Off-Season Events

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by MarcD79

Depending on the area of where you want to erect the field, be it concrete or a basketball floor, some degree of protection has to be put in place. If it is a gym floor, not only does the floor under the field need to be protected, any area that robots will be transported will have to be protected. There is more to having an off-season event, but these are a few details.
If your school/team really wants to have it, it will happen.

We lay the carpet for the field directly on the gym floor for BE. And much of the rest of the floor is left uncovered except for the queuing areas. Your school might be the one requiring you cover the floor so that's something that could be venue-specific.

I posted in the other thread about the concerns of having a multi-day event/24 hour event: it probably sounds like a super awesome great idea to all the high school students who largely have nothing else to do during the summer, but remember that mentors, coaches, volunteers, parents, etc. are mostly made up of adults who have other responsibilities. Of course, there are also high school students who have jobs and internships during the summer, as well. This is less of a concern for a 2-3 day event, but could be an issue for a weeklong event. A lot of the adults have to use up vacation days to get to the regular season events and I'm not sure how keen they (or their employers) would be about taking off an entire week. Personally, I love FIRST and all, but it'd be hard to convince me that missing out on a week's pay would be worth it, not to mention I doubt my employer would be too enthusiastic about it. Even if your team's mentors and parents would be willing to do it, I'd then be worried about getting enough teams to show up for it.

The safety concerns of hosting a 24 hour event have been pretty well covered in the other thread so I encourage you to check that out.

Honestly, both ideas sound like a logistical nightmare (and I've been on the BE planning committee for a few years now). Take the advice of many others in this thread: start small with a 1-1.5 day event. See how that goes.