2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by Donut

The sooner we get everyone to Districts the better off all of FIRST will be. I hope they come up with a good system to handle those of us in remote areas (maybe read some of the threads on CD for a few ideas ) but I'm willing to be inconvenienced on what competitions we can attend short term for the huge economic benefits. Plus I think forcing the system may be the best way to spur growth in the areas that haven't seen it.

I wish it were that easy! Sadly, moving to the district model is quite difficult for some regions. Take Minnesota for example. We would probably be a good candidate for the district model because we have the 3rd largest number of robotics teams (I believe highest per capita). Unfortunately, we haven't really hit a high volunteer base yet. If we were to switch to the district model, we would likely have to about double the number of events we hold [citation needed], which would certainly overburden our volunteers. I'm already pushing the limits of the time I can take off work, and I know many of the other volunteers are as well.

There are a few more issues that we've run into when considering the district model here, but I'm certainly not the most qualified to talk about them. I do know our planning committee is watching the other districts closely to see how it goes.

[treffk]

Originally Posted by Donut

The sooner we get everyone to Districts the better off all of FIRST will be. I hope they come up with a good system to handle those of us in remote areas (maybe read some of the threads on CD for a few ideas ) but I'm willing to be inconvenienced on what competitions we can attend short term for the huge economic benefits. Plus I think forcing the system may be the best way to spur growth in the areas that haven't seen it.

I do agree with the other comment, determining the districts is not an easy task. As you have sort of touched there are some remote areas. This is caused both by high concentrations of teams in certain states and by low numbers of FRC teams in a particular state.Between Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa there were 17 teams for the 2013 game. Add Colorado, Kansas and Missiouri to that number and you are only up to 147 teams. Then if you include New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas you reach 218, this is 7 more teams than in Michigan.

That is a huge expanse of land to get a high quanity of teams. How do you arrange the the district competitions let alone determine where the "State" tournament is without making it to where certain teams have to raise a large amount more than normal to even compete? I'm not saying that some of these teams don't already have to travel a distance to get to a regional but that what if it would cause them to have to raise more money than a normal season.

I feel that because of this, as much as districts currently seem like the best thing for everyone FIRST has not grown enough in certain areas to make it a viable solution for everyone.

[runneals]

Originally Posted by Donut

FIRST needs to stop using custom/rare game pieces. There have been a few games where it would have been easy to use a standard size, readily available game piece without needing to tell the suppliers about it and they've gone to custom or hard to find ones every time (this year stands out in particular).

I would say this year's game piece concept (frisbee) was pretty decent, but I must agree that they could have gotten it standardized. If Wham-o "sponsored" FRC this year, they could have used one of their brand name ones that anyone could easily pick up at the store. However, the nice thing with these custom frisbees is that each graduating senior (high school) member and (college) mentor received a signed frisbee. But overall, I do agree.

[A. Estrella 78]

"The season ended not cool."

[Mike Marandola]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The season ended. Not cool.

Yeah I agree. FIRST really needs to fix this next year.

[Ernst]

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

[Rynocorn]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

This is a huge problem! I know that at Peachtree this year, the walkways on the bleachers were completely full of sitting kids to the point that everyone had to stand in order to let one person down from the top row of seats. This mainly occurred during finals with the pits closed, but all of the seats were always full. On the other hand, Smokey Mountain had plenty of seats but somehow was the only regional I saw without a live webcast on TBA. These small issues go a long way to helping people have a better experience with FIRST.

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

I agree, this is something that could really use some work. Maybe there could be some kind of advance sign-up system? Teams sign up on a first-come, first-served basis (just like it is now, except with everybody rushing to a website, not a stadium), and teams reserve blocks of seats.

[Carl C]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

We've run into this problem also. At Palmetto, there were 61 teams and hardly any seats, so there were many who acted ungraciously and darted in front of everyone, even going so far as taking other team's seats. What made this worse it the fact that no team was allowed to reserve seats for the next day (though many did it anyways), so this was a daily occurrence. We did not care so much about where we sat as ling as we all could sit together, but with a medium-sized teams with many parents, siblings, and mentors, this was nearly impossible.

At North Carolina, we had a similar issue, but thankfully Team 3196 kindly allowed us to use their empty seats before eliminations. Afterwards, however, our team was unable to sit together as we made a run to finals, which was rather frustrating.

It is probably up to the respective regional directors, but I hope this issue could be resolved at one point.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by ZehP

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

I agree, some sort of registration system would help. They did block off the seats in front of Einstein for the division champions, but other than that, it was a free for all.

[chantal68]

A couple of things that might help seating. One is a scouting block of 6 to 8 seats per team, which I know has been tossed around. I realize it doesn't solve having the whole team sit together but properly placed in the best seats for actually seeing either the blue or red alliances, it sure does help with scouting.

Another is if people would not move during matches. Sit tight, and then get up and do your moving around between matches. It's always always always a huge issue trying get people to remember to stay "down in front" when EVERYONE is trying to watch and collect scouting data.

Originally Posted by cgmv123

I agree, some sort of registration system would help. They did block off the seats in front of Einstein for the division champions, but other than that, it was a free for all.

[jawebste]

This was our first trip to the Championships. And while it was exciting and wonderful, and the access to seating was awful. And the teams that manage to make it in the morning and hold three or four rows are being incredibly rude and setting an awful example for our students.
The two wristbands for each team to be able to have at least two people see Einstein and then whatever they did so the teams playing there got preferential seating seemed to work, and that is a credit to the staff at the Dome. I was waiting near the entrance to the "pink band" seating to meet our captain to whom I was giving the band as he had to return from the pits. I was embarrassed by the number of people giving the Dome officials grief because the officials would not let them through without the correct identification. So not gracious.
If "scouting seating" has been discussed, then based on the behavior of the people in the stands, each field would require a couple of volunteers at all times to enforce the pin or badge system or whatever each team would be provided. But I would support this process and it would help the teams that are not able to stay right near the dome. Not every team can be right next to the stadium.
Someone in this thread mentioned big screens overhead broadcasting the matches to the pits, like the standings, and I think that would help ease the pressure in the seating area. But I would be a little concerned about safety as even with the standings some people get glued to the screen and overlook their surroundings.

[Robby Unruh]

Originally Posted by rsisk

The video quality on the webcast of some regionals. Would love this to be consistent and good.

Not to brag or anything, but Crossroads and Buckeye were streamed in 720p.

ninja-edit: Midwest districts pls

[Michael Hill]

Commercials during webcasts

[Bochek]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Commercials during webcasts

Working on it