Championship 2011 - St Louis - Your Thoughts Please?

[Bill_B]

Lots of thought fodder in this thread. I'd like to see some diagrams made to support some of the relocation ideas proposed. Want larger bleacher areas? where? Better routing? sketch out what you mean. No debris zones? how can that be laid out.

Hey, you're not designing a robot for a while, why not try your hand at "venue" design.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

Lots of thought fodder in this thread. I'd like to see some diagrams made to support some of the relocation ideas proposed. Want larger bleacher areas? where? Better routing? sketch out what you mean. No debris zones? how can that be laid out.

Hey, you're not designing a robot for a while, why not try your hand at "venue" design.

This could include debris zone containers. If trash cans are overflowing, that provides an opportunity to think inside the box and how to keep it there. It also provides an opportunity to think about portability and effectiveness.

(I don't know about stadium venues but I know one of the first job positions to get cut in the educational systems - is janitorial services and supplies. They need support and help, not just complaints.)

Jane

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

No debris zones? how can that be laid out.

It's kind of tricky--you'd want a 25'+ wide path. 5'+, marked, for people to walk in, with a good, solid 10'+ on either side, running on the most direct route possible. Anybody not in safety glasses needs to stay in the marked area; everybody wearing safety glasses can go wherever they need to.

Looking at the load-in diagram (I don't have a pit map), the run to Curie would run from the corner entrance area around Pit Admin. Ideally, Galileo and Curie pits in that area would be swapped, and the aisle right behind the first aid station would be widened to the minimum distance. Newton would run along the wall (15'+ wide--the wall prevents anything flying from the other side) where the robot route is now up to the end of the practice field, then go straight to the field from there. Where possible, all those paths would go along walls (lower space requirement due to the wall on one side).

[BrendanB]

If FTC expanding is what started the move of one FRC field then how about some FTC fields move to the pits for a year!

I have a serious question about the initial plans for fitting items in the new arena before the concert was in the works. IF FTC was growing and needed more space, what about the far ends of the dome? Remembering back to Atlanta there was space on the ends for some smaller event to be held like FTC or FLL.

Maybe there are some things I am not considering as I am not involved with FTC, but when someone mentioned Bill saying that with FTC growing they had to move a field but that didn't make sense to me since I remember space leftover in ATL.

my $0.02

[JesseK]

Hey, whatdya know -- the 2011 Championship Survey was just emailed to team contacts a few minutes ago.

With all of the robot cross-traffic of teams going to the Dome, I understand why it may be necessary to require safety glasses for pit fields. Yet they (possibly) could have arranged the pit fields so as to facilitate a safety zone where goggles weren't required. However, I'm sure there's some logistical/other tradeoff to doing so.

Great

• Food -- the boxed lunch was spectacularly better than either DC or VA. DC's was something next to 'god awful' and VCU's was a 'not bad', but Champ's was great. Bottled water, chips/cookies/sandwich left me hungry at 4pm rather than 2-3pm at the regionals.
• Pit field proximity to pit, and feeling like we had 'court-side seats' to some of the best matches FRC can offer spectators. If we could figure out how to increase the quantity of seating, I'd be all for pit fields next year.

Good

• For once, I didn't feel like the music was trying to rip a hole through my eardrums as we stood in queue or put the robot on the field.
• Wildstang broke 2 paradigms on my team last week (though they weren't my own POV's). They'll forever be on my 'rock stars' list becaue of it. 1.) You don't NEED high traction wheels to make it to Einstein. 2.) No, the driver coach doesn't need to micro-manage the drivers. We simply need to design the robot in such a way that gives the operators more opportunities to quickly recover from the inevitable failures (dropped tube, misalignment, etc). Thanks Raul!

Meh

• I didn't get a shirt this year, for the first time in 3 years. Honestly, I hope several others noticed their elevated prices and didn't purchase because of it.
  
