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Unread 19-09-2003, 23:08
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Chamionship Qualification - feedback needed ASAP!

FIRST is considering modifications to the criteria and procedures used to qualify for the FIRST Championship for 2004. This is due to a perception that the current method - based on Even/Odd Team Numbers and “points” earned during prior years - may no longer provide appropriate primary discriminators for the registration process, and will still have too many teams competing for too few open registration slots. That this is being considered probably does not come as a surprise to many folks (there is already one thread speculating on this possibility).

As this change is being considered, FIRST and the Board are seeking input and comments on this topic from the teams. Specifically, we would like feedback on the performance of the current system, and – if a new system were to be put in place – what characteristics of a new Championship qualification system would be considered most appropriate by teams.

So, here are the ground rules:
- It is guaranteed that every response will be read and all inputs will be considered - nothing will be ignored
- No feedback – direct or indirect – will be provided until after the final decision is made and the Championship qualification criteria are announced; and even then direct feedback may not be provided
- Although all inputs will be read and considered, these input are not the only ones being sought. Thus, there is no guarantee that the final decision will be based solely on the inputs provide here.
- For any of a number of reasons, submitted suggestions may be impractical, incompatible, or unimplementable, and may not be incorporated into the final decision. There is no promise that your ideas will get used.
- We want to hear your impressions of how well the Even/Odd system has worked, or not worked
- Specific, highly detailed descriptions of alternative selection criteria are not needed – a few alternatives have already been identified and are under consideration
- We particularly DO want to hear your comments and ideas about the attributes that a fair, robust, and appropriate set of qualification criteria would have (i.e., you don’t need to tell us “here is my suggestion of an alternate points scheme for registration…” – but we really want to hear things like “a good registration process will let us know six months in advance if we are registered for the Championship, so we can start raising funds – and an excellent process will let us know a year in advance” etc.)

Note that time is short, and we need to hear from you quickly – like within the next 7-10 days. So if you have a comment, or would like to provide feedback, this is your opportunity! Let us hear from you!

If at any time during this year's competition season you thought "if I had designed the Championship Qualification Criteria, I would have done it differently..." then here is your chance! I know that if there is a single place to go for this sort of input, it will be this forum! Let's hear your thoughts.

-dave lavery
FIRST Executive Advisory Board

p.s. We are hoping to see something with a little more thought and "big picture thinking" than all the even-numbered teams really like the current system, and all the odd-numbered teams think it is horrible!
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Unread 19-09-2003, 23:45
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Out with the Odd! (and Even)

Though the even-odd system lets alot of teams take part in the event, I believe that a more exclusive and performance based system would make the Championship Event more exciting and better overall. The award based system for robot design, performance, judges awards, &c seems to me to work quite well, so I would be interested in creating more qualifying awards and doing away with the even-odd.

Though I think there should be less teams competing or a more rigorous determination of which teams get to compete, I would love to see more teams and people involved in the event itself. Since I live in Metro Atlanta, I plan on taking my team to the entire Championship Event, regardless of whether our robot will be there with us. I would love to help work at the event as a volunteer and I know many other members of my team would be interested as well, so I think it would be good if there was some sort of volunteering system where teams that were interested in going to the Championship but had not qualified would be asked to volunteer at the Event for a day or two.
The more people at the Championship Event, the better.

As to when teams should learn of there acceptance into the Champioship Event, the Regional Events that they qualify at would be when they learned (if qualification was based solely on Awards from the same year as the Event). Although this wouldn't give teams much time to collect all the money they needed, I think it would be better to do it at the Regionals and teams that wanted to go the the Championship Event would fundraise enough beforehand to cover the costs of qualification.
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Unread 20-09-2003, 00:16
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I hate to sound like a broken record, but:

Bring it back to everyone who wants to go to Nationals, goes!!

Last year at Reliant stadium it was very disappointing sitting at the closing ceremonies and seeing probably more than 60% of the stadium not being filled by people.

I say let everyone compete, add a new field into the mix (maybe Socrates) and everyone will be happy (maybe?)

I think the big deterrent to this is pit area, and people traffic or the fear by FIRST that they won't have enough volunteers to run things.

If this is the case, have a member from each team each day volunteer for FIRST.

I know this more than likely already happens for maybe half of the teams involved, so make it a standard and have it count for points.

As for the pit area, I don't know the layout of The Georgia Dome complex, but if need be, set up a tent outside for additional pits...

