Championship 2011 - St Louis - Your Thoughts Please?

[Chexposito]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

I was surprised when I heard that FIRST was willing to sanction a standing crowd during the concert. There was an incident a few years ago that caused FIRST to restrict that sort of activity. (I'm not sure where I stand on allowing/disallowing/not caring about that sort of behaviour at an FRC event.)

i was surprised too, they told our team that the wristbands were for "special seating" we didn't figure that was "floor" until we distributed the tickets where some said "floor" and others had sections.

i do however find it funny that so many of the students were watching the teleprompter that they had a staff member hold a sign in front of it. also there seemed to be a lack of energy in the finals crowd (late night...). i remember the massive waves on all the decks last year, the crowd beach balls, all of which were fun. especially when we got into doing more than one wave per level and people used their physics knowlege to go really high up when they met and both sides of this continued the respective waves. oh well i guess this is where i miss the georgia dome.

the airplane throwing competition was fun to watch though. especially the crowd reaction to them making it far (to the torn down devision field area) or to the awards stage

[Nemo]

Good:

The availability of good seating for Einstein was much better in St. Louis than it was in Atlanta. Having more space around Einstein and having the upper levels open was key.

The convenience of immediate free boxed supper after Einstein was really amazing - I am hoping we see this again in the future. Best idea ever.

Finishing Einstein on time was much appreciated.

The concert was really cool. I was initially negative toward that idea, but it turned out to be great for the students. Even if it made us more exhausted on Saturday morning.

Allowing pit work and inspections on Wednesday evening was GREAT.

Starting qualifiers on Thursday afternoon was GREAT.

Bad:

Having every single door on the 9th street side of the pits closed was really annoying. At least setup a single door as an exit for people who parked over there.

I got confused trying to get from the pits to the dome. Some well placed signs would help directions stupid people like me.

The pit fields made the pits very noisy.

No field monitor screen in pit area.

Crowded / uncomfortable bleachers in pit fields.

[fsgond]

I have to say that one of my biggest problems that I had was the seating at the concert. Our team was up as high as you could possibly be, not by choice mind you. We could not understand what the speakers were saying. Also we could not actually see the black eyed peas. It could have been 4 of our team members down there, and I could have not told the difference. I felt as though we got the bad end of the deal when there were teams that were right up at the stage. If the would have rotated the entire venue 90 degrees there would have been more seating at a reasonable level.

I am sure that a lot of these problems will be addressed after a few years.

[Grim Tuesday]

Watching the Einstein webcast, they didn't play music, or the music wasn't broadcasted to the web viewers. It make the whole event seem toned down.

I was forced to play thunderstruck in the backround myself

[elemental]

Pros:
- Fields in the pits
- Roboprom
- Black Eyed Peas Concert (Letting Chairman's teams have floor tickets was a nice touch.)
- Meeting Hall of Fame teams
- Attending the Chief Delphi WebHug
- Aerial Robotics!

Cons:
- Little space outdoors or indoors to decompress. It seemed that anywhere I went was loud and crowded.
- The Black Eyed Peas concert. Taking up half of the arena made the commute to Galileo/Newton much longer as everyone had to use the same route.
- The wrap party. It was extremely chaotic and my team decided to leave earlier than planned to because of the crowds.
- Seating for the fields in the pits.
- Having Chairman's interviews on Thursday.

[lpickett]

I have only been to Atlanta once, so I do not have a lot to judge this by. That being said, there are definately pros and cons. Pros: short distance from pits to dome for robot traffic. Parking was close and not too bad on cost. The bleachers were not big enough. Missouri/Illinois teams had large groups since it was such a short trip for us. I was disappointed in the cleanliness of the center and dome. When we arrived Saturday morning, there was still trash-filled containers outside the dome. This did not present a good look for Missouri or St. Louis. There were not enought trash containers in the pit areas for the number of people. The robot crossing route was right by the bathrooms. Needed to be better monitored and maybe routed away from bathrooms and water fountains. Food venues closed earlier than pits. Not handicap friendly for movement from pits to dome, especially if you are on the other side of the dome. It took me two days to figure out how to get my husband from one place to another easily with his oxygen tank.

