2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The real time scoring left much to be desired.
Need more districts. Now.

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.

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). Orbit balls (2009) are still the only game piece that I think they have made any legitimate attempt at this, but it was made by a single supplier that stopped producing it at the worst possible time.

[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.