FRC Blogged-Something New--Early Release of Event Dates

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Does seem odd to me... best explanation I have is that there was some holiday or teacher workshop that gives schools that Monday off. Since the district event does start on Saturday evening anyway, it doesn't seem like there being a conflict at the school with another Saturday event would force the FRC district to Saturday-Monday.

While I do appreciate that the "leave Sundays available!" voice was heard - as there are three events scheduled away from Sundays - I am a little disappointed that there are only 3 of 9 New England district not on Sundays. Fortunately for 1519, two of them are the closest events to us. I'm guessing there are other teams in New England that would at the very least prefer not to compete on Sundays for either religious or personal/practical reasons (being wiped out to start the work/school-week)... unfortunately for them the only events closest to them involve a Sunday.

With there being 4 different "schedules" for district events in New England (1 Thursday-Friday, 2 Friday-Saturday, 4 Saturday-Sunday, and 2 Sunday-Monday), do you think webcast viewership will be affected? My Saturdays afternoons (if not at a meeting) in March and April are usually spent in front of a bunch of webcasts. With elimination matches being spread across as many as 3 or 4 days each weekend, may average webcast viewership suffer? I don't mean anything like "no one will be watching webcasts!" but I'm pretty sure I'll be less likely to see as many webcasts if fewer are happening simultaneously. Thoughts?

Sunday-Monday events are weird, maybe it was just a typo/error on FIRST's part?

In regards to the shift to Saturday-Sunday, with the shift to districts, it's kind of an inevitability, as it's much easier to have events at a HS without having to worry about interfering with the Friday school day(all that directly coincides with it is setup for the field, so all the school really has to do is just move gym classes/restrict parking).

And in regards to webcast viewership, personally, I find it much easier to pay attention to more elimination matches, mainly the Sunday afternoon ones, as it's less events overall and easier to pay attention than "ten regionals on one screen"(as well as being able to get other work, ie. homework, especially if your team is meeting all day saturday)