Saving Seats Epidemic

[MagiChau]

As one way to help the problem I think a reminder to not reserve/save seats be sent in the FIRST email, team update before week 1 events, and Frank's FRC Blog would be a few simple ways to alert teams. It is clear having it in the administrative manual is simply not enough because not everyone reads it.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by MagiChau

As one way to help the problem I think a reminder to not reserve/save seats be sent in the FIRST email, team update before week 1 events, and Frank's FRC Blog would be a few simple ways to alert teams. It is clear having it in the administrative manual is simply not enough because not everyone reads it.

It's mentioned in the email sent out to teams every week during competition.

[Kevin Leonard]

The most important part for our team is getting seats that are good enough for the scouting team. Our spectators and spirit crew can find a seat somewhere (especially at champs) with a less ideal view of the field.

Originally Posted by Maldridge422

As mentioned in this comment, saving seats is really bad for spectators. How can anyone be expected to attend an event if the only space in the stands is for people specifically associated with teams? Maybe having a sort of "scouting/media" section reserved for 5-10 members of each team would allow the rest of the stands to be clear of clutter and blocked off sections. Thoughts?

I think this could be a great idea. Having a section of seats in ideal viewing location that is reserved for scouting teams and media people.
This would (for us at least) remove a lot of the stress that comes from needing to have a set of seats for the scouts.

That being said, that wouldn't solve every issue. Especially when you're talking about regionals with limited seating. The Connecticut regional has limited seating for the 56 teams that attended this year, and it becomes difficult to find enough seats for our entire team to sit. The scouting section idea might actually hurt here, as not as many teams scout at regionals as the teams that scout at worlds.

[iyermihir]

An announcement each morning during a regional could help prevent people from saving seats. I think that many people are not aware of the rule. Even people who are doing it with full knowledge of the rule may stop and think about it before saving seats.

-Mihir Iyer

[GaryVoshol]

We went to a Christmas program at a church once, as visitors. They had stated the time the program started, and when doors opened. We arrived a few minutes before the doors opened, and when let in found that all the good seats had been covered with coats to be reserved by church members. We never returned to that church.

Is that the image we want of FIRST? When the public come in, they are rudely told they can't sit here because it's reserved for a team? I wouldn't return.

[Ernst]

Hey guys. I'm from 1732. Those are our seat savers. Please let me explain.

I know they're bad. I know you don't like them. WE don't like them.

We simply didn't see any alternatives. As a team sending 84 (!) people down to St. Louis this year, we were unsure as to what our course of action should be. At the Wisconsin and Boilermaker Regionals we kept a general area of seating "reserved" by leaving piles of stuff there, rendering many seats useless, leading to people's things being stepped on, and, inevitable, losing things. We did, in the process, create a space for the scouts, spirit team, parents, mentors, and guests that came along. Unfortunately, we always had people sitting alone. We've struggled with seating for the past few years that I've been on the team, always ending up spread out. As a last resort, and after seeing many other teams to so, we opted for these felt, rubber band, and sticker combinations.

I never saw anyone who wasn't on our team shooed out of one of the marked seats. I remember, possibly the day that photo was taken, giving up entire rows because of the outrage over our seat savers. On Saturday we didn't bring them. We learned our lesson and sent half of the team to the venue really early.

I apologize.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by ZehP

Hey guys. I'm from 1732. Those are our seat savers. Please let me explain.

I know they're bad. I know you don't like them. WE don't like them.

We simply didn't see any alternatives. As a team sending 84 (!) people down to St. Louis this year, we were unsure as to what our course of action should be. At the Wisconsin and Boilermaker Regionals we kept a general area of seating "reserved" by leaving piles of stuff there, rendering many seats useless, leading to people's things being stepped on, and, inevitable, losing things. We did, in the process, create a space for the scouts, spirit team, parents, mentors, and guests that came along. Unfortunately, we always had people sitting alone. We've struggled with seating for the past few years that I've been on the team, always ending up spread out. As a last resort, and after seeing many other teams to so, we opted for these felt, rubber band, and sticker combinations.

I never saw anyone who wasn't on our team shooed out of one of the marked seats. I remember, possibly the day that photo was taken, giving up entire rows because of the outrage over our seat savers. On Saturday we didn't bring them. We learned our lesson and sent half of the team to the venue really early.

I apologize.

