Championship 2011 - St Louis - Your Thoughts Please?

[Dan Petrovic]

Man, this will be my first time posting in years, but since I was able to attend and I opinions, let's let them fly!

The Good
St. Louis - It was a nice area that wasn't too crowded, the parking around the dome was incredible and, I felt, that there were plenty of places to eat in and around the dome. Also, the people from the area all seemed extremely interested in what was happening in their dome.
The Saturday Afterparty- I had been to Atlanta twice and getting dinner was never that easy. They were EXTREMELY prepared to feed all of the people there and they were able to get food to every very quickly and easily. Well done there. Also, the Talent Show was everything we've come to expect after years of seeing the IRI Talent Show.
The distance between the dome and the pits - I'm glad that I don't need to pack a lunch before going between the stands and the pits.
The weather - I know those in charge have no control of this, but it's still worth noting that the weather was fantastic.
The concert - Not only did it have the teams excited, but the commoners on St. Louis were excited to hear that the Black Eyed Peas would be in town. That was a ton of fun. Would attend again.
The hour before the Einstein matches - I never knew that music and airplanes would make waiting around so much fun.
utcjobs.com/first - As a college student, this is very much appreciated.

The Bad
The concert - The effect that this concert had on the rest of the competition cannot be overlooked.
The fields in the pits - This wouldn't have been so bad if there was more seating, or more space around the field. It felt like the Boilermaker Regional, but with twice as many teams. There's no way that would work.
Einstein matches - I don't know about you guys, but I felt that Einstein was rather lackluster. Not to take anything away from the teams who played there, congratulations to you all, but it wasn't what I was expecting this game would end with. Maybe it was the lack of music, which I'm assuming had to be done because of the I.Am.FIRST, but that doesn't make it any less true.
Announcing the Chairman's Award Winner at the concert - This might be my biggest gripe of the whole event. My team was able to attend the championship event because of winning the RCA at GSR. We got on the floor, which was awesome and had a ton of fun at the concert. However, there were people from my team that did not go to the concert because they were tired, did not care for the Black Eyed Peas, etc. How would they have felt if they had not been there to receive the Chairman's Award? It wouldn't have been so bad had we been told that the Chairman's Award winner was going to be announced, but we had no word of that.

All in all, the sheer volume of the event still made it a great place to be. I just hope that this publicity that FIRST is getting wont continue to get in the way of the experience that the students are having. If you ask me, I'd tell you that FIRST is great no matter what the celebrities say.

[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.

[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!

[Pjohn1959]

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.)

Well it happened at this concert as well. A student was dropped (crowd surfing) on a female mentor of a team that is a really good friend of ours. She was pretty badly hurt. I saw her in the hallway in our hotel later, and she had to be helped by 2 students just to get to her room. I understand the excitement of the concert, but there should have been some additional safety measures there to prevent this from happening at all.

[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.

[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.

[pbawesome]

wow, this was my first year at the championships. That was so much fun. It was unbelievable having so many famous people helping first. Will Smith, Willow Smith, Morgan Freeman!, black eyed peas, jack black, will.i.am. that was awesome!

I wish we could've seen the teams at full force in the finals, I think it was just a very crazy season and the robots just couldn't take it anymore.

I never got a chance to talk to 177, so if you guys see this, congratulations on your second place! 1100 was cheering for you the whole time.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by CassCity2081

I dont know how other people felt about it, but I enjoyed the fields in the pits. I was in Curie division and so I was in the pits for two days. It was a much shorter commute to get to and from the field and I was able to get to my scouts quicker for information on the teams we would be playing. I think that it was better than many people thought it would be.

Working team que I LOVEd the field pits because we had ample space to load our teams. The setup reminds me alot of FLR and Chesepeake which are my favorite que setups.

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by CassCity2081

I dont know how other people felt about it, but I enjoyed the fields in the pits. I was in Curie division and so I was in the pits for two days. It was a much shorter commute to get to and from the field and I was able to get to my scouts quicker for information on the teams we would be playing. I think that it was better than many people thought it would be.

I agree that the shorter commute to the pit fields was nice. However, I think the negatives overweigh the positive. The bleachers were terrible:
* The leg room MAY have been appropriate for a 6th grade class; it was painful for me & I'm not that tall. Actually, I thought the legroom in the dome was also bad as compared to other stadiums, but it was better than those bleachers.
* No backs to the bleachers. Seats in the dome had backs....
* At least in the Curie bleachers there weren't enough aisles, making getting to the middle seats difficult and somewhat dangerous. Someone ran some caution tape up the middle of our section on Saturday; that helped the difficulty part but was possibly even more dangerous.
* People walking by & standing at the edges of the fields blocked the view of the lowest levels of seats. This is a seating fault; we should expect people to be walking by & standing on the field during matches.

I almost would have rather been in the pits all three days (assuming adequate seating) instead of being tempted with Friday in the dome & then being thrown back to the pits for Saturday. But I would have rather had all teams be given the opportunity to have had all of their matches in a true Championship venue.

Overall I think it was a good event. I think the issues (and yes, there were more, as are being pointed out all over the place) are correctable, and next year the St. Louis folks will be putting on an even better event.

[Koko Ed]

I admit I was skeptical when FIRST said they were taking their act to St. Louis. I was wondering why a taser wasn't included in the Kit of Parts but St. Louis wasn't so bad once I got there. The event itself was really trying hard to impress (sometimes too hard) and the volunteers were treated really well (though there was a moment when they nearly made a huge mistake). The pits were a bit tight with everything going on and I wish I could have seen some of the Arial Robotics competition. It seemed pretty cool.
The pit fields weren't so bad from a volunteer perspective but the stands needed to be MUCH larger and FIRST saying it's up too the audiance to make a hole for people after kicking them into the pits. That's very Delta of them (to blame the customer for having the nerve to be being inconvienced). They should fall over themselves to make sure there is enough room for everyone and then some.
The celeb sightings were interesting and all if a bit inconvient (it was much worse at Midwest when Dean showed up and a whole wave of kids just poured over the walls down onto the field to approach him. I was livid! Not only was it dangerous but they were clogging the back of the que area and we were still running matches).
The concert (I think of it as more of a glorified FIRST pep rally) was pretty cool though I found Will.i.am's assertion that he wanted to make FIRST loud quite amusing. I think a good amount of adults find FIRST is quite loud enough already thank you.
And the lack of music during Einstien was just creepy. It was like being at a funeral.

[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.