Quote:
Originally Posted by runneals
Both of these are very valid ideas that are both worth attempting (although I think I read the second one differently the first time). Why don't they do something like what they do in December with FIRST Choice, where it allows a team to put in events and rank them which they would want 1-5(10). This would allow teams to come up with a list of events that they would want to attend, allow mentors to input them in their free time before the specified date, and then the slotting program be ran at a specified time to slot teams into events based on their choices that they made. For quite a few people, registration is not during their lunch hour so it could be hard for them to do it at work. The "slotting program" could also account for starting at 0 and working it's way up so older teams get first pick, but it could also include some spatial algorithm to allow teams to attend their closest event.
Allowing district teams to register on their own day would offer a way for IT to ensure that their systems would work for regional registration.
Just some random ramblings after reading this  |
I don't like this nearly as much as I like the FIRST Choice system.
If you don't get what you want on FIRST Choice, you don't get some free stuff you weren't totally expecting to get. If a regional is full, I want to know as soon as I sign up for it that I'm not on the confirmed list so I can look at my other options and decide.
How can an algorithm decide if I'd rather be on the waitlist for one event rather than confirmed for an event 7 hours away that I know won't be filled? There's too many human decisions in this process for me to want to automate my decision making in an algorithm.
FIRST should be able to handle a few thousand page requests at once. If they can't, any number of outside firms I'm sure would love to have a contract to do this. This isn't an insurmountable challenge.