If you're bringing 84 people, then seat them in separate areas, seat them towards the rear or off to the side. Do you HONESTLY, expect to seat all 84 people in a prime, central location and then not expect to step on some toes?

- Sunny G.

[Kevin Sevcik]

First off, I'd like to point out that any suggestions of "first-come-first-served buuuut {reserved scout/media area, 6 prime seats per team, current match cheering section, etc.}" is pretty much an argument for the status quo. Teams reserving a handful of seats for scout aren't the problem. Teams reserving 40+ seats with 3 people are the problem. No matter your exception, there will still be teams with 40+ people they want sitting together looking for seats in the first-come sections. Making exceptions for small amounts of people is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Crazy idea:
Most complaints seem to center around people having to sit "alone". Sitting "alone" in this case seems to mean sitting somewhere not surrounded by people you've been stuck working on a robot with 12 hours a day for the last 6 weeks. Instead you're surrounded by people who've been stuck working on a robot for 12 hours a day for the last 6 weeks.

Surely all of us FIRSTers have enough in common that we're never actually alone in the stands no matter who's sitting next to us. Maybe if more of us made a point of spreading out a bit more and getting a bit more comfortable with all the other similarly crazy people in the stands, there'd be less worry about having to reserve completely contiguous, uninterrupted blocks of 40+ seats.

In furtherance of this, I think I'll spend more time at my next regional actively sitting just a bit away from my team. Feel free to call me crazy now.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

In furtherance of this, I think I'll spend more time at my next regional actively sitting just a bit away from my team. Feel free to call me crazy now.

As open minded as this is, it's not a way to build and share team spirit, to share the highs and lows with the people you've worked with, love, and care about. To me, a FIRST event wouldn't be the same without this.

Whatever changes are made to seating in the future, having teams be able to sit together, at least while their robot is on the field, is of utmost importance.

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by Woolly

Right, now if only we could require every team to send 1 rep to scout, such that it becomes plainly obvious to teams where to get good scouting info, rather than showing up to alliance selections and just picking by rank/reputation/#of LEDs.

The end goal for the CrowdScout system is just that: Get every team at a regional involved. Now making it a requirement might be a bit harder

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

First off, I'd like to point out that any suggestions of "first-come-first-served buuuut {reserved scout/media area, 6 prime seats per team, current match cheering section, etc.}" is pretty much an argument for the status quo. Teams reserving a handful of seats for scout aren't the problem. Teams reserving 40+ seats with 3 people are the problem. No matter your exception, there will still be teams with 40+ people they want sitting together looking for seats in the first-come sections. Making exceptions for small amounts of people is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Crazy idea:
Most complaints seem to center around people having to sit "alone". Sitting "alone" in this case seems to mean sitting somewhere not surrounded by people you've been stuck working on a robot with 12 hours a day for the last 6 weeks. Instead you're surrounded by people who've been stuck working on a robot for 12 hours a day for the last 6 weeks.

Surely all of us FIRSTers have enough in common that we're never actually alone in the stands no matter who's sitting next to us. Maybe if more of us made a point of spreading out a bit more and getting a bit more comfortable with all the other similarly crazy people in the stands, there'd be less worry about having to reserve completely contiguous, uninterrupted blocks of 40+ seats.

In furtherance of this, I think I'll spend more time at my next regional actively sitting just a bit away from my team. Feel free to call me crazy now.

Okay, you're crazy, but you're my kind of crazy

I love hanging out with other teams, you can get into some very fun discussions.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by CENTURION

The end goal for the CrowdScout system is just that: Get every team at a regional involved. Now making it a requirement might be a bit harder

The thing with this system is that not every team wants to scouts, cares to scout, or thinks they need to scout. Scouting is a lot of work. While I do think that cooperative scouting can be great (as evidenced by Team 20's collab scouting at our regionals and at champs), I don't know if every team should be involved.

If every team has the same scouting data, everyone knows who the best robots to pick are, and it gets rid of the competitive edge you get by scouting.

And not every team is looking for that competitive edge.

I think scouting collaboratively is a good thing, but sharing the information with everyone removes the "profit" incentive from the equation that is the edge meant to allow your team to perform better than others in elimination rounds.

These are just my thoughts- not necessarily all of Team 20's, just mine.
Take them for what they are.

