Quote:
Originally Posted by Fe_Will
The biggest problem that Washington in particular has is that they have a 3:1 rookie to veteran ratio. There are some places that don't have a big enough group of veterans to support some of these ideas. At the Seattle Regional last year 1/8 of the teams were sub-1000.
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At 10,000 Lakes in MN last year, there were 51 teams.
There was one team with a number below 1000.
There were a total of 3 teams with numbers below 2000. None of these three teams were from Minnesota.
There were 19 rookies.
There were another 22 teams that were second year teams.
The list of teams is available
here if you want to check my math.
There was another regional literally across the street the same weekend. The numbers there were similar.
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I have taken a deep breath several times and resisted replying to this thread until I could get my thoughts in order. They may still not be in order, and this may get somewhat long-winded and rambling. Please forgive me in advance.
I am deeply concerned about any significant compression of the schedule on Thursday. With the tremendous growth that we have had in MN in the last 3 years, going from < 10 teams to > 80 teams, we have a significant lack of experience. These 80+ teams are spread over a large geographical area (there are only 7 teams within an hour drive of my house, there are teams that are at least 6 hours away). The great majority of these teams do not have any mentors that are qualified to be doing inspections of other teams robots, as has been suggested by others. In fact, most of my inspectors either come from out of state or are local but are not actively associated with a team. With the number of young teams that we have here in MN, it is a challenge to get everyone's problems resolved and thru inspection by the end of the day on Thursday as it is. To compound matters, our volunteer pool is spread across both events, and at the moment it looks like we will have a rookie Lead Inspector at one of the regionals this year. Inspector training takes place on Thursday morning due to the distance that most of the inspectors and myself travel to get to the event. This takes a couple of hours, so we really can't start inspecting until 10:00-10:30. To try and inpect 50+ robots between then and 3 PM would be "Lunacy".
Due to the sheer number of teams and the wide geographic distribution, there is not a "pre-ship" event here in MN that everyone attends, as there is in a lot of other places. Therefore, trying to impose some sort of "pre-inspection" at that event is not an option for us.
I'm also concerned about requiring teams to be "done" at a pre-ship event. Teams that do attend pre-ship events often learn that they have major issues to be addressed before Tuesday. A big one, especially for young teams, is finding out that the robot does not drive the same on the field carpet as it did on whatever floor they used at the shop for testing. I think every year I was involved with a team in GA we rushed back home from the pre-ship event with a list of necessary design changes, some of which were significant. We always thought we were "done", but always learned otherwise. My feeling is that a lot of other teams are in the same category, especially ones that do not have the resources to have their own practice field.
I am all in favor of more rounds for each team. However, I am not in favor of forcing more rounds into the match schedule at the expense of being able to have every team thru inspection with a robot that is capable of competing. If teams, especially rookies, miss their first match or two because they didn't understand something in the rules and they only have half a day on Thursday to make a major correction, they are not going to be inspired by FIRST. They are more likely to give up, and to become yet another team that goes and finds some other (cheaper) activity to participate in next year.
Last year at 10,000 Lakes, with the 51 teams, we ran 9 matches per team without any major time overrun. By shortening up the opening ceremonies each day, taking some time out of lunch, and maybe going a little later on Friday, we should be able to go to 10 matches per team without having to start on Thursday. To make this happen, it is critical that the FTA, the Field Supervisor, and the Field Reset Crew do an outstanding job, but it is not impossible (as long as the field control system cooperates). If we go much above 50 teams this year, then it gets harder. I feel for the 60 team regionals, who will have some problems, but the smaller events should be able to pull this off without having to give up half of Thursday.
That's my opinion. It's probably not worth $0.02.
-Jeff Pahl
Lead Inspector, Minnesota 10000 Lakes Regional
Lead Inspector, Newton Division, 2009 World Championship
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