Dear GDC,

[johnr]

To the powers that be at the gdc, could you try something at your 2010 live broadcast? One hour before broadcast take some students and mentors and show them everything. You could make them sign something or take away thier phones and then they could sit as a group during the broadcast. Take the questions they come up with and use them in your tv game show part of broadcast. I think if this was used this year the very simple questions of,"Can we take balls out of trailer?" or " Can we cover trailer?" would have came up. Then again, if you did this we wouldn't have so much to talk about on cd.

[Mike Betts]

Dear John,

It's been done before. Wireless microphones were circulated about the audience and people could ask questions. The result was:

1. An extra hour that people had to sit through before they could get their kits.
2. No one had a chance to read the rules yet so many questions were irrelevant.
3. The GDC was forced to come up with answers "on the spot" without having time to discuss or research and many "quick" answers were eventually overturned in subsequent updates. BTW, this caused a LOT of hard feelings on the part of the teams, i.e. "But Woody Said..."

There was one year that it was already dark before I got out of there with my teams KOP.

I am the last person in the world to say that FIRST does nothing wrong. However, the kickoff in its present format has much improved over the 15 years that I have been doing this.

JMHO...

Mike

[johnr]

As i said ,before the show starts have the people see rules and submit questions. No live stuff or follow up. Same amount of time as tv game show section.

[smurfgirl]

How do you propose they choose the people who would get to see the game early? I feel like this would create more issues than people already have.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I think all of this could be really easily addressed by, you know, having the Q&A open the day of kickoff. Instead of 4 days later after everyone's been speculating in an information vacuum and already half way through the design process. Also, answering more than six questions in the first 24 hours after such a long time without any Q&A would help as well.

[Protronie]

Thanks for such an awesome game. Finally everyone will be playing on a level field. The powerhouse teams as well as the rookies have just as much chance of slip sliding to victory.

As for the kick off format... its fine the way it is!
Whats so wrong with some discussion on CD?

I'm crazy for Lunacy!

-p

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I think all of this could be really easily addressed by, you know, having the Q&A open the day of kickoff. Instead of 4 days later after everyone's been speculating in an information vacuum and already half way through the design process. Also, answering more than six questions in the first 24 hours after such a long time without any Q&A would help as well.

Kevin,

I hear ya... I think the intent of the 4 day wait was to allow teams to read the rules. However, the reality is that everyone who is going to read the rules have done so by Sunday. And, however hard we try and make it different, you can give the remainder 4 weeks and they still will not have read them! Maybe a Monday open?

And, as excruciating as it is for the rest of us to see so few questions answered, I believe that most of the GDC have day jobs. Also, I'd rather few answers that are correct rather than quick answers that could have been thought out better...

In fact, we could all help the process by posting more intelligent and less repetitious questions.

Yeah. Like that's gonna happen...

Regards,

Mike

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Mike Betts

Kevin,

I hear ya... I think the intent of the 4 day wait was to allow teams to read the rules. However, the reality is that everyone who is going to read the rules have done so by Sunday. And, however hard we try and make it different, you can give the remainder 4 weeks and they still will not have read them! Maybe a Monday open?

And, as excruciating as it is for the rest of us to see so few questions answered, I believe that most of the GDC have day jobs. Also, I'd rather few answers that are correct rather than quick answers that could have been thought out better...

In fact, we could all help the process by posting more intelligent and less repetitious questions.

Yeah. Like that's gonna happen...

Regards,

Mike

Monday would make a lot of sense. I do understand the wait for people to actually read the rules, and the desire to cut down on the number of "Read the rules" style answers. I think by waiting so long, however, they end up with a flood of identical questions as everyone on CD that's been waiting for an answer posts the same questions with different wordings. It's obviously difficult to avoid repetitious questions when there are so few answered, after all. And no, CD as a clearinghouse for questions to the Q&A is not a good idea. We shouldn't have to pick up the slack for something that should be being addressed by FIRST.

I do understand that the GDC members have day jobs. They should still be able to get to a few questions during evenings, though. It appears that there were 0 new answers last night, which is just ridiculous. If FIRST is actually planning on growing any larger, they're going to need to develop a better system for the Q&A. Perhaps making sure a few of the GDC members are employed by FIRST itself and can thus have their day jobs put on hold for January to make sure the easier Q&A questions get answered in a timely fashion, thus cutting down on the number necessary for consideration by the full GDC.

[JesseK]

In the ideal sense, the OP has a great idea. The questions would be asked during the little segment they do that's like 'who wants to be a millionaire'.

I think that the rules should state the intent of a section of the rules in addition to the technical wording they do. That would remove some ambiguity. They did this with the 'build schedule' section, so perhaps in future years (because we all understand things take time) they could do this to other sections. Stating the intent during the little gameshow at kickoff would also immediately remove preconceived notions that are not the intent of the game's design.

(I personally think they should have had a question ... 'can we use duct tape this year?' ... that would have perked up a LOT of ears and would have had alot of funny possible answers to boot!)

[JaneYoung]

It's always great when teams create a list of what worked, what didn't, and what could be improved, as they move through their build and competition season. It's always good to submit suggestions to FIRST directly, with brief explanations of why your teams arrived to their conclusions. Constructive feedback is always valuable.

[johnr]

Dear smurfgirl, i think a few invitations would be great. How about previous years chairman winner. Nice little perk. limit to five members or so. rest from general audiance. lottery system