Saving Seats Epidemic

[MrTechCenter]

Originally Posted by Marc S.

I think the GP card could go either way. Yeah your taking their seats that they are trying so hard to defend, but they are trying to save seats with almost no one there.

At SVR I talked to a rookie mentor from another team, and he mentioned to me how ungraciously professional he thought the pink team was for taking up half the stands in the center section of the stadium. "Their spirit people take up the same amount of room as the scouts from 20 other teams." he said. Its an interesting thought, 90% of their seats went to cheerers who loved to stand and block the view of people behind them, but they did get there first. I only mention the identity of this team because they ironically won the championship Gracious Professionalism award.

So it begs the question, what is more graciously professional? Is it, "we only need these higher quality seats for our scouts", or "they got their first so we should respect their right to take up as many seats as they can"?

The Pink Team, 233, won the Championship Spirit Award, not Gracious Professionalism. Not that they don't show any GP, I've talked with several of their members, including their cheerers and they are all gracious and professional.

[KevinShi3]

Another issue I saw with the seat saving rule was this year's opening ceremonies. In Archimedes a medium sized team left towels with their team icon to save their seats so that they could all watch the opening ceremonies together. Another medium sized team came over and began to take those seats while taking these towels off and placing them in the seats behind them. One poor student from that original team was left to argue with a whole team while their team was away. Since FIRST wasn't broadcasting the opening ceremonies to the other divisions what should this team have done?

They could either miss the opening ceremonies and sit their in their seats in order to "save seats with bodies" or go to opening ceremonies because this might be one of the last times some of the students there could ever see them. I feel like FIRST should have at least broadcast the opening ceremonies to the other divisions because to this day I can't seem to think of a solution to this dilemma.

[BL0X3R]

I believe one thing that may not completely solve the problem, but will greatly help, is to have the better seats reserved for the teams who are in the current match.

I don't know about everyone else's teams but 4488 tends to follow a pattern (I know, a pattern after one regional and one trip to worlds ): the scouters are always there, and when one of the matches we participate on comes everyone but the drive team can be seen in the stands (if anyone in Curie saw us attempting to save seats this is why)

If we were given seats to use during our matches, our scouters would have gladly taken about seven seats and set up their station there, joined everyone during the matches, then gone back to their scouting area.

I saw this strategy in practice on Einstein, though slightly modified (I believe all the Division Champions were given the center rows) and it worked rather well for those teams, the only problem was that the other four divisions were all crowded into the left over space. If this were to be used for each division, you'd only have to reserve a quarter of that space, because it's for one match combination instead of four, and you'd have one division's worth of the other teams that want to watch the match in the other areas instead of the entirety of the championship participators.

The best part? Everyone will, at a variable number of points (this year it was eight) be able to watch their robot that they've worked so hard on compete. All of the teams there deserve this opportunity to watch their teams up close, not just the ones that got seats early and stayed there for the duration of the competition.

The few unsolved problems I know of are the awards and if a few very large teams are all in one match at the same time. We could use the seating method we use right now for the awards, but I'm sure we can come up with a better solution with time. As for the large teams problem, there are some solutions I currently have, though none of them quite work for me (the first is to have a really large reserved area, restricting the other teams not competing. The second is to expand the area when necessary and essentially temporarily kick people out of their seats, which I REALLY don't want to see happen)

I hope you'll all take this suggestion into consideration, refine it, find and fix issues with it, and mitigate or even solve the problems proposed with this system.

[Chi Meson]

Our team unfortunately tried to follow the rule and as a result we never got to sit fully together as a team.

When we had a game on the second match of one day, there were at least two teams in our division where 50+ seats were saved by 3 or 4 kids. The rest of the team were not even there when the matches started. No team in the second match. No team in the third match.

We managed to scrounge half a row of seat (up to the tape stretched across several rows by yet another team, who were, at least, mostly there--I got glares as I moved the tape down one seat so I could sit down). As the pit crew and mentors arrived for our match, there was nowhere near us for them to sit so...

They had to find the empty seats scattered among the other teams

Later in the day, our team managed, like an amoeba, to soak up various adjacent seats (our block looked like the state of Maryland [seriously, check it out on a map]), and after I gave up my seat for one of our students I stood in the aisle.

For about five minutes

looking at the team behind us who had four seats taken up by scouting boxes. Subtle hints were ignored. A direct question of "do all those boxes need to take up all those seats?" resulted in no effect.

So yeah, it's a problem. Everyone knows you're not supposed to, yet everyone does. The best teams do. Chairman Award Winning teams do.

If you are reading this, chances are your team does. And of course we have in the past (though we have never gotten any "good" seats because we don't send out the 3 kids an hour ahead).

Here's my solution:
Rule 1: One person in the stands gets to save 1 seat! If you need 50 seats, you better send at least 25 people into the stands to keep them.

2nd rule: a person in the stands gets seating precedence over any t-shirt, pom-pom, pennant, flag, number, or box. No argument.

[Koko Ed]

Unless FIRST gets directly involved and start penalizing teams for abusing the rule nothing will change.

[Mike Marandola]

Originally Posted by Woolly

If your average team needs ~10 people to scout, and there are 60 teams at a regional, what you end up with is 600 people redundantly recording what is mostly the same data.
If, somehow, everyone could agree on a scouting standard before they show up at the regional, you could have a representative from every team do all the scouting, and it could probably be uploaded to a neutral location on the web. Then, any fancy metrics/calculations that a team are doing just have to be set up to pull information from that neutral source.
Thus the need to sit in the bleachers and be together the whole event is alleviated for most teams.

