Friday Night Entertainment - will.i.am with special guests

[Sam Lipscomb]

First of all, some excellent points have been made by thefro526, sanddrag and of course libbyk. You guys definitely hit a lot of nails on the head.

I'd like to encourage you all to think of all the time, effort, planning and dedication that went into this event. Many many hands went into the making of the FIRST Championship Event and almost all of them have gone unrecognized.

Rather than complaining about choices made, think about celebrating the fact that someone outside of the FIRST community was given the chance to show how much he appreciates what we all do every year between January and April, and beyond. Think about appreciating the fact that FIRST decided to think outside the box and do something new and exciting for everyone, rather than just sticking to what works.

Hasn't that always been the mission of FIRST? Don't settle for what works; strive for what amazes.


And just a quick response to this:

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I seem to be a grumpy voice here. I apologize for coming across like that, but...

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan
"...it did not cause the event to come to any sort of serious grinding halt."

It did halt things. Qualification matches ended an hour earlier than they would have otherwise and the dome was cleared out.

Qualification matches ended at 5pm, and they were scheduled to end at 5pm. While this may have been different from previous years, this was not wrong. There was a hard stop when there might not have otherwise been, but Championship fields are always encouraged to run on time and are not necessarily required to stay late to finish up matches.

The field crews of all of the divisions did an excellent job at keeping to the schedule, as evidenced by the very small number of matches that the pit fields had to play past 5pm and that the dome fields came back to play at 6pm.


This event had its pros and cons, but as apprehensive as we all may have been about the setup, I would 100% agree with the majority of you that the pros vastly outweigh the cons and that our first year in STL was a huge success. For the minority, I would simply ask that you emphasize the constructive part of the criticism and recognize the difference between giving feedback and finding reasons to complain.