Michigan, be honest, how is the district model?

[Jim Zondag]

My dream would be a semi trailer that would pull up, unfold into a playing field in minutes, minimal number of volunteers needed for scoring, queuing, being refs, and playing for several hours.

For 12 years, we have been doing exactly this in Oakland County Michigan with our OCCRA Fall Robotics League.
It really is pretty awesome that we can run a full robot tournament on a Wednesday evening: start setting up at 3:30, be packed and out by 9:30pm.
http://www.oakland.k12.mi.us/Default.aspx?tabid=535
We used a lot of the lessons we have learned on OCCRA over the past decade when we designed the FiM structure.

My fundamental point is we need to give the teams more and cheaper playing time.

Absolutely, teams build robots so they can use them.

[Jared Russell]

I have a couple of questions/concerns about the district model and its possible implementation across non-Michigan regions of the U.S...

1. When a Michigan team pays its $5000 registration fee, does all $5000 go to New Hampshire, or does a portion go to help pay for district events/local infrastructure/the state championship? On the surface, the district model seems to be a way for teams to keep paying FIRST the same amount of money while receiving less (in that the same volunteers who run teams now are responsible for coordinating and running on-season competitions).

2. Presently, a small, dedicated cadre of volunteers support many of the on- and off-season events in the Northeast (with similar patterns elsewhere). With the added time and effort of potentially twice as many field set ups/teardowns, inspections, etc., how big of an issue has volunteer burn-out been in Michigan? Do we think it would be even worse elsewhere, where there is a smaller pool of volunteer "regulars"?

3. With smaller district events, it seems like the average turnaround between matches for a team can be very short. On one hand this is great, as it allows for more plays. But on the other hand, a single malfunction or repair could conceivably affect the outcomes of more than one qualification match. How big of an issue is this in Michigan? Do we think it would be even bigger elsewhere, where there are fewer "elite" robot-building teams?

4. Certainly, some of the Michigan district events are loaded with former World Champions and annual powerhouses. These events yield great entertainment. But what of some of the lower profile district events? Is the quality of the on-field event compromised by the smaller field of teams in these cases?

5. Lastly, my understanding of some of the top-level goals of the district pilot in Michigan is as follows:

* The regional events were running out of room for rookie expansion
* Many teams in the region only attended one event each season for financial reasons, and more play time was a goal
* Local sponsorship for the three Michigan regional events was becoming harder and harder to get

How many rookies in your region are there annually? Is the pace of rookie growth non-sustainable for your current events? What percentage of your regional's attendees already attend more than one official event per season? Are there ways to make Regional Competitions more affordable without requiring a qualification structure? (I already know the answers to these questions for my region)

My point is, the success of the District Pilot in Michigan against these goals and the ones that Jim laid out earlier in the thread is well documented. In my mind, there is no doubt that Michigan *had* to switch to a different competition structure in 2009 for sustainability reasons. The model would have benefits elsewhere, but would also be riskier because, let's face it, Michigan represents a pretty unique concentration of dedicated and experienced FIRST volunteers and teams. Moreover, in my region at least, I haven't been convinced that the transition is a strict necessity from a sustainability standpoint.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by Jared341

2. Presently, a small, dedicated cadre of volunteers support many of the on- and off-season events in the Northeast (with similar patterns elsewhere). With the added time and effort of potentially twice as many field set ups/teardowns, inspections, etc., how big of an issue has volunteer burn-out been in Michigan? Do we think it would be even worse elsewhere, where there is a smaller pool of volunteer "regulars"?

This was my first year volunteering, so I can't accurately comment on how big the issue of burn-out has become based on experience. All I know is that positions did get filled, because otherwise it would have been noticeable. However, I do believe that it would be worse elsewhere if the pool was smaller. We have a great volunteer base in MI, but in my opinion, I don't think that we could have gotten away with it with too many fewer key volunteers. "Key" in this case being the field supervisors, FTAs, refs, and other positions that require specific knowledge/training. Roles such as crowd control and safety glasses table workers are mostly filled by the required two volunteers per team per event.

Originally Posted by Jared341

3. With smaller district events, it seems like the average turnaround between matches for a team can be very short. On one hand this is great, as it allows for more plays. But on the other hand, a single malfunction or repair could conceivably affect the outcomes of more than one qualification match. How big of an issue is this in Michigan? Do we think it would be even bigger elsewhere, where there are fewer "elite" robot-building teams?