[DeAnnaC]

Just a few more thoughts (and I'm from St. Louis):

Pros:
It was nice sleeping at home each night!

I thought for the most part, the layout in the Convention Center with pits and vendors was good, there were some traffic jams (esp when returning from the dome at the first corner).

The St. Louis Planning group did a good job of getting the word out - we saw it on multiple billboards, soda cans, at the little screens at gas stations, on sheets attached to pizza boxes, etc. We ran into a family in the dome who had seen it on tv and drove over from Illinois. We helped them into the convention center and gave them info to navigate around (do we need a 'Are you new to FIRST? ' table?

I had a blast at all the events, and it may be next weekend before I've recovered. The Black Eyed Peas - I'm glad we went, I thought the video clips (esp Jack Black's) was hilarious. It was good to laugh. We decided we were way too old to be down on the floor, lol.

The talent show - we are just glad more people were able to witness Fishboy. And it's always nice to see the variety of talent that these kids have.

The collegiate teams - that was very interesting - they need more seating and a posted schedule


Cons:
The price of parking, even at the same lot. On 2 days we had to leave and return, and the price at the same lot had changed while we were gone.

The STINKY tennis shoes from our team mates after standing in the 6 inches of water to unload - they were dry by the next day but in a small vehicle each day back down there the smell was awful, maybe the shoes need replaced? Ugh.

Lack of things for younger visitors to do on Saturday - the Lego booth should have stuck around for local people who came down.

At the Georgia Dome, there was more than 1 set of doors to enter the building - routing everyone thru the same set of doors every day and for the concert was a mess. I know that this event lacked some volunteers, perhaps this is the reason other doors were not open?

I can't wait for next year though.

DeAnna
FEED THE FISH!

[Refresh]

The Good:
St. Louis:Wonderful Venue. The Commute across the field wasn't that bad and didn't take much time to get from one place to another.
The Concert:Really enjoyed the Black Eyed Peas.
CARD matches:With me being a College student, I've really missed participating in this year's game. This just might be a cool challenge to participate
The Lego station: The whole station was great. From the structures of the Arch and Boba Fett to the Lego Chess board really made the place enjoyable.

the Bad:
The Concert: Our team got to be all the way up in the nosebleed seats and we weren't able to see any of the video's or the special effects that were displayed on the back screen. If they had put it on the front screen that was down between acts, people at the top would probably have had a chance to see the videos.
Pit seating:The fields in the pit were fine really, the only thing that needs to change is more seating. The stands were packed with people and even the steps had people with it. Apart from that, I didn't really have a problem with the stands being in the pits.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

As usual, the speeches/presentations during the finals were too many and too long. I had three family members who were completely unfamiliar with FIRST come for the entire day Saturday. One of them actually fell asleep DURING THE FINALS because of the speeches, only to wake somewhat disoriented for the next game.

If the speeches had been more spread out, I would have enjoyed them more. Alternating between speech and award would have been far better than doing all of the awards at the end. There were three or four long speeches in a row at one point, and I was on the verge of falling asleep. I do appreciate what the speakers had to say, but I was tired after four long days and didn't have the attention span for what was probably 20 minutes of speeches aside from Dean's, and I would have appreciated it if they were broken up by matches or awards.

Originally Posted by Chexposito

i do however find it funny that so many of the students were watching the teleprompter that they had a staff member hold a sign in front of it. also there seemed to be a lack of energy in the finals crowd (late night...). i remember the massive waves on all the decks last year, the crowd beach balls, all of which were fun. especially when we got into doing more than one wave per level and people used their physics knowlege to go really high up when they met and both sides of this continued the respective waves. oh well i guess this is where i miss the georgia dome.