It worked for years in Florida didn't it?
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Unread 20-09-2003, 00:31
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Everyone should have a chance to go to the championships. To remind everyone the spirit of FIRST is not to have a good robot or even a robot that works but to teach students that science and technology is fun. By limiting who can and can't go to the championships is hurting how much fun it really is.

Every other year was a good compromise and spreading it out any more than that would make it so many members of teams only get to see the championships once. I would reccomend that it be open to everyone. As Elgin said expanding the pits to tents would not hurt, it worked in Florida.
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Unread 20-09-2003, 00:35
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Thanks for asking. Honestly.
  • Make the event accessible to as many teams and people as possible. This seems obvious, but it can't hurt to mention it. Atlanta wants hotel rooms booked? Offer hotel-only packages at a discounted rate and let teams who can't compete come down and learn.
  • Ditch the even/odd qualification process, but avoid, at all costs, a robot performance based system. FIRST isn't about the robots -- I think you've all said that yourself -- so now is the time to really send that message home.
  • Place more emphasis on various awards by increasing their consideration when allowing a team to attend the Championship event. This might include technical awards, judges awards, animation, Inventor, etc.
    I can't express how disappointed and surprised I was to learn that the Engineering Inspiration Award didn't qualify a team to attend the Championship. If it's supposed to be second to the Chairman's Award in importance, why isn't it treated that way?
  • Create a pool of interested teams. Possibly ask them to pay event registration ahead of time. Then, randomly select a number of teams from that pool to attend. Do this early so as to give them ample opportunity to do other things with that money.
  • Eliminate automatic inclusion of inaugural year teams.
  • Make points accumulation cumulative across several seasons. It rewards hard work and patience. Teams could then bank those points and choose to use them whenever they'd wish.

My overwhelming feeling is that the Competition has begun to err more toward being a competitive event that rewards winning matches and success at regionals over inspiration and recognition of science and engineering; and of science and engineers. I'd like to see steps taken to correct our course, so to speak, so that we're including as many people as possible in the good experiences the Championship has to offer and doing so in as egalitarian and balanced way as possible.
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Unread 20-09-2003, 01:16
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My Opinions:

Everyone should go to nationals.
Yes, it's true. In an ideal world, every team should be allowed to go to nationals, so that they all get to experience the "big show" of FIRST. This will not happen. I mean, cmon guys. No matter how many times we say it, FIRST is going to have to limit nationals in some way. Otherwise, Dave wouldn't be asking for our opinions on how to limit nationals, he'd just be saying "Yay, everyone goes this year!"

I didn't see any such post.
So, barring the above:

Everyone should get the chance to experience nationals.
Note: this is not the same as the above. Barring the "everyone can go", we have "everyone can go, at least once every 2 years." Now... there has been a lot of whining about this, but, at the risk of breaking with the 'popular' opinion... I LIKE THE EVEN/ODD SYSTEM. Face it, people can complain all they want how they got "shut out of nationals" but, I won't cry for them knowing that next year, they will get their "free ride".

Teams that build strong robots should go to nationals.
Yes, it's true. I'm one of those people that thinks the BEST robots should be at the big-show. Everyone else is a bonus. How do we decide which robots are the "best"? Well... how about with the current qualification system? Seems like a good plan to me.

The only problem with this is... even after going to multiple regionals, some of the "best" robots might not get recognized. (everyone has bad luck). A possible solution to this, is to overhaul the judging/award process. But, this is a completely different problem.


Summary:
I like the current system. It allows for everyone to experience nationals (even if you only go once every 2 years). It also rewards the *best* robots, and makes the nationals competition competitive. I think overall, it works well.

Again, in my opinion. The only major problems stem from the judging/award process. There has been a lot of talk about how this process needs to be reformed, and I won't go into too much detail here (I'll save it for another thread ) Basically, what it boils down to is: If FIRST is going to make the awards "worth" something. They need to make sure they ALWAYS go to the right teams. We've all heard the horror stories. Let's keep this from happening in the future.


Dave,
When can we expect the "final word" on some of this?


Thank you,

John

PS - I think I chimed in way more than my allotted $.02 this time. Sorry for ranting.
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Unread 20-09-2003, 01:43
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I feel the even/odd/point solution was good in the beginning. Now it seems to me to be to inclusive. Heres my logic considering 2v2 system. We have roughly 1000 teams and we need to get at most 300 of them. I think the system should be purely award driven. This is the superbowl of smarts right! lets make it that way. This breakdown covers all aspects. Great robots, great teams, and even a chance for those rookies to get in. I'd like to see it like since when championship qualifying is harder to achieve then we will all strive to make a better bot. It will influence us all as teams to work together and realize we have to work to get to atlanta.

