Advice from a grumpy old man :)

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by IndySam

Wow can't believe I missed that one. I guess I have been spoiled by a wonderful pit crew that breaks out the broom and vacuum when the drive team leaves the pit.

I am the guy that always did that last year, I see some dust, it is time to whip out the vacuum.

I would recommend having a computer and monitor at your pit to track the latest scores as they are updated and look at match scheduling without the hassle of looking for the paper sheet. Usually there is some program someone posts on ChiefDelphi that takes data uploaded to the FIRST website and puts them onto an easy to use program for easy navigating and organizing.

Never, ever, have a single time where no one is at the pit is the obvious but needed to be emphasized tip. It may suck not being able to see robots compete in some matches, but take one for the team to make sure anyone that visits the pit can ask a team member without hassle of searching.z

[Tyler Olds]

Some things about us Emcee's and Game Announcers:

If we announce your team name wrong on the field, please do not come running up to us in a frenzied fashion telling us how we need to change it immediately. Be nice and kindly request. Odds are that it is your fault for putting it in TIMS wrong.

If you have a special way you want to be introduced or have something you want us to wear or wave during your teams introduction let us know! Please remember that emcee's are not responsible for keeping track of your items, it is up to you to get it back.

It is okay to ask for a shout-out from your Emcee, but don't be disappointed if we do not do it or forget; we have a lot going on! Oh and please no birthday song requests! Odds are that 5-10 other people have a birthday that day as well.

[Molten]

There will be conflicts between those that stand and those that sit. Please keep this in mind when picking a seat. The sides are a perfect place for large teams that are heavy on spirit. You can all sit in a group without building a wall that those that can't stand all day can't see around.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by MagiChau

Never, ever, have a single time where no one is at the pit is the obvious but needed to be emphasized tip. It may suck not being able to see robots compete in some matches, but take one for the team to make sure anyone that visits the pit can ask a team member without hassle of searching.

And rotate that duty. Unless someone specifically volunteers to spend every match of yours in your pit... Or you're in the end pit by the screen at Pit Admin, so you can watch matches from the pit.

Also, be sure that whoever's in the pit has at least one working cell phone number to call the stands (and a working phone in the pit), or some other non-radio signaling method. I could tell of a time or two when someone was needed in a hurry in the pit and either had to be paged via PA or was turned around in the stands to get to the pit.

Chairs in the pit: One. Two at the most. Any more, you clutter it up. One is for the programmers to sit on, the second is for either a second programmer or whoever needs to sit down, beyond that, go to the stands or find a suitably strong box/bin/tool chest.

[Bongle]

If you're going to go for the safety award, please don't plaster the pits and fire exits with flammable paper or crowd the pits with 'safety wardens'. Please keep your safety award efforts confined to things that are actually safe, like good shop practices in your pits or by evangelizing good safety practices in a safe way.

You know those teams with really well-functioning robots? Ask them for help when yours breaks. They probably have lots of tools and knowledge to help out.

[nathan.chupp]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

That's funny - I remember running into a bunch of robot inspectors, oh, ok - went looking for them - at the Championship event and they all wanted coffee. I have no.idea.why.

Edit: I should contribute to the thread - please refrain from running at the event, esp. in the pit area. (It will just slow you down.)

Jane

As a inspector i would always want coffee and at the Championship i never can sleep really. The inspectors can be your best friends and help you out. I know i'm busy helping out teams fixes there robot every year.

[2bkrul]

Originally Posted by synth3tk

Excellent post, Sam.


That gives us a huge hassle every year. Great reminder.

Thats why you dont let me do the BoM

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Be aware some arenas ban food and water from the pit areas so make sure it's ok. Also remember there are strict rules about bringing outside food and drink into arenas.

If I remember correctly, the rule is that you should NOT do this at ANY event out of respect for the arena and its staff.

...Yup, found it in the manual, among other Arena rules.

2011 Manual, Section 4 "At The Events", 4.16

• Do not bring food onto the site. If you bring food, do not bring it onto the property.
• Do not distribute any food products, such as candy, water, soft drinks or fruit

It doesn't matter if you can 'get away with it' at your regional. It's against the rules, and you shouldn't do it.

That said, a big THANK YOU to IndySam and to all the suggestions listed. Definitely take these to heart!

[Michael Sperber]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Bring a small broom and dustpan to keep your pit area clean. Nobody likes to see a pit covered with clipped zip ties and aluminum dust; it's more of a sty.

Please remember that we are all guests in the venues... Even if the Regionals Planning Committees pay a rental fee, we should all try to keep the entire place clean (not just your pit).