Match turnaround sometimes IS incredibly short. The match schedule is random, though, so you can have a two-hour gap followed by a 3-match gap. Malfunction/repair effect on matches depends on the size of the problem and the capability of the team members in the pit, so it really isn't possible to judge how big of a problem it would be in a given area, and it isn't always based on how experienced a team is. Having "elite" teams at an event is very helpful if a team comes to the event with a problem and doesn't know quite how to fix it. For repairs that are a result of gameplay, it is easier for those familiar with the robot to do the work, but teams with high amounts of experience will oftentimes have some extra, vital supplies and replacement parts.

From experience, small repairs can usually be done easily even if there is a short turnaround time, and the distance from the pits to the queue usually isn't too far (and - apologies to the queuers for saying this - cutting it close in getting to the match on time is possible if the need is absolutely necessary). Large problems, however, can be devastating. We had an axle slip out of place at West MI, and it took us hours to get it fixed due to the need for machining and the distance to the machine shop. We missed several matches, and didn't get to our last match until the teams for that match were already loading onto the field. Had we been at a regional competition, I don't think that we would have missed as many matches, if any.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I'm going to make the same earnest plea I made a couple years ago when talking about the FiM district model. Please, try and isolate the variables.

I realize this is tough with only a couple years worth of district data to work from (and none of that is pure, since there are so many variables involved). For example, looking at retention rate. The economic crisis absolutely ravaged Michigan. It's expected that they would have higher than normal loss rates of teams. It's tough to figure out what role, if any, the district system played in that. Similarly, the amount of Michigan teams that reached the elimination rounds in St. Louis is likewise a combination of many factors (see my previous thread for a similar evaluation).

Secondly, not all of the FiM district "features" have to be in a full-on district system. Ideas like eliminating Thursday practice days, increasing the total matches per event, increasing the quantity of events, reducing the cost of events, bag and tag, geographical segmentation, and two-tiered competitions should each be evaluated individually, rather than as a single package. It's entirely possible to implement some of those without going to a district model, and it's possible to go to a district model without implementing all of those.

Frank, I look forward to meeting with you and the rest of MAR at the July 9th meeting. I hope to have more solid evaluations prepared by then.

Well put. Let me point out something regarding the growth of FIRST that the district model definitely DID help with. Michigan has a centralized 'authority' in First-in-Michigan (FiM). Because they could act as a single group, they managed to pull in some big-name sponsors. Because they were able to cut-costs, we're being given the same opportunity that we were given last year: new Michigan Rookie teams are having their entry fee paid for.

There's a lot to be said for the district model. Economies of scale are huge, as any engineer can tell you.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I'm curious about how teams from the Upper Peninsula feel about the district system these days and how it has evolved.

Another great question. There is no silver bullet. For the 95% of the teams in the state that this system helps with double the play time, it's definitely tough on teams that are far from the epi-center in southern Michigan. FiM has made an effort to get competitions north. The problem in the past has been that there simply weren't enough teams up there to support it.

We have the Traverse City regional. It's 4.5 hours from Detroit, but 8.5 hours from worse-case Ironwood in the UP. It ends up being a travel-event for all the UP teams anyway. However, the flip side is that pretty much any other event is going to be a travel event for them.

The downside to that is that if they want to earn their way in to States, they MUST attend 2 districts. Of course, their odds of getting in through a single normal regional event and winning to move on would be extremely small as well. 6 of one, half dozen of another.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

...
Why do we participate in FIRST?
...
The only teams who should be at any championship are the ones who legitimately have some chance at being a champion, regardless of the sport. Anything other than this is just promotion of false hope.
...

Jim,

That's an interesting opinion, and I'm aware that you are quite passionate on the subject; but in a point-counterpoint use of this space, I would like to simply say that other valid opinions, assertions and raisons d'être exist, and are held equally passionately.

I personally like to find room for multiple reasons for STEM teams to attend and benefit from competing in the STEM World Championships; and I like to try to find a middle road through discussions about the subject.

In the broader picture, FiM seems to have found a process that works well for FRC in Michigan. Other folks can learn much from it. Congrats to all the hard workers in Michigan for all its successes.

Blake

[gblake]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

...
in my current position, if we went to states only, being in Kentucky in Louisville means that if there ever was a team on the Indiana side (one of my 5 year goals), we would be locked out of a district in Louisville. ... We would have to go to at least Columbus, IN for the closest major Indiana City, which is about 1 hour away when there is a much larger city 10 min away across a bridge.
...