78 Regional Winners
26 Chairman's
26 Animation
26 Spirit (I feel the loud teams should be there to cheer everyone on)
26 Delphi Award
26 Engineering Inspiration Award
26 Motorola Quality Award
26 Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award
26 Leadership in Control Award
26 Highest Rookie Seed
-------------------------------
312 teams

and with the overlapping teams it brings it down to about 280. Makes sense? And youve got 2 weeks before atlanta in the last regional so if you weary on time and money go to an earlier regional.


and M krass its called competition for a reason...
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Unread 20-09-2003, 02:12
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My two cents (Or is it two dollars? I may have misplaced a decimal point.)

There are plenty of Regionals now so all teams will get a chance to experience the spirit and excitement of a FIRST competition.

The Championship Event should be just that: a championship. Only the best of the best should be there. The Championships will be FIRST's best shot at mass-marketing themselves. They need great teams for great competition to get great TV broadcast offers.

That being said, I'd like to put on the table a system that would accomplish this in a fair manner. To be fair, we need a system that recognizes every way a team can excel in FIRST. I think these criteria do that:

1). Any team who played on an alliance that went to the Semifinals at any event. (This way you can't qualify just by being picked. You have to earn it with success in the elimination matches.)

2). Any team who finishes in the top XX% during the qualification rounds. (This number can be tweaked according to how many teams have registered in FIRST, how many regionals there are, and how much room there is at the Championship event.)

3.) Any team who wins a Regional Award. (This helps to emphasize the parts of FIRST that aren't about competition.)

4.) Any previous champions or Chairman's Award winners.

A team can prove they can win in the elims (1), they can prove they are good in the qualification rounds (2), they can prove that they are good at some other aspect of FIRST (3), or they already have proven themselves (4).

Even / odd is bad. I was never a fan of it, and I'm glad FIRST is considering discontinuing it. As far as general guidlines go, past Chairman's and Championship winners should get an exemption.

Looking at Ricksta's calculations, maybe only Regional Finalists should qualify. Oh well... We'll see, I guess.

Kudos and thanks to FIRST for asking our opinions!

George
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Unread 20-09-2003, 02:12
Jnadke Jnadke is offline
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If you look at the Event Page, it seems to have been established that only 210 teams will be able to pre-register for this year's nationals.

Remove the Chairman's award winners and the original teams and you're left with roughly 200-190. Last year 787 teams competed in the FIRST competition. However, by my calculations, there are 1,186 available spots at regional competitions. With the facts at the table, it's safe to say that not everyone will be able to go to the Championship Event every single year.

I do believe every team should have an oportunity to attend the Championship event at least every 2 years, if not every other year. I also believe, however, that the "best and the brightest" should be allowed to attend. As a result of gaps in the team numbers due to inactive teams, the previous system of using a divisor would not suffice, as the load from year to year would not be even. With that said, I propose that a random lottery system to be developed. The rules for attending would be outlined as follows:

Rules for Championship Event Attendance:
1. Every team that is elligible will be added to a lottery. Teams would be chosen at random.
2. The winner(s) of every regional, and every major award winner would be allowed to attend (or perhaps every award winner if there is enough room).
3. Chairman's Award Winners and the previous year's Championship Winner(s) would be allowed to attend.

Determining Championship Lottery Elligibility:
1. If you have attended the Championship within the past 2 years, you are NOT elligible for the lottery.
2. You are REQUIRED to sign up for and attend at least one regional in order to be elligible for the pool (there are enough regional spots for every team).


I do believe every team should be given a fair and equal chance to attend the Championship. However, I also understand that it is physically and logistically impossible to accomodate every team every year with the tremendous growth that FIRST has had. I believe that the above system would reflect a fair and accurate chance for each team to participate in the event.
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Unread 20-09-2003, 04:39
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The problem with the current point driven system is that it is inherantly unfair to poorer teams. A team that can afford to go to 3 or 4 regionals would be three or four times as likely to qualify for nationals as a team that can only afford to go to one (and lets face it, including shipping, registration, travel, room, and board, attending an additional regional can be very expensive).