I think that the reason for the sign on the teleprompter was to let the performers/speakers know when to speak and when to not. My one peeve about the teleprompter was that it let those on the floor see who had won the awards before the speaker got to it (I personally turned away from it and looked at the speaker for Chairman's), even though we all had it figured out halfway through. If something like this were to happen again in the future, I think that it would be more appropriate to have the whole award speech be read from a piece of paper to keep the element of surprise there.

-Pit fields: Executed way better than I had anticipated, though still some things that could be fixed. Overall noise level was not a problem. However, there were times when the pit announcer drowned out the field announcer/MC, and vice versa. Traffic flow seemed very good, but the staging area for the red alliance made it hard for volunteers to get back to the drink table and to the area where we stored extra and popped tubes. I think that the issues with the stands have been vocalized enough, so I won't add any further comments.

-St. Louis: Holy cow, this city did a lot. There were signs everywhere. The team I traveled down with stopped at Union Station for dinner and putt-putt golf, and we were surprised to find signs in the station museum and FIRST bookmarks in the golf place. There were a lot of close hotels; I saw a lot of teams walking. Great job, St. Louis.

-Venue: It would have been GREAT to have "you are here" stickers on the maps, or a significantly higher amount of FIRST greeters (the venue greeters were good, but only if you knew exactly where you wanted to go). I spent at least half an hour wandering around because I didn't know how to get into the dome. The entrance by the volunteer check-in was not open until the end of that half an hour, and it wasn't clear that there was an entrance from the pits. I asked a greeter, who directed me to do xyz and then talk to another greeter down there. A few times, I was unable to find another blue-vested individual, or the one that was there was already swamped with people waiting.
Also, I never attended a CMP in Atlanta, but I've heard that getting to the pits from the fields was a trek. Here, I was able to do a complete circuit of the venue (from the dome through the pits and back through the hallways to the dome) in 10 minutes, with traffic.

-Concert: I thought that it was great. I had a floor ticket because of a connection with another team who was able to give me one, and I found it enjoyable. Some of my friends in the nosebleeds didn't enjoy it as much. The stands in the lower levels on that curtained-off part of the dome were not used end-to-end, if I remember correctly. There was still no way to avoid seating some in the nosebleeds, though. I'm excited to see the program on TV

--Crowd surfers: Yes, that was bad. Really bad. I saw a mentor standing next to me get a foot to the back of his head, and had to drag my friend out of the way to avoid her getting crushed by people who were trying to support the body overhead. They also all seemed to be in the same area, and I saw one or two traffic jams between surfers. This isn't FIRST's fault at all, and I don't know how it could have been avoided (it's a personal discipline issue).

-Volunteer food: I'm a vegetarian. I was starving. 2 out of the 3 entrees always had meat in them, and that third one was usually something very small or not even enough to constitute as an entree. I was wary about taking more than my share of cornbread, or biscuits, or dessert, because I knew that those ran out frequently, so I took extra half the time and sucked it up for the rest. I also feel bad for any volunteer that was a vegan, because they probably couldn't eat much of anything (I felt that too, since I don't like eggs at all and couldn't eat those for breakfast).

-BrendanB, I ended up being the recipient of the paper plane that you threw during the finals matches. I texted the number, but never got a response. I probably didn't type it into my phone right. Just thought you'd like to know in case you didn't get the text or can't

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Karibou

-Volunteer food: I'm a vegetarian. I was starving. 2 out of the 3 entrees always had meat in them, and that third one was usually something very small or not even enough to constitute as an entree. I was wary about taking more than my share of cornbread, or biscuits, or dessert, because I knew that those ran out frequently, so I took extra half the time and sucked it up for the rest. I also feel bad for any volunteer that was a vegan, because they probably couldn't eat much of anything (I felt that too, since I don't like eggs at all and couldn't eat those for breakfast).

While I thought the food was pretty good, I have to agree with you; the choices weren't broad enough. I eat meat, but I've got to watch my fat intake, among other things. So even without the meat, there was the cheese; even harder to remove. There were nowhere near enough vegetables & salads, although the fruit at breakfast was OK. We actually got somewhat more healthy food at the St. Louis regional; a LOT fewer volunteers to feed there, of course.

