Quote:
Originally Posted by IKE
I would appreciate it if folks took the time to add both positives and negatives that way the "right things" get continued, and the "Wrong things" get addressed. I use the word addressed, because what 1 person sees as a wrong thing, many others may not.
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Apologies in advance for such a long post...
Over the last two weeks I had the chance to attend the Midwest Regional as an inspector, and then the Kettering District as a competitor. I don't think any of these comments will be a surprise to the FiM people - you have heard them in private and in public at various times.
First, the core volunteers who are making the 2009 Michigan District system happen deserve many many thanks for working so hard on making sure the events run. The relatively small number of people who spent so much time interacting with and helping the teams solve technical issues at Kettering deserve gold medals.
The amount of money we are saving this year by going to nearby district events, and not staying in any hotels, and replacing nicer team dinners with pizza while still at the venue, is a lot. If ever there was a year to save money, this is it. It makes the activity a little less big-time, but I think we would have had to make such sacrifices anyway in this year of financial challenges.
The increased number of matches is great. It makes you realize how important a robust robot and an easy-to-update control system are. Friday and Saturday were non-stop and long.
So far, the "coverage" of the district system has been limited. We need some actual objective evaluation of it. I don't know what FIRST-Manchester's evaluation plan is, but I worry that there is not enough objective evaluation - there is a lot of repeating of talking points, and some avoidance of the negative issues. The talking points are: 1) I worked a full day at work on Thursday, 2)more plays, less money, 3)the event went great, 4)no shipping. But it would be nice to get some more objective statistics and details.
Some possible statistics would be 1)does a 2-day district + Thurs night practice + 8-hour Access Period take more time away from work/family than a 3-day regional? 2)how many people attended vs a regional? 3)could they see/hear the action? 4)did they have seats? 5)Was press coverage better? 6)what are the no-show robot statistics? 7)were field issues similar to the non FiM events? 8)was tech support from FIRST/NI/FMS sufficient? 9)How did the self-shipping work out? (It is NOT being suggested these are all problems - but these are useful fact- and data-based criteria for an objective evaluation).
While it is difficult to be objective about the "feel" of the event, my opinion is that the Kettering event was like an FRC off-season event. Someone likened it to an FLL event, but it did not have the same "show" quality of the FLL State Championship that I have been judging at for the last several years. I saw some video from the Traverse City event, and that did not look as good as Kettering. Does anyone disagree that the District system has replaced the "arena show" with a "gym event"?
The compressed schedule makes the show a little less impressive. Because teams have less time to get up and running at the event, and because for many it will be the first time they are on a real competition field with game conditions, some of the learning curve happens during matches instead of during practice. Are there any statistics capturing how many teams used matches (instead of practice) as their "get it running" learning curve? For example, what are the FRC vs. FiM statistics on how many teams were running an autonomous mode in their first couple of Q-matches as compared to their last couple of Q-matches? You would think that this might be a positive statistic for the "more plays" concept. It could also be a negative statistic showing that teams needed the practice session.
Speaking of practice, is there any data on how many teams took advantage of the open practice sessions on Thursday night and Friday morning? Was there enough time to cycle all teams through a practice (assuming they were ready, which they should be at later events)? My impression was that many teams who needed the practice were not yet ready, and that open practice time was being used by the "prepared" teams. It would be interesting to see data on who got stick time on the field during practice.
Is the compressed schedule the reason why there were no awards on Friday, and why only 7 students per team can go up to receive awards on Sat? I think anything that gets the students up in front of a cheering crowd to receive an award they won is worth the time. I understand that we cant do that in Atlanta, where there are many thousand people, but it seems like we could/should do it at a district/regional.
Do the non-Michigan teams know that we get to bypass the 40 lb withholding allowance for parts made during the 8 hour robot access period?
Were the rules being applied consistently? I have two issues which I think are big ones:
(1) I walked into the building Saturday at a couple of minutes past 7AM. There were dozens of people in the pits, and some teams were working on their robots. I do not know how long they had been in there, and I did not see any officials (safety, inspection, etc.) monitoring any of this. The agenda indicated pit opening time was 7:30 AM.
When I asked one of the key volunteers what was going on with teams in the pits so early, he said that one of the FiM officials told him "this is the new FIRST." When I then went to that specific FiM official and asked him about teams in the pits early, he told me that it was important that people didn't have to wait outside in the cold. Huh? This is disingenuous. We were talking about people in the pits, and it was unseasonably warm outside.
It is things like this that have made me wonder about the management of FiM, when we hear different answers at different times, depending on who is listening.
(2) This issue was already raised by another competitor, but I think there was at least the appearance of favoritism on the playing field. A team had a DS problem at the very beginning of eliminations, and it was announced that it was a DS problem (a team problem) as opposed to a field problem. Several minutes went by while this problem was being worked on and eventually resolved. No timeout was taken. In the finals, this same team had a problem at the beginning of match1, and at that time a timeout was taken. An extension cord was run out onto the field from under the scorer's table in order to allow the team to power up their DS so they could run a motor on their robot. I thought this was going too far.
In summary, I am thankful for the cost savings, but worried that the so-called "new FIRST" is diverging from "old FIRST" in an unsupervised fashion that may not be following the rules/guidelines/philosophy of FIRST. I think more should be done to maintain consistency and transparency.
Respectfully submitted,
Ken