[Koko Ed]

Here are some queing tips for rookie and veterans alike:
• Read the Match Schedule and the Read it Again – Have two or three people thoroughly read the match schedule and clearly mark off the matches they are participating in and make sure members of the drives team is aware when those matches are and adhere to the schedule like religion. Last at Midwest I actually had a team miss a match because they misread the schedule and were unaware they had a match coming up. Fortunately they were sitting near me at the front of the que and after debating that they didn’t have a match saw their number in the drivers station and sent their human player so they wouldn’t get DQ’d. their sister team actually went to lunch at 1:30 pm after lunch was over and missed their match. When you do this it looks irresponsible and unprofessional. It’s a guaranteed way to turn teams off in a heartbeat from picking you.

• Come Early – If your robot is properly functioning please show up 5 to 10 minutes previous to your match. And if your robot is not functioning properly please have your Analyst/Feeder show up 10 minutes early. It let’s us know what is up with your team and lets your alliance partners also know what is up with your team.

• You Are Responsible for Your Drivers Buttons – The driver’s buttons are issued to you for a reason so we can differentiate who belongs on the field and who doesn’t. Make sure they are in the hands of someone reliable and responsible. If you lose them, forget them at home or destroy them somehow you are responsible for getting another one at Pit Adman ASAP! Even if you have a critical match coming up we are not going to let you on the field without a badge. If your drive’s team is incapable of taking care of their badges leave them with a responsible mentor (just make sure they don’t leave the arena with them. I’ve seen that happen before too)or put someone on the drive’s team who is responsible.

• Authorized Personnel Only! – The field area is for Field Personnel, Drives Teams, Judges and Authorized Guest only! It is not to be used as a shortcut to the other side of the field or a great place to go watch the match close up or for that awesome shot from your camera. Remember if you want to be in there so do dozens of other people in the arena and we don’t have room for all of you so it’s just best to play fair and keep all of out so we can keep order on the field so everyone can enjoy the event.

• STOP RUNNING! – last year at the Midwest regional the son of the founder of Motorola was walking around the filed area with Dean. He walked very slow and was bent over all the time. He looked very fragile. Meanwhile there were frantic high school students solely focused on the well-being of their robot and dashing around back and forth from the field to pit getting parts for their robots to make them work as well as they could never once thinking that they could collided with this man or anybody else and severely hurt them or themselves. Is that extra five seconds of getting that part worth hurting someone in your haste? If you did crash into someone and hurt them I certainly hope you would have the brains enough to drop everything and make sure they are all right at least. Because the robot isn’t going to matter to that person that you sent to the infirmary I assure you. Slow down.

• Please No Coding – Unless it is an unavoidable emergency please do not upload code to your robot while waiting to go onto the field especially if you are in the next match. It takes forever and whether you are ready or not we are going to start the next match with or without you and if you are not ready to go because your robot is taking in some new programming we are not obligated to wait for you so you might as well go back to the pits and finish your upload there.

• Great Play Now Please Leave – Nothing personal but while your big upset/ big victory/ great play was an awesome moment for your team could you please unhook your control, retrieve your robot and celebrate to the side. We still have a job to do.

• No Standing Zone – and while you’re at it please do not block the traffic lane because you want to see the score from the last match. There is not much room in the field area and you are holding up teams leaving and event personnel from their appointed duties when you are just standing there with your robot and cart and team in the way. Also those attending the event should leave the entrance and exit of the field clear so teams can do their best to come and go as well.

• I am Not a Radio Station – Please do not give me your music request for the DJ. The DJ isn’t going to take my request to delete obnoxious ( The Chicken Dance) dated (The Macarena) or overplayed ( Cotton Eyed Joe) songs for his playlist so I’m not going to forward your request either and to be honest I have better things to do at the moment like helping keep the competition running. And no you can’t come into the field area too make request either. Just put up with what’s being played like everybody else.


• It’s not just about you. It’s about ALL of us – Yes FIRST is a wonderful event that is designed to help you reach your full potential and the regional is going to be one of the best times of your life, win or lose. But please be aware that you have a job to do as well and it’s not just in service to your team. It’s your job to make sure your team has everything on your robot plugged in and ready to go. That your robot is inspected. That your batteries are charged and that your team is ready and willing and able to perform the task at hand to get your robot on and off the field in a timely manner. All it takes is one team or one team member to be lax in their duties and the competition dies the death of a thousand papercuts. A minute lost here. A couple of minutes there and next thing you know the event is an hour behind. What I have learned in queing is that when queing is at its most effective it isn’t because the que team rocks. It’s because YOU GUYS ROCK. The most efficient and organized que team is only effective as the teams they lead. If they get it then everything works like clockwork.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Libby K

It doesn't matter if you can 'get away with it' at your regional. It's against the rules, and you shouldn't do it.