[MisterJ]

Most every other sporting event in America has assigned seats on your ticket. Seems fairly simple to implement with a few volunteer "ushers". In order to accommodate others, there could be a large "bleacher" section for "general admission" towards the back or sides. (Lawn seating, anyone?)

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by Thunder910

The thing with this system is that not every team wants to scouts, cares to scout, or thinks they need to scout. Scouting is a lot of work. While I do think that cooperative scouting can be great (as evidenced by Team 20's collab scouting at our regionals and at champs), I don't know if every team should be involved.

If every team has the same scouting data, everyone knows who the best robots to pick are, and it gets rid of the competitive edge you get by scouting.

And not every team is looking for that competitive edge.

I think scouting collaboratively is a good thing, but sharing the information with everyone removes the "profit" incentive from the equation that is the edge meant to allow your team to perform better than others in elimination rounds.

These are just my thoughts- not necessarily all of Team 20's, just mine.
Take them for what they are.

Those are certainly some fair points. And we also realize that getting every single team at a regional to collaborate is next to impossible, plenty of teams are going to prefer their own scouting system.

About teams not wanting to scout though: That's the main purpose of CrowdScout, to distribute workload. At the WI regional, the total cumulative man-hours spent scouting is about 64,125 (And that's assuming that there are 10 teams who don't bother to scout) Every team that scouts spends roughly 1282 man-hours per regional on scouting. That's a heck of a lot of redundant work.

Even with only one or two teams on board, the scouting burden on those teams goes down drastically. Suddenly, you only need three scouters, or two, or even just one per team.

[MrJohnston]

Some thoughts:

* Seating was a major issue at Nationals for all the reasons previously outlined. It is crazy that somebody can camp out all weekend in a "prime" viewing location, watching every single match from an ideal vantage, when some kids completely miss some of their team's matches - simply because they did not bully (yes, bully) their way to the ideal seats... Something really should be done.

* Collaborative scouting: With a large team, we are always looking for jobs for all our kids to do. Moreover, we have created a couple of formal leadership positions around scouting. We'd rather do most of our work internally so as to allow our students to do this.

* Seats reserved for teh public: Definitely.

Two possible solutions:
* Assign seats. However, assign the same set of seats to two different teams, only giving them enough for one team. Let the two teams work it out such that everybody can watch their teams matches. Coordinating with a "partner" team is much easier than with various other teams.

* We already have five fields set up for play. There should be room for a sixth (allowing for more qualificaiton matches)... However, instead of designating one field as teh "Newton" field, simply number them 1-6. Teams would have scheduled matches on all six fields. This way, teams would not be reasonably able to camp out at one spot all weekend. This would naturally create enough movement in the stands that there woudl always be open seats for gropus of people.


Finally, the ferocity with which folks will "save" seats is really upsetting. My most frustrating moment came at the Seattle regional. Our team was hosting 100 4th graders for about two hours on Friday - about one hour of which was to be in the stands watching the competition. We were given leave (by the tournament directors) to hold on to about 150 seats for that one hour so that some of our students coudl sit with the younger kids. As other teams came to sit in that area, we spoke with them about it and simply asked that they allow the smaller kids sit in that area during the one hour they would be present. They moved in and, when the time came, most refused to allow the small kids somewhere to sit. Those who refused were a variety of mentors, FRC teams and families. They even refused to give up empty seats. Worse, the fire marshall was already upset at the number of folks standing in the aisles and was kicking folks out of the stands who could not find seats. It was brutal having to talke 10-year-olds out of the stands and try to find them somewhere to stand alongside the field in a near mosh-pit. The $@#$@#$@#$@# thing about it, is that one team told me that they were trying to win the spirit award and if they were not together cheering, the judges would not know how much spirit they had.

Seeing similar struggles at Nationals and reading justifcations here, I am convinced that a few rules and announcements is not going to change this aspect of our culture. Either we are all going to have to pay more and have much larger venues so that there is never a shortage of seats, or we are all going to have to bring the change to our teams.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by MrJohnston

The $@#$@#$@#$@# thing about it, is that one team told me that they were trying to win the spirit award and if they were not together cheering, the judges would not know how much spirit they had.

I agree with MrJohnston's points, especially about the ABSOLUTE need to accommodate younger students at the arena.

If this is what it takes to win the spirit award, then FIRST needs to change the spirit award. This attitude is totally counterproductive.