At least we were somewhat compatible; I almost never eat desserts.

[Tristan Lall]

One additional observation: unless I wasn't paying enough attention, they basically ignored the plight of 781 during the Einstein finals. I hypothesize that this was a personal decision on the announcer's part to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation: one robot wasn't moving during the two most critical matches of the world championship, and perhaps he felt the less said of it the better.

(Incidentally, has anyone got the backstory about 781's robot? What was wrong with it, and what prompted them not to call for the backup?)

[cpeister]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

One additional observation: unless I wasn't paying enough attention, they basically ignored the plight of 781 during the Einstein finals. I hypothesize that this was a personal decision on the announcer's part to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation: one robot wasn't moving during the two most critical matches of the world championship, and perhaps he felt the less said of it the better.

(Incidentally, has anyone got the backstory about 781's robot? What was wrong with it, and what prompted them not to call for the backup?)

After the first failure of our bot, the drive team tethered it up and tested it, and everything seemed to be working fine. From what I understand, they fully expected the robot to be functioning in the next match, and therefore did not call in a backup bot.

Evidently, our problems were not solved and we experienced a near identical failure in the next match.

On the way home last night we believed that the digital sidecar had failed. This could have been the result of 4 events worth of wear and tear, as well as playing our first defense of the season, with some heavy hits.

Then, biancs15 from Team 610 brought this to our attention today, regarding the banebots motor on our arm.

At this point we don't know the cause of our problems, but we will be looking into it in the coming days.

Although what happened was disappointing, we are still very excited to have gone as far as we did. 2016 and 177, sorry we couldn't perform for you guys in the end.

[Clayton Yocom]

I personally had a great time as St. Louis even though our team had problems with penalties for several reasons, we all had fun. We had a lot of fun at the talent show giving Andy Baker a standing ovation because of his excellent MC'ing, and I was told that several members of our team had even more fun stalking him after the talent show This was my first year at a championship, and, as I was in the pit almost the entire time, it was different than that of the rest of the team.

Pros -
-Dome fields were easy to view
-Walk from Pits to Dome (to watch games) was quick
-The Dome is near quite a few hotels, and eateries, so walking to and from the dome was completely viable.
-The Concert was a lot of fun
-The walk to and from the pit fields our pit was convenient
-Paper airplanes.
-Paper airplanes with names and phone numbers.
-The talent show
-The "First Conversation" show, I was the second guy of the "guys in the blue shirts" to talk, it was very interesting as a "do'er" to hear what Amir said about getting the bureaucrats to agree with doing more mentor based education in public schools. For those who weren't there, the answer to the question, "How did you get the bureaucrats...to agree," was, (paraphrased) See, That's the interesting part...I didn't...I did it, then basically challenged them to tell me that what I was doing wasn't the answer to the problem at hand, and my school has now embraced FIRST into the culture as much as, if not more than, any other sport.

