"The 24" - Off-season Idea

[Alexa Stott]

To add to my previous post: as someone on the planning committee for an off-season, this also sounds like a logistical nightmare.

For events hosted at a school, you need to have the custodial staff on hand. This would likely be hard to convince the district to allow, especially during the summer. I'd imagine events hosted at other venues have similar rules regarding having people from their own staff at the event. Just think what would happen if the bathrooms didn't get cleaned for the entire event. Gross.

Then there is the issue of concessions and having people to work them. Most of the volunteers that come from outside of the team end up in positions that require some knowledge of how an event goes (so things like queuing, field reset, reffing, etc.), which means most of our concessions are run by parents. Again, good luck getting parents willing to do this.

Aside from that, you'd most likely need 2 sets of volunteers, as it's pretty unreasonable to ask someone to stand on the side of the field for 24 hours straight or MC for that long. Again, as someone involved in planning an off-season, it's not that easy to come up with one set of volunteers, let alone two. Throw in that some of the staff will get the short end of the stick and end up with the graveyard shift, I don't think it'd be incredibly appealing. Additionally, while the actual event may only be 24 hours, you'd also have to consider the setup and takedown, which takes hours to do.

To add to this, teams would probably also need two separate subteams to relieve the other when they need a break. The safety issue of having people who haven't slept in a long time operating/lifting/repairing robots has been discussed fairly extensively in this thread. Speaking from personal experience, it's pretty difficult to get a team of 5-6 students who would be able to make it to a summer off-season. Many students go away on vacation, to visit relatives, to summer camps/programs, or simply just need a break.

If you can figure out a way to make this work and take care of all those issues, then more power to you.

Perhaps a different idea would be 24 hours of robotics-related fun? Have teams come in the night before for an all-night social/movie night (and, of course, allow teams and individuals to opt out) followed by the competition the next day?