2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[MARS_James]

Lets do this in Sections:

The game:
Nothing to really complain about besides another shooting game in a row which as a complaint is the most minor one I have ever had.

Kick-off:
I honest to god thought that when they began to announce the game it was a joke being played on us since it happened so early and with no fan fair. Give us some heads up.

Build Season:
If the purpose of the Q&A is not to answer hypotheticals or design specific questions. How about we make a system that does?

The new Jaguars were horrid and I am sure many teams who used Jags as their main controller, such as my team, will never use them again.

Regionals:

Nothing to complain about here Orlando and South Florida are still great events, in great areas with tons of space and easy access and I would recommend any teams from out of state or country to consider these events when picking regionals.

Champs:
As a team who went to Champs via wait list I will freely say, I wish FIRST would make a decision by week 3 saying: "Because of field reset times and the desire to give teams as much playing time as possible the number of wait list teams given will only be enough to make the divisions equal this year." 100 teams is way to much and to just vent a little among the top 8 teams in Newton my team played with 1 and against 1, and I am sure that their are teams who can say "We played against 4 and that was it." or "We never played with or against any of them".

FIRST has evolved beyond our current structure for Champs and something needs to change. To many teams, not enough time, speeches go on for way too long. At the dean's list presentation our team had to leave before the 3 college representatives finished speaking for our match but I did hear what the Representative from MIT said about making this longer and I wouldn't be opposed to saying "Load in Tuesday night, practice is first half of Wednesday then matches start Wednesday afternoon" This would have given teams 4 more matches minimum with only needing 1 more day off from school.


We have big huge screens showing our rankings hanging above our heads, why couldn't we have another screen with no audio showing us the field? This also would have allowed for people in the pits to see the opening ceremonies and the start of eliminations.

Pit Admin should be centrally located among the four fields being on Newton it was a great location but It must have been a hike for Archimedes.

Now here is the big one for me and this resulted in a conference with Pit admin:

When returning from a match a woman from Underwriters Laboratory stopped my crew and asked us which division we were in, when we told her it was Newton she said well all newton teams have to walk around the other way to return to our pits meaning instead of walking along the area meant to lead on to the stadium field Newton would have to walk around all 3 divisions. Since there was 5 other teams from Newton with me the coaches all said that can't be right and to let us go the way we came and we would consult pit admin and ask them to make an announcement or send someone to all the pits if this was the case. She agreed and let the other 5 teams go but when we tried she actually grabbed the handle that we use to pull our cart out of our Human Players hands and said "Well all of you can't go that way" and pulled our cart sharply resulting in our robot falling out. Another person from Underwriters saw this came over told her to leave, assisted us in getting our robot back on and personally escorted us to our pit.

Now here is what I have gathered from this experience:
The women felt that since the coaches on the other 5 teams were all men who looked 30+ years old that she could pick on my team since I am the coach and will freely admit that I do not look any older then a Sophomore in High School.

Unless the robot is in danger of hurting someone no one (volunteer, ref, safety personal, Dean, Woody) should touch your robot our your cart without your teams permission.

The people from Underwriters were very good to us when we all went to Pit admin and explained the situation, they even stated that if anything broke they would go speak to the machine shop about having us cut in line. I feel this was one member of one company who was not doing what should have been done and should not have her actions reflected on her company, I just felt this story needed to be told and this was the thread to do it in.

Overall:
Even though this post was much longer then my positive one I felt this was one of the best games and seasons I have ever experienced