Amen - Concentrations of teams do not respect state boundaries. Perhaps in a rather distant future enough teams will exist in enough locations to make this largely irrelevant, but that day isn't today.

Blake

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by gblake

Amen - Concentrations of teams do not respect state boundaries. Perhaps in a rather distant future enough teams will exist in enough locations to make this largely irrelevant, but that day isn't today.

Blake

Tell me about it. There is 2 parts of the area- Louisville and "not Louisville". the latter is the half in Indiana. You can guess where most of the wealth and resources are that could be used for FIRST.

I am the first and as it looks, the only Student living on the Indiana side of the Louisville to ever be involved in FIRST, let alone FRC.

The only reason I was involved (and knew about FIRST) was my 3 years prior on 1747 HBR In West Lafayette, IN. There, you could say i was umm, very devoted. Heck, my devotion earned me a 2010 Dean's list semi-finalist pin. You could say I was addicted to FIRST. As luck would have it, there was a team across the river who was happy to have a Veteran from another team become part of their family. It may have involved 45 minutes driving each way, but I was determined to have FRC as part of my Senior year in High school. And believe me, my devotion didn't lessen.

Had I not been exposed back at my old high school, I would have never known FIRST existed, let alone have the motivation to become part of it.

due to this, if Kentucky ever went to a district setup, my dream of bringing FIRST to the Indiana side of the river city, would be much more difficult. As it is, the nearest regional is back in my former home in West Lafayette at Purdue's Boilermaker regional, where my current team, 2783, has gone for the last 3 years. making districts state restricted would make it worse as many would see it as too dumb as to do anything you have to go 3 hours north on I65 instead of 15 minutes south.

I know that was a bit off topic, but that's my thoughts on turning FIRST into a state restricted sport.

Either way, GO FIRST! it must be good if i am willing to burn 1.5hr travel every day of build season for it (plus the same for the 8 weeks following for withholding/practice bot duties).

[Craig Roys]

You do not need to do a State/Regional Championship in order to benefit from the district model...by that I mean if you don't have a high enough concentration of teams for a state or regional championship then don't. However, teams could still benefit from playing more smaller competitions for less.

Say there's only 40 teams in a particular region; would you rather play one regional for $4-5k and get around 8-10 matches and maybe eliminations; or would you want to play two events against the same teams for the same amount of money and get 24 matches (12 per event) plus any elimination matches? Maybe you've got 60 teams in a particular area; then you could put on three 40 team competitions where all the teams register for any 2 of them. I'm sure there are many other ways to organize something around this idea.

The whole idea is more matches for less money. More time competing with the robot you spent 6+ weeks working on. If FIRST is going to continue to grow, it has to become more affordable for teams with more ROI. I'll admit that I was a little bit skeptical when the FiM system was initially introduced, but I can't see ever going back. Our first 3 years as a team (2006-2008) we averaged between 12 and 13 matches per season from our initial investment. In our past 3 years (2009-2011) we averaged between 33 and 34 matches per season from our initial investment (which, I believe, was less than the initial registration cost for the first 3 years). If you take out eliminations since those aren't guaranteed matches; then we averaged around 9 matches per season for the first 3 years for our initial registration vs a guaranteed 24 matches per season now from our initial registration. Even if there were no State Championship, I would still prefer this model because it gets you more playing time for less money.

[Enigma's puzzle]

If the area doesnt have enough teams to hold the "state" or "regional" championship, they could always use a similar point system to what is used in Michigan. And then adjust it for the number of people they send to championships.

Hypothetically,If the region gets 10 bids and has 4 districts, the 4 chairmen award winners get in and the 6 highest scoring teams, based on that similar point based achievement system.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

...
due to this, if Kentucky ever went to a district setup, my dream of bringing FIRST to the Indiana side of the river city, would be much more difficult.
...

Remember, it isn't the notion of a "District model" that is the root of this situation. The root cause is that so many folks have a knee jerk tendency toward drawing district boundaries along state borders.

Force them to realize that being in one state or another (or one county/city or another) has nothing to do with being on a robotics team, and tell them to tell local and state officials that you think both they and the robotic programs simply don't need or want to create artificial boundaries at state borders.

When the old canard about state/local funds only being used to pay for folks inside of a boundary gets raised, simply tell them to go right ahead and do it; but to not confuse that support with saying that tournaments or other activities can only include those supported teams. They will find a compromise fast enough if folks like yourself stick to your guns. "Rules" like those get broken constantly.