A regional I attended (WPI) explicitly permitted food and drinks in the pits. I imagine this is the only case when such an action is okay.

[MagiChau]

Run through the inspection checklist yourself before the actual inspectors come. FIRST provides it freely in their manual section on the site. It will give you some more time to fix the problem if you find it before an inspector comes and notifies you.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by IndySam

Wow can't believe I missed that one. I guess I have been spoiled by a wonderful pit crew that breaks out the broom and vacuum when the drive team leaves the pit.

We put our safety captain in charge of keeping the pit clean overall, since we don't allow them to be on the drive team. As soon as the robot is out of the pit, our pit crew puts away everything that was taken out (tools, spare fasteners, etc), and then the safety captain vacuums or sweeps as necessary. The robot should always come back to a clean pit.

Originally Posted by EricH

Also, be sure that whoever's in the pit has at least one working cell phone number to call the stands (and a working phone in the pit), or some other non-radio signaling method. I could tell of a time or two when someone was needed in a hurry in the pit and either had to be paged via PA or was turned around in the stands to get to the pit.

I can't even stress how important this is. Also make sure that you can tell if you're being called. The only quiet place at events is the bathroom, so make sure the phone is on vibrate (or a very loud ringer, but that can turn obnoxious quickly)


-Don't forget to put your safety glasses back on as you enter the pit if you had to leave for some reason! Someone WILL notice.

-Please please PLEASE respect the size limitation of your pit. PLEASE. If you don't, that just means that someone else gets less space. At one of our events, we arrived about an hour later than most of the other teams, and ended up with less than a 7 foot wide pit. There's no one team to blame for this (each team going over a few inches adds up quickly), and once pits are set up, they aren't going to budge over such a small amount. We dealt with it, but it was still endlessly inconvenient when we needed four sets of hands and could only fit in three bodies. Remember that while 10'x10' is the suggested pit size, you are NOT entitled to expand to that if your event's pits are 9.5'x10'. Which brings me to my next point...

-...Make sure that your pit configuration is adjustable, because you won't always have a 10x10x10 space. Plan for the minimum when you're creating your pit - I've never seen one smaller than 8x10x10, since that's really the minimum workable space anyways. 10x10 tents (if you choose to use a tent, which I don't suggest) should be a no-no unless you don't care if it doesn't fit.

-On the topic of pits, wear deodorant. Everyone at the event will thank you.

[Molten]

FIRST seems to have alot of grumpy old men in the making. Honesty though, all the advice here has been pretty good. Anyone preparing for your first regional or could use a bit of work on your regional demeanor should read everything on this thread.

[nitneylion452]

Originally Posted by Karibou

We put our safety captain in charge of keeping the pit clean overall, since we don't allow them to be on the drive team. As soon as the robot is out of the pit, our pit crew puts away everything that was taken out (tools, spare fasteners, etc), and then the safety captain vacuums or sweeps as necessary. The robot should always come back to a clean pit.



I can't even stress how important this is. Also make sure that you can tell if you're being called. The only quiet place at events is the bathroom, so make sure the phone is on vibrate (or a very loud ringer, but that can turn obnoxious quickly)


-Don't forget to put your safety glasses back on as you enter the pit if you had to leave for some reason! Someone WILL notice.

-Please please PLEASE respect the size limitation of your pit. PLEASE. If you don't, that just means that someone else gets less space. At one of our events, we arrived about an hour later than most of the other teams, and ended up with less than a 7 foot wide pit. There's no one team to blame for this (each team going over a few inches adds up quickly), and once pits are set up, they aren't going to budge over such a small amount. We dealt with it, but it was still endlessly inconvenient when we needed four sets of hands and could only fit in three bodies. Remember that while 10'x10' is the suggested pit size, you are NOT entitled to expand to that if your event's pits are 9.5'x10'. Which brings me to my next point...

-...Make sure that your pit configuration is adjustable, because you won't always have a 10x10x10 space. Plan for the minimum when you're creating your pit - I've never seen one smaller than 8x10x10, since that's really the minimum workable space anyways. 10x10 tents (if you choose to use a tent, which I don't suggest) should be a no-no unless you don't care if it doesn't fit.

-On the topic of pits, wear deodorant. Everyone at the event will thank you.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the pits at the 2010 Philly regional were 8'x8'.