|
Re: [FVC]: Longer competitions
Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryV1188
I can see FVC expanding greatly in the next few years. Probably never as big as FLL, but maybe halfway between FRC and FLL. We will have to have hundreds of VEX tournaments to handle the number of teams. That's either a very scary or a very inspiring thought!
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by fredliu168
That would mean FVC would have to increase the number of tournaments teams are allowed to win awards in. Also, it would probably mean more divisions in the championships, like the FRC 4 divisions.
I actually love that idea.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryV1188
More likely, it will mean that FVC gets 3 tiers of competitions like FLL has now. You win(*) at a regional, and you advance to the next level. You win(*) at that level and you qualify for the Championships. Currently in the FLL model, the "next level" is state or country. For FVC, it would be a larger section of the US or a few countries for international teams.
Unfortunately, there would be travel and other costs associated with the 2nd tier tournaments, meaning the path to Atlanta (or wherever) just got more expensive.
(*) - "Win" wouldn't necessarily mean just the first place alliance and the Inspire award. Assuming maybe 20 second-tier tournaments of about 40 teams each around the world, 6-8 teams could advance from each tournament to Atlanta, and compete in a manageable-sized competition (with divisions!) of 120-160 teams. Maybe first and second placed alliances, Inspire plus runner up, etc. could advance. The number of teams advancing from the regional to the 2nd tier would also be determined in advance, based on number of entries. For example in Michigan FLL, about 1/4 of the teams entered in the regionals advance to one of the two the State Tournaments. This structure could support 3000 VEX teams, less if they are allowed to enter more than one regional.
|
Trying to get back closer to the original intent of this thread, I have been trying to think of competition models that are employed by other organizations; that might also work for an FVC season enjoyed by thousands of teams. Key points seem to be these: - Many other competitions/challenges that are both spectator sports and that place participants in head-to-head competition, typically have a long regular season filled with matches that give all participants a good dose of time "on the field". FVC doesn't have that but tries to give a worthwhile experience to teams in 1-day tournaments (Petty hard to do with a large number of teams and a small number of layers of competition)
- Other competitions do not muddy up a team's chances to prove themselves worthy of advancing, by allying them with pseudo-randomly chosen partners in a handful of matches on a single day. FVC does this, but could instead switch to other formats. Many are possible. Most or all the (1-day) alternatives would poke a great big hole in the concept of coopetition. Most or all of the whole-season options would raise the specter of high costs, if the team-density didn't rise to something like the densities other popular competitions in this age group enjoy.
So, if FVC grows to a few thousand teams, if the number of layers of of expensive competitions between a team and the World Championships is kept low, if coopetition concepts force teams to ally with random partners during tournaments, if doing well at 1 or 2 "championships" per season remains necessary for getting to the World Championships, and if the FVC Tx/RX technology doesn't change to one that can use ID codes to share RF channels across multiple fields; then I think that multi-day competitions are going to be necessary in order to give the large number of tournament participants at each event a statistically significant number of matches and enough matches to make the season worth their investment.
Change a few of the "if"s above and maybe two-day events won't become necessary.
Blake
__________________
Blake Ross, For emailing me, in the verizon.net domain, I am blake
VRC Team Mentor, FTC volunteer, 5th Gear Developer, Husband, Father, Triangle Fraternity Alumnus (ky 76), U Ky BSEE, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, Kentucky Colonel
Words/phrases I avoid: basis, mitigate, leveraging, transitioning, impact (instead of affect/effect), facilitate, programmatic, problematic, issue (instead of problem), latency (instead of delay), dependency (instead of prerequisite), connectivity, usage & utilize (instead of use), downed, functionality, functional, power on, descore, alumni (instead of alumnus/alumna), the enterprise, methodology, nomenclature, form factor (instead of size or shape), competency, modality, provided(with), provision(ing), irregardless/irrespective, signage, colorized, pulsating, ideate
Last edited by gblake : 29-04-2007 at 16:04.
|