2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative

[Tom Line]

Every single one of these complaints was overshadowed by us having a great time at the event. My experience was FAR more positive than negative. Let's just keep improving it.

1. The district trophies were embarassing.

2. This year, the primary Championship Handout did not have the MARS or MSC teams listed in them at Championship unless they had pre-registered. I can only assume this is because the events were so late that they couldn't get the documents printed.

3. Light the targets! In too many situtaions we have rear or front projected screens in direct view of the targets from all angles. Those screens - especially in the case of the Troy District in Michigan, we almost the same saturation and luminescant values as a lit vision target. There was almost no way to filter the darn things as they cycled through dozens of sponsor logos and colors.

4. There needs to be substantially more time between the division fields end of qualification and start of elimination. Many teams couldn't even each lunch, much less get their triple balance in. Our triple balance practice time was AFTER our first match had been played.

5. The Q&A stunk. I'll be blunt - the Q&A folks need to be given the authorization to tell people things are legal or illegal. Period. Even if it's not answer the GDC might have wanted, put it out there so people can design their bridge hanger etc without guesswork. Wading through the Q&A also stunk unless you wanted to read it cover to cover.

6. It's time to include actual GP in the GP award. Rather than just giving it to the team that had the money to bring a full machine shop, let's have GP judges looking for things like obnoxious noise, not saving seats, NOT yelling robot, and let's get that stuff in the rules. FIRST - yelling robot IS NOT A GOOD THING. Stop encouraging it!

7. The referees, and specifically the head referees need to start listening to the teams. Blowing off multiple teams when we have Q&A's up on our smart phones that answer the question at hand SPECIFICALLY is ridiculous. I'm speaking of the issues seen on Galileo, with ball placement. What happened there was a travesty. For a head ref to make a change to how balls have been placed all year at the champs is crazy. For that same ref to ignore multiple teams complaints and proof that it's wrong is worse. Then, to create a new rule on the fly - that teams have to be off the field before the balls were placed on the bridges..... If it seems I'm bitter, I am. We missed seeding first by one qual point, and we lost a match by 1 point where the volunteer specifically moved the balls after we set up our robot so we could not pick them up in hybrid by placing them to the extreme outer portions of the bridge. They later did the same thing to 33, and several other teams with hybrids that went after the balls on the bridge. I'm over it now.... but the head refs need to be more responsive to the students and more active in going up the ladder to resolve problems.

8. Swerve drive and judges. FIRST, can you please start teaching your judges about swerve drive? Every year, at nearly every event I've been to someone wins an award for swerve drive. I suppose it's overwhelmingly neat for people who haven't seen it before, but it's not new, it's rarely novel, and it's time for the judges to start looking at unique solutions to the game problem rather than a drive train that's been done a thousand times.

9. Steele Meetings may need to be reconsidered. In some cases rooms were marked up 50-100%. If you called the hotel directly and booked for a large number of people, you could get a 20-30% discount beyond the normal price. I know we certainly won't be using them with that type of price markup.