2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative

[PaW]

More video feeds.

MSC set the standard this year by having a 'fixed, full-field' view, and supplemented by a 'roaming/closeup' view. Viewing both simultaneously is optimum for those of us at home (or work!).

I would have expected no less for Einstein at least.

[topgun]

I would like to see practice matches at 3 day regionals go until the pits close on Thursday. That beautiful field is mostly empty from about 4:30 p.m. on. People could be practicing and tuning rather than struggling on the practice field.

I would like to see lower cost regionals. The price per match is extremely high, even if you make it to eliminations.

I would like to see adults allowed to train student drive team coaches during the practice day at at 3 day regional.

I would like to see participation pins distributed to teams based on roster size rather than a straight 25 per team.

I would like to see brightly colored caps for the field reset crew so they stand out from the others near the field.

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by topgun

I would like to see participation pins distributed to teams based on roster size rather than a straight 25 per team.
.

Now while I do understand there could be issues having this happen, I think it may be a good idea.

FIRST is always saying how there trying to cut costs. If we did it by roster size, excess pins wouldn't be given to smaller teams, and the larger teams would be covered.

My $0.02 on the issue.

[omalleyj]

Me too on the FMS stuff.

The balls. This is the second time in the time I have been mentoring that the balls have really impacted things. Lunacy year the primary game piece was discontinued by the manufacturer, so I guess this wasn't quite as bad. But when you take all of your KoP and AndyMark balls and they are all within a tolerance and then the competition comes and they are WAY different it is a pain. Couple with the fact that we are now in a district model and there were no practice days, just a match or two, and retuning was 'exciting'.

Also, as one who had to watch the championship online: please have the NASA coverage go all the way to the end! They stopped at 6! While I appreciate the time, effort , and expense that the teams who stream go to, the stream quality just can't measure up to NASA's. It was Heidi all over again! (older NFL fans know what I am talking about )

Coopertition (I also posted it as being a Good Thing in that thread). That FIRST got a strategy that really threw a curve ball was a good thing. That it got teams arguing and divisive at times was definitely not. That I think is a question of resetting expectations for how you go about getting top seeded. But unless FIRST comes up with equally compelling coopertition schemes going forward that may be difficult.

[omalleyj]

Ooops, Forgot my Kinect Rant:

Why was a device made to track humans put in areas where humans (other than the human player) could easily walk through? At every event (we went to 4) we had instances of people including photographers and field personnel walk through or into the Kinect area during hybrid. There needs to be something more than lines on the floor, especially when so few teams utilize the Kinect.

How about "Drivers behind the lines; confused bystanders out of the Kinect areas; 3, 2, 1, GO."

[Libby K]

Einstein is its own story, and since FIRST has already set out that they're looking into the issues and want to make it right, I don't think there's much need to touch that subject here.

Coopertition is a good thing, a core value of FIRST, and a neat element of Rebound Rumble. The unfortunate stories I've heard from many events regarding bullying and manipulation of other teams into non-cooperating is not.

From the other thread...

Originally Posted by Carol

I challenge everyone to make The Positive thread longer than The Negative thread.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=106207

Please, go add the positives. So often, we focus on the bad things. And yes, there were bad things that happened this year. Inexcusable things. But there were also plenty of positives. FIRST reads Chief Delphi and I am sure they would appreciate your support on both threads, so long as posts stay constructive.

[LH Machinist]

The coopertition bridge allowed teams to be ranked higher than their abilities and I saw numerous "respectfully declines". IMO - this is humiliating especially if you receive more than one decline.

The coopertition points should have been the first tie breaker after your W/L/T record.

[IndySam]

The Coop award made no sense at all. I bet there was nobody at most regionals that could even explain how it was determined.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by IndySam

The GP award made no sense at all. I bet there was nobody at most regionals that could even explain how it was determined.

Not to sound biased given we got one:

If you've followed our team around for a bit you'd see why other teams would vote to give that award to us, our opinion of ourselves irrelevant.

I'm rarely more proud of my team than when they go all out (including rebuilding other people's robots from scratch with them) doing the right things, not just what it takes to win.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

Not to sound biased given we got one:

If you've followed our team around for a bit you'd see why other teams would vote to give that award to us, our opinion of ourselves irrelevant.

I'm rarely more proud of my team than when they go all out (including rebuilding other people's robots from scratch with them) doing the right things, not just what it takes to win.

Sorry I meant Coop.


I love the GP award.

[1986titans]

Better webcasts. I didn't really watch so many before this year because I was always going to the regionals with the team. I'd say the GKC Regional is probably a model other regionals/districts should try to reach/emulate.

It has:

• Almost instant access to matches, so if you barely miss seeing a team play, you aren't out of luck.
• A semi-permanent archive
• A good connection

These were things that it seemed like a lot of regionals lacked. Quality was definitely an issue with some regionals. I had to watch one regional 1986 went to with the sound off because the stream skipped every few seconds.

I'm not sure why FIRST doesn't try to do something like the Blue Alliance for themselves. It seems like they should be interested in keeping archive footage. I'm also not sure why FIRST is staying out of providing the webcasts to begin with either.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Astrokid248

1. As Nate said, put a photocopier/computer with attached printer in the pits. Also, it'd be nice to have electronic copies of the schedules (toss them on a cheap, Air Force-branded pen drive) since many of us like color-coding them but can't ever post color coded copies until midway through seeding matches.

I started bringing a printer/copier/scanner to competition years ago, anyone that's ever at a competition with Spectrum stop by and will make you copies. It's only like $100 for the entire competition season, with a new printer and replacement ink. It's useful for a lot of other things besides match schedules as well.

I make pocket schedules for all my team members that only have our matches on them, takes about 5 mins. I did it for a couple other teams at championship as well.

Having FIRST do this would be far too difficult, this is something that teams can take care of easily and at not too much of an expense.

[J93Wagner]

Watching the streams on The Red Alliance was great... Except for one thing. Terrible stream quality due to the lack of good equipment at events. It's minor compared to a lot of things here, except when you're trying to get someone to watch a few matches and it is almost impossible to tell what is going on.

Edit: I guess I got beat to it by Paul.

[JuliaGreen]

I would like to have written feedback from the Chairman's Award judges for every team that presents at a regional or CMP. There is a judging rubric out there - I'd like to see something that helps the students understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Julia

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by 1986titans

Better webcasts.

I agree. Especially for the Championship. I had a handful of people from work and family trying to watch the Archimedes webcast.

One of my co-workers videoed his computer screen to show me what he was seeing for most of the time he tried to watch the Archimedes eliminations.

http://youtu.be/L_flbSCBvQw

Apparently all other field feeds were working fine...except for the one he really wanted to see.

How are we supposed to get people interested in FIRST, if we can't show them?