Sure, in-state teams might get funding or other support from their state; but! that doesn't mean that the only way to draw a district boundary is to create one that excludes contact with or sharing costs with other teams and jurisdictions.

There is a huge difference between deciding to support a group of teams and deciding to exclude a group of teams. Folks often make the jump from one decision to the next for absolutely no good reason.

Blake

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by gblake

Remember, it isn't the notion of a "District model" that is the root of this situation. The root cause is that so many folks have a knee jerk tendency toward drawing district boundaries along state borders.

Force them to realize that being in one state or another (or one county/city or another) has nothing to do with being on a robotics team, and tell them to tell local and state officials that you think both they and the robotic programs simply don't need or want to create artificial boundaries at state borders.

When the old canard about state/local funds only being used to pay for folks inside of a boundary gets raised, simply tell them to go right ahead and do it; but to not confuse that support with saying that tournaments or other activities can only include those supported teams. They will find a compromise fast enough if folks like yourself stick to your guns. "Rules" like those get broken constantly.

Sure, in-state teams might get funding or other support from their state; but! that doesn't mean that the only way to draw a district boundary is to create one that excludes contact with or sharing costs with other teams and jurisdictions.

There is a huge difference between deciding to support a group of teams and deciding to exclude a group of teams. Folks often make the jump from one decision to the next for absolutely no good reason.

Blake

who said we even need borders?

I have an idea:

districts and world championship. thats all.

It would work where you would have district competitions all over the areas where FRC can be found.

Any team can go to any district they want. if they like being local, great. if they want to travel, fine.

Any trophy award gets a team the world championship. championship fields would be drawn from the list of those who got in and have paid their fees.

Essentially like 2008 only with smaller and more numerous competitions

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

who said we even need borders?

I have an idea:

districts and world championship. thats all.

It would work where you would have district competitions all over the areas where FRC can be found.

Any team can go to any district they want. if they like being local, great. if they want to travel, fine.

Any trophy award gets a team the world championship. championship fields would be drawn from the list of those who got in and have paid their fees.

Essentially like 2008 only with smaller and more numerous competitions

Unless I missed something you just described regionals. Maybe smaller cheaper regionals, but nothing that could be reasonably described as districts.

[pafwl]

I am very impressed with the responses. You all get it. Now a few points...

Q: Why have a geographic "district" in the first place?
A: Management. FIRSTs computer system cannot take many combinations so they want to keep all the district rules the same across the country. I suggest we have a lot of smart folks that can solve that problem.

Q: Why can't everyone who wins a "district" event go to Nationals.
(assuming they can afford this)
A: That would create too many slots. Very soon Nationals will only be avavilable only to teams that score high with awards or win a regional. Read Bills Blog he is already hinting to this. We in Mid Atlantic Robotics may end up with only 1 Regtional. If that happens then the number of teams from our area going to nationals is cut from 12 to 6.

Q: What about a point system. Get rid of the Regionals and only hold districts. Highest points (awards + scores) go to Nationals.
A1: Problem1: You might win a district but not get to qualify for nationals.
A2: Problem2: FIRST wants that money from the second regional. FIRST only puts up money for a regional if it will be short. Donations make up the rest. So they do not want to get rid of teams going to second regional. That is gravy for them.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

Any trophy award gets a team the world championship. championship fields would be drawn from the list of those who got in and have paid their fees.

If I'm interpreting that correctly...
Any trophy award? From Chairman's to Coopertition? I usually try to not immediately shut down an idea in a thread of serious discussion, but that one simply doesn't work logistically. That would be 25 teams per event at max, assuming that no team gets two trophies (e.g. no team were to win a judged award and be a finalist/winner, and the highest rookie seed was not a finalist/winner and did not win a judged award). There are currently 49 regionals (which includes MSC), 58 if all of the MI districts were to count in addition to MSC. Multiplied by the 25 awards, that would be a possible championship of 1225 or 1450 teams, respectively*.

Now, if it were to be specific trophy awards, and the championship was enlarged, it might work. However, you open up a giant can of worms when deciding which awards make the cut. Just engineering awards? Just non-engineering ones? Mix of engineering and non-engineering? Which ones do you choose? (and that's not a rhetorical question)


*if any of those numbers are wrong, please correct me. I scrolled down pages and counted, so they may be off by a bit.