The current system acts as more of a frequent flyer program than a fair ranking of skills. I know of no other sport which allows to to try to qualify for the championship as many times as you like, given the right amount of money. A good registration system should remove the advantage to attending more than one regional. I'm not saying we should limit teams to one regional, or make the regionals truely for a single 'region,' but perhaps there are compromises, such as:
  • "Champoinship points" could be divided by the number of regionals a team attends. In other words, it is the average number of points that count.
  • Forget points, and just allow teams that either won a technical award or made it to the finals at one pre-specified "home" regional. In other words, teams can only attend one regional that counts, and the rest are just for fun (in the same way that the Chairman's Award can only be applied for at one regional). This runs into the problem of 'lame duck' teams who are at a non-counting regional, but I don't think it would be a major issue.
Of course, both these sugestions run into issues of fairness with teams that can only afford to attend "harder" regionals, but that is true of every sport, and it would still be much more fair than the current system. Plus, remaining spots could be randomly distributed, evening things out a bit.

I guess the only truely fair way to do nationals would be to either let everyone in that wants to go, or to base it purely on the even/odd or lottery system, but I can't see either happening.

P.S.: The issue of whether or not to automatically allow first year teams to go has been brought up here a few times, and while I can't speak for the other first year teams, I do know that one of the main goals for 190 each season is to qualify for the Championship through conventional means (and we have done so every year). I honestly don't think there would be much protest from 190 if the grandfather clause were removed.
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Last edited by ahecht : 20-09-2003 at 17:21.
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Unread 20-09-2003, 08:36
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everyone should have a chance to go. If it becomes based on performance then there will be a dividing line in FIRST. When I went to nationals twice I learned so much from all the other teams. We were a better team for it even if we didn't perform well. If you only have the good teams they get better and the growing teams just kinda sit there. Older teams have more money and experience. We can learn from them. Make it a raffle. At kickoff when you pick up your kit ask who is interested. If a team is, put in thier number. You could have the drawing the next week and require a deposit. Money shouldn't be an issue if they knew about the system and saved ahead of time. If a team doesn't have enough money they are taken out and another is drawn. Its fair, its unbiased, it will help learning. It'll work
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Unread 20-09-2003, 08:38
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The point system has problems, such as the mentioned frequent flyer problem. I like the idea of accumulating points. I also think that the point system should be rewarding to teams winning awards other than the chairman's and regional champs. Yes, it is good to have the best teams at the champ event; however the regional events aren't providing the true meaning, spirit, and purpose of FIRST the way the championship event does - therefore I think more teams, especially rookie teams, need to go to the national event. And I don't mean there should be 50% rookies or something outrageous. I also understand the bias I seem to be under, however I was on Team 71 before 1020 and I don't feel like 1020 was cheated last year.

The even/odd system has a great advantage. It's like the old days when everyone could go except it's half of everyone. How long will this be enough though? 1000 teams and I read, possibly 210 spots?

The inclusion of the inaugural teams jumped off the page at me when I read it. "Why?" I thought. I can understand the want to keep them in the event and actually after thinking about it, I hope you do. They are the ones that I can go to at the event and chat with about the old days when everything was on tether! They deserve that spot for getting things started and the can offer a lot to the community from their experience.

An idea occured to me from professional sports: What if there were two major events followed by a competition between the winners? I shuddered at the thought and I hope you do too. If someone has already thought of this on your end, Dave, no offense to them, but please keep searching for other ideas and don't split up the one event that we all love!

Good luck to all of you guys at FIRST who are trying to figure this one out. Don't lose too much sleep over it!
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Unread 20-09-2003, 08:59
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Great job by everyone so far at being concise....

The bonus that went with the odd/even system was that a team knew that they were eligible to attend and that fund-raising money was needed. It is hard to motivate fund-raising (especially with seniors) if there is only a " chance" that you might attend the Championship. Last minute travel arrangements are a nightmare. Ask those who have done it.

If points are given out for awards, then all awards should be treated like the Chairman's Award at Regionals. Teams select ONE regional at which they are eligible to win awards. This is done by submitting "paper work" in advance of the regional. This then helps judges narrow down the work that they must do.

Presently, the focus of the Championship is the robot competition (does anyone disagree??) . Teams that compete should have competitive robots. Again, this is FIRST's chance to shine. As a 2002 Regional Chairman's Award winner, we chose NOT to compete with our robot. It was NOT a competitive machine. However, the team itself should still attend as volunteers or spectators.
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Unread 20-09-2003, 09:19
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I agree with Rick and the idea that the championship should be purely award based. Only instead of just current year winners, previous year technology award winners should be allowed to qualify as well. John has a good point in saying that the judging needs to get better in the awards section, ie. making sure a team can actually do what they say they can do.