Cons-
-Pit fields. Everything about them other than the walk there as someone who knew where they were going was bad, in my opinion. Trying to get family who didn't know/understand the pit rules into the pits and to the fields was atrocious. The seating was horrid, we only had our scouts in the stands during our matches, unless teams were gracious enough to harbor us for 5-6 minutes (thanks to the team from mexico that let me and a few of our pit crew sit with them during some of the qualification matches).
-Hard to find standing screens
-Lack of room in pit isles
-The walk from the pits to the dome was impossible to explain unless you had someone show you the route (or you took the elevator)
-Load-in. The lady who was in charge of the gate we were at was misinformed or something, as she kept telling all the teams that they could only bring in what they could carry, (aka, no rolling tables, carts, etc. etc.) and even after we were given our wrist bands we were told that we had to go through the small entrance carrying what we could, so that the lady could count us off her list. After about 30-45 minutes all of this was sorted out, and the lady in charge was very nice in-the end, but some of the handling of the event was quite unprofessional. Also, finding an inch or two of water in our electrical crate was very concerning.
-ROBOT! - I'm a supporter of people yelling robot ONCE if there is a large group of people in front of you and you are behind on queing, I am not okay with you yelling robot every 10 seconds when there is an obvious clear lane in front of you.
-Even though I think it is awesome that we are getting the word of FIRST out there, I think the Concert was a disappointment due to the lack of seating in reasonable places (section 405 was like watching a bunch of ants move around on the floor) and some of our team felt like the show was more for TV than it was for us.
-Chairman's Award at the Concert - I feel I am obliged to agree with everyone else on this, and restate their claims, this was a serious oversight to the people who were planning this.
-The volume of the pit announcer was way too loud. You could not yell over the PA unless you were yelling into the person's ear next to you.
-Crates. Trying to get our crate at the end of the day was way to hard. Trying to get them to take the crate away was way to hard. (actually didn't happen until after we left Wednesday night, and some pit lanes were completely blocked off by so many robot crates
-Pit layout. Unless you looked at the image before-hand, it was really hard to determine if some of the teams in Galileo were in Galileo or in Archimedes. The Curie/Archimedes inspection tables were very confusing at first as well. The stickers on the floor needed to be much more visible for people with robot carts, or just people in general to see.

These were just what I could come up with at 10:30pm at night, I felt like I had a good time. The cons really do detract from the experience though, and the pit fields were almost as bad as I had thought. Hopefully they can see some of the feedback on CD and improve next year.
PS- Sorry for the wall-of-text :/

[Peyton Yeung]

Clayton we have school tomorrow so nighty-night.
For the most part I agree. One of my biggest disappointments was that the lanes between pits were tiny...in some cases a robot could just fit. Most of this was due to too many spectators in the pit but overall many of the lanes were too small. If they have a similar concert to next year then they should get a better seating arrangement or make sure the lights aren't constantly shining in the eyes of us in the nose-bleeds.

I seem to prefer Atlanta over St. Louis but for their FIRST time with this (pun intended) it wasn't bad.

[d.courtney]

Originally Posted by cpeister

After the first failure of our bot, the drive team tethered it up and tested it, and everything seemed to be working fine. From what I understand, they fully expected the robot to be functioning in the next match, and therefore did not call in a backup bot.

Evidently, our problems were not solved and we experienced a near identical failure in the next match.

On the way home last night we believed that the digital sidecar had failed. This could have been the result of 4 events worth of wear and tear, as well as playing our first defense of the season, with some heavy hits.

Then, biancs15 from Team 610 brought this to our attention today, regarding the banebots motor on our arm.

At this point we don't know the cause of our problems, but we will be looking into it in the coming days.

Although what happened was disappointing, we are still very excited to have gone as far as we did. 2016 and 177, sorry we couldn't perform for you guys in the end.

Cale,

I had a chance to watch most of your qualifying and elimination round matches, and if I am not mistaken the very same incident happened once on Archimedes. It was 781's last match on Thursday, match 57. Team 781 was immobile after slightly moving in autonomous and then unable to move throughout the match resulting in a score of 78-7. The peculiar thing about it all was that you were in Blue 3 that match, like the two finals matches. I wonder if there was something about being at the Blue 3 station that caused a communication issue for your robot, whether it was a hardware/software problem on your end or theirs... It seems weird that tethered wouldn't be a problem, if it was in fact the banebots motor. You only played on Blue 3 5 times, 3 of which resulted in a robot that couldn't move. Now it could just be a coincidence. Does anyone with detailed scouting reports have anything suggesting that it happened to other teams, specifically playing on Blue 3? (Likely an isolated or unrelated problem though). Anywho it would be nice to find out what happened. As amazing as watching your journey was to the finals I felt like 111, 254, 973's alliance would have been victorious regardless, but that is something which can only be speculated. What I personally would love to see is the finalists and champions play another couple matches just for fun at an invitational, like IRI. Obviously it wouldn't be the same as changes may be made to robots between now and then and maybe new drivers etc, but it would be fun!

David