Now, how do you get everyone to agree on a scouting standard? Well, for one the regional committee could hold a meeting 2 weeks before the event where everyone shares what data they need for scouting. It would not take much to hash out, as every year almost everyone's scouting sheets contain the same data.

That would be great idea also. We implemented something like this with team 20 at worlds and it worked out very well. I said scouting but the 6 seats could be used for any purpose.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Unless FIRST gets directly involved and start penalizing teams for abusing the rule nothing will change.

The Lone Star RD has occasionally had to take the microphone and remind teams of the rule. And threaten to stop the regional cold if teams keep breaking it. It helps, but the reminders shouldn't be necessary.

[Jimmy Nichols]

Last year we had problems at QCR with seat saving. Teams left seat covers, banners, etc. in efforts to save their spots. We even had one team who had some members sign up to volunteer, they came in early with their volunteer credentials and went into the stands to save seats about 5 minutes before the venue opened. I personally watched with the FTA and RD as my team came down and was stopped by the person who instructed my students that the seats were saved. We had a talk with this team's lead mentor. Now our team hangs our banner, but not in an effort to save seats, if we don't sit in front of our banner, its ok with us. We just hang it to promote the team.

1114 and 610 (and 118 as well) did "do it right", and not only because they showed up early and had their entire team grab seats. They also, if they had any open seats, would allow spectators, such as myself and other members of my team, to sit among them.

This is exactly how we do it. We set our morning schedule so that we can all get their early enough to get the best seats as a group. Teams tend to stay where they park on Thursday for the remainder of the event, at least at Regionals.

I instruct ALL my students that seats may not be reserved...

This is priority one when we get to the regional on Wednesday night at our team meeting. I also instruct them not to get into a confrontation and if it does escalate to come tell me so I can relay to the Event Manager. I also let them know that anyone who comes to our "section" and tries to sit in an open see needs to be welcomed.

Teams that I have spoken to on this issue and stories I hear from other Event leads and Key Volunteers are the same. Teams claim that seat saving is allowed at Regional X or that's how they were taught to do by team Y. I hear the same story and it needs to change.

[Jimmy Nichols]

Originally Posted by 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

At QCR we made this announcement several times.

[BrendanB]

I know at the Championship, PTR, and GSR they made several announcements about the seats rule but they made the announcements in the pits. Not really the best place to announce that.

[IndySam]

As visitors to QC I must say that we had no problem finding seats. First we came in an 48 invited us to have a seat in their section and during the finals we sat with 1741.

This is in direct contrast to last year at Midwest where we were denied seats by a couple of well known teams until finding a home with the great folks from 71.

[Jimmy Nichols]

Originally Posted by IndySam

As visitors to QC I must say that we had no problem finding seats. First we came in an 48 invited us to have a seat in their section and during the finals we sat with 1741.

This is in direct contrast to last year at Midwest where we were denied seats by a couple of well known teams until finding a home with the great folks from 71.

This year we didn't seem to have any problems. I know each morning when I surveyed the stands before the venue opened, there weren't any seat saving devices in play.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

The Lone Star RD has occasionally had to take the microphone and remind teams of the rule. And threaten to stop the regional cold if teams keep breaking it. It helps, but the reminders shouldn't be necessary.

As with the practice field, to many FIRST teams, when it comes to the need to seeing that your team's needs are met it's amazing how easily the creed of FIRST is so easily forgotten.

[BigJ]

I am a pit guy. The only time I am in the stands is usually for our matches and for opening/closing ceremonies. For most matches I even usually find the closest seats to the pits to see our autonomous mode so I can fix it or make suggestions to the kids.

I do know that the policy on 1675 is to spread out a little bit to have spaces for pit/chairman's/tour-guiding/etc people to sit for ceremonies at least. However if anyone is looking for a place to sit they are welcome to sit with us.

Even though I nag the kids they are still always bringing heavy coats/bags/etc that don't fit well with them in a stadium seat. Such is life in Wisconsin/Midwest during regional season.

This year we have been fortunate to kind of "partner up" with a friendly team through an alum who mentors our team such that seating is never really a problem except for the latest parts of the event, but in past years one problem I noticed was "encroachment". Teams spread out near us would spread out farther when our "edge" people would leave for lunch/pit/etc leaving us with not enough seats for elims/ceremonies. Heck, when we won an award at Midwest this year our team was split in 2 areas of the stands, it was a little awkward and not as exciting as shrieking with the whole team as the judge text was read.

I am with the poster suggesting "You better have half or more as many people as seats" as well as letting people looking for a seat sit wherever they want. Us brown-shirts are friendly, we don't bite. (Even if we are a little crazy).

[dubiousSwain]

Hey everyone, chronic seat saver here.

Our team has 11 students and 9 mentors. When we get to the events, there ends up being 4-5 people in the stands because the kids are working in the pits.
But when our team is up, *gasp*, our team needs 16 seats! If our 4-5 scouters don't save seats, our mentors and pit crew don't have anywhere to sit. We realize its against the rules, but we see no other way. If anyone has a solution, feel free to tell me.
Thank you