With the current even/odd system, yes it is fair to everyone if thats what your looking for, but it also doesn't make for the best championship. Maybe after all the qualified teams register there could be 50 spots for non-qualified teams to fill, and once a team that doesn't qualify goes to the championship they can't go untill every other team that wants to go has gone at least once. This would take a lot longer to get everyone down there, but at least it would still get them all there.

Dave, just out of curiosity are there any numbers being thrown around about how many teams would be able to go if it was open registration? Also, is the max teams in the new venue 210 or is that the max previous year qualified teams that can register and there will be added slots for the teams who qualify in this year?
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Unread 20-09-2003, 09:19
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Quote:
Originally posted by JVN
My Opinions:

Everyone should go to nationals.
Yes, it's true. In an ideal world, every team should be allowed to go to nationals, so that they all get to experience the "big show" of FIRST. This will not happen. I mean, cmon guys. No matter how many times we say it, FIRST is going to have to limit nationals in some way. Otherwise, Dave wouldn't be asking for our opinions on how to limit nationals, he'd just be saying "Yay, everyone goes this year!"

I didn't see any such post.
So, barring the above:

Everyone should get the chance to experience nationals.
Note: this is not the same as the above. Barring the "everyone can go", we have "everyone can go, at least once every 2 years." Now... there has been a lot of whining about this, but, at the risk of breaking with the 'popular' opinion... I LIKE THE EVEN/ODD SYSTEM. Face it, people can complain all they want how they got "shut out of nationals" but, I won't cry for them knowing that next year, they will get their "free ride".

Teams that build strong robots should go to nationals.
Yes, it's true. I'm one of those people that thinks the BEST robots should be at the big-show. Everyone else is a bonus. How do we decide which robots are the "best"? Well... how about with the current qualification system? Seems like a good plan to me.

The only problem with this is... even after going to multiple regionals, some of the "best" robots might not get recognized. (everyone has bad luck). A possible solution to this, is to overhaul the judging/award process. But, this is a completely different problem.


Summary:
I like the current system. It allows for everyone to experience nationals (even if you only go once every 2 years). It also rewards the *best* robots, and makes the nationals competition competitive. I think overall, it works well.

Again, in my opinion. The only major problems stem from the judging/award process. There has been a lot of talk about how this process needs to be reformed, and I won't go into too much detail here (I'll save it for another thread ) Basically, what it boils down to is: If FIRST is going to make the awards "worth" something. They need to make sure they ALWAYS go to the right teams. We've all heard the horror stories. Let's keep this from happening in the future.


Dave,
When can we expect the "final word" on some of this?


Thank you,

John

PS - I think I chimed in way more than my allotted $.02 this time. Sorry for ranting.
Conformist..

Unlike John, the conformist, I am selfish. As long as my team gets to go to nationals every year, I could care less. You can change as many qualification criteria you want, as long as it doesn't bar my team from going. <-- Unless you are a chairman's award winning or an original team, then one of these statements is most likely the subconscious drive that motivates you to "want" a change to the current qualification system. People go against the qualification system because it prevents them from going to nationals, or because they have already qualified and want to add their voice in to make it sound like they really "care." If the system was changed midway through the year and those that qualified for nationals no longer did, then I'm sure they would still have a voice against the new system and those who qualify would assume the empathic role.

Watch closely, also, the changes people want made to the qualification system. The changes probably give the team of that person, or the strength of that person, the best chance of carrying them to nationals. Teams with new innovations every year probably want more technical awards to be included in the qualification criteria; spirited teams perhaps want the spirit awards to warrant them a place at nationals; teams with competitive robots that don't quite make it to the finals of a competition perhaps want the scope of regional elimination awards to be broadened, etc.

How about that for cynicism? At the heart of my post is "sarcasm," but now that I look back at it, I think I believe it to some degree.

Accumulating points does sound like a good idea, at first; however, we see this as FIRST setting itself up for quite the fiasco in the long run. Eventually, all non rookie teams will have accumulated enough points to warrant them a spot that the National Competition. FIRST can only allow so many teams to enter, thus reducing registration for nationals to a true, "first come, first served" deal.

Rick's idea also sounds like it would work for the upcoming year. But it would run into a problem once the regionals began to grow. Now that I think more on the rate of regionals being added per year, Rick's idea would perhaps work for the next 4-5 years. I have to say that I don't like the idea and I suppose I can't put across a reason why...

Anyway, this thread distracted me, I have to get to other things.
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