• I think I stated enough about the bad in the 2011-Negative thread, but the only other thing I'd add on top of what others have stated regards the safety advisors. Safety is taken seriously most of the time, yet it's not administered evenly. That cute little WallE robot attracted crowds that would make a 20-30-foot circle, including 2 safety advisors at one point. I understand that it's very easy to lose focus at a championships; but really if they're going to be pedantic about us having too many people in front of our pit, they need to be pedantic about the other situations that happen as well.

[Debbie]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Hey, whatdya know -- the 2011 Championship Survey was just emailed to team contacts a few minutes ago.

[*]Food -- the boxed lunch was spectacularly better than either DC or VA. DC's was something next to 'god awful' and VCU's was a 'not bad', but Champ's was great.
[/list]

You must have A) not looked inside your food.. or you would've seen the mold that I found on 10 sandwiches our team ordered... and B) have a much stronger stomach than those that got sick on my team! I'm glad someone enjoyed it! It certainly wasn't me lol

[Karibou]

I just keep on thinking of more things to add. Sorry for always posting something new :/


Did anyone else feel like the arrows on the floor weren't accurate? I don't know which ones in particular, but I remember looking down a few times after I had gotten my bearings, saw "FTC/FRC to __location__" and thought "That's not right..." There were even a few that had one of the competition names blocked out in black Sharpie.

[kristin329]

Good

• The concert! I was originally sore about it kicking out 2 fields, but it was well worth it!

• The hotel we stayed at was beautiful with great views of the arch.

• The representatives at scholarship row helped me narrow down my top schools.

• Roboprom!!

• St. Louis was wonderful, they really did their best to welcome us.

Bad

• Crowd surfing...my team was on the floor for the concert, and I'm pretty small and weak, so when a crowd surfer came my way, he fell on me and it hurt!

• The food was disgusting and overpriced.

• The after party was not worth going to, there was virtually nothing to do.

Overall, I had a fantastic time and I'm sure that I can say the rest for my team.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

Lots of thought fodder in this thread. I'd like to see some diagrams made to support some of the relocation ideas proposed. Want larger bleacher areas? where? Better routing? sketch out what you mean. No debris zones? how can that be laid out.

Hey, you're not designing a robot for a while, why not try your hand at "venue" design.

I can't chop up the Load-In PDF at the moment, but I'm thinking you land the two fields in the hall next to 9th street, possibly oozing out into the corner of the two halls. If you keep them the same orientation as now and slide them close together, you can economize on the extra space usually taken up around fields for equipment, storage, aisles, etc. Then pits and all the other miscellanies go in the hall occupied by Newton. Yes, you'd be back to the giant labyrinth of pits, but you have to admit that the packing efficiency is a good bit higher. Plus it keeps the FRC pits completely separate from the stands, which eliminates the need for debris-free lanes, etc. And puts the fields right next to FTC in case any of them are interested in checking things out.

Yes, you could swap this around and have the fields where Newton is, but then you've got a lot of robot traffic all headed in one direction, inevitably crossing the path to the fields for the public. Plus it'd be harder to balance pit vs. field locations to keep travel distances mostly equal.

If you're concerned this puts the fields too close together and could cause cross-talk problems, then you could separate the fields more and fill up the in-between space with scholarship row, the NI and Autodesk stages, etc, etc. More added benefit there in that the public could check out those venues without the safety glasses hassle.

Mind you, that Load-In map is a complete and utter lie. I sure don't recall those spots near the fields for "Spare Parts" and "TV Viewing". And the pit layout was a little different. And that map cleverly doesn't show all the space taken up on the Curie/Archimedes border by a wall o' robot crates not even stacked double high. If space was really at a premium and we really wanted to expand things to fit in bigger bleachers, I would think we could do something better with crates than just shoving them across the aisle. I'll admit it was personally convenient during loadout since our crate was right there, I'd have gladly traded that for more seats around Curie.