Championship Location Announced

[Peyton Yeung]

While I really wished the championships could be in Indy I guess the bright side is that Indiana should be moving to districts sooner since we don't have to worry about hosting anymore.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

There's 52 weeks in the year.

52 weeks for CMP ??

[Racer26]

@Ether: Obviously not, but the point remains that VEX Worlds and FIRST Championship need not be on the same weekend.

Both programs ARE growing at a significant rate, and that's going to mean increasingly more collisions of their event dates. I don't believe for a second though, that it means their World Championship Events must share a weekend, especially when many of the people who are the most dedicated to either program, contribute to both.

Its no particular secret that MANY VRC teams are associated with FRC teams.

[Thad House]

I found the thread from last year where both people from VEX and people close to FIRST replied and gave their reasoning on the timing

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=116489

[Calvin Hartley]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

There's 52 weeks in the year.

Originally Posted by Ether

52 weeks for CMP ??

Please, share with us your time travel knowledge. It would be especially useful during build season.


On a serious note, I'm not sure what weekends it could be realistically moved to without changing the rest of the competition schedule. MSC is a week 7 event (and I assume other District Championships are as well...?) putting it just two weeks before Championship. That alone is a time crunch. Putting it later seems to have been effectively dismissed due to AP testing and the like. Putting it earlier seems to me a bit too short notice for some teams to find they are qualified.

Just my thoughts. If you are more knowledgable than I, please enlighten me.

[Steven Donow]

This isn't meant to sound critical of VEX and is meant to be a legitimate question for discussion, but is there any reason, aside from venue contracts(and I guess focusing on the competition structure) that VEX Worlds can't be a week earlier?

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

This isn't meant to sound critical of VEX and is meant to be a legitimate question for discussion, but is there any reason, aside from venue contracts(and I guess focusing on the competition structure) that VEX Worlds can't be a week earlier?

The stated reason is avoiding Easter.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Racer26

Call me cynical. You've only been around a short time. I've been around long enough to have seen enough little things to make me feel this way. I expect better from the organization I've devoted 10+ years of my life to.

Why not simply post a Frank Answers Friday question about this particular topic?

He's probably already reading this thread anyway. Give him a chance to put forth an "official" explanation from a seemingly-trusted individual.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Racer26

Call me cynical. You've only been around a short time. I've been around long enough to have seen enough little things to make me feel this way. I expect better from the organization I've devoted 10+ years of my life to.

I'm generally a pretty vocal critic of FIRST, particularly re: the whole VEX/IFI thing.

In this case it's total BS to insinuate that FIRST is taking a petty stance and trying to screw over VEX and your post is full of false outrage. Seriously, diagram out how you expect FIRST to not have championships on the same weekend as VEX champs.

7 weeks of regional events, one week between bag and tag day and week 1. 1 week between week 7 and Easter. 1 week between Easter and champs. Where is the time that you envision FRC Champs being held?

It doesn't exist. You have the last 7 days of April and that's it. Any earlier and build has to be less than 6 weeks. Any later and you're in AP testing. Both of those are untenable solutions.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Racer26

b) Yet another snipe at VEX/IFI by FIRST HQ, which frankly, are becoming quite tired. The stated goals of both programs are to better STEM education. Forcing people to choose between them is the WORST thing they can do. Stop wrestling over the existing Robotics program pie, and GROW the pie. First the switch away from IFI controllers in FRC, then the axing of FVC in favour of FTC, then minibots which ONLY allow Tetrix parts, VEX parts being specifically banned, and now this. Just stop. Seriously. Are these the messages we want to teach the kids?

Your comments are way, WAY out of line. You should consider that you don't really know ANY of the facts involved in this situation, and maybe need to calm down.

In 2013 IFI was a Crown Supplier to FIRST, and we enjoy a fantastic working relationship with the folks in Manchester.

[Nate Laverdure]

Originally Posted by Cory

Seriously, diagram out how you expect FIRST to not have championships on the same weekend as VEX champs. ... Any earlier and build has to be less than 6 weeks. Any later and you're in AP testing. Both of those are untenable solutions.

Interference between FIRST CMP and VEX Worlds is almost as crappy as any of the other options, and becoming crappier as more students become involved in both programs.

Backseat-driving the 2014 schedule, I come up with this:

• -2 weeks (Apr 9-12) Interferes with existing Week 7 events. Resolving this interference would require significant (a) investment in fields and (b) volunteer growth to compress the Regional and District event schedules to 6 weeks. Also requires eliminating the Feb 20-22 slack week so that Week 1 events would immediately follow after Bag & Tag day.
• -1 weeks (Apr 16-19) Interferes with Easter holiday (Apr 20).
• +0 weeks (Apr 23-26) Existing. Interferes with VEX Worlds.
• +1 weeks (Apr 30-May 3) Interferes with SAT testing (May 3-4) and in-class preparation for AP testing (begins Monday May 5)
• +4 weeks (May 21-24) Interferes with final exams, proms, early graduations, etc.

Yes, any of these options would present us with a challenge we'd have to overcome.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by JVN

Your comments are way, WAY out of line. You should consider that you don't really know ANY of the facts involved in this situation, and maybe need to calm down.

In 2013 IFI was a Crown Supplier to FIRST, and we enjoy a fantastic working relationship with the folks in Manchester.

I am well aware of the long-standing relationship between IFI and FIRST. I may not have any intimate connections to anyone at either end, but I do have the experience of watching the last 10 years of that relationship as an outside observer.

As Nate said earlier, even if the snipes are not intentional, they have that appearance. For every person like me that's vocal enough to say something, there's dozens more thinking it. Regardless of whether or not my opinions are right or wrong, baseless or spot on, that's a bad thing.

Such appearances teach the wrong lessons about the world beyond high school. The lessons we teach unintentionally are just as important as all the lessons we set out to teach.

It is nice to see IFI doesn't seem to feel slighted by the date collision. I stand by my view that the net result is bad for both programs.

Maybe there truly isn't anything that could be done to avoid a date collision in 2014. Personally, I don't see the big deal with competing Easter weekend. It was not an insurmountable problem in 2013 when Easter collided with Week 5 of the FRC competition season. The team I work with is based in a Catholic school, and we competed that weekend. I agree its less than ideal, I'm just not sure that its a worse option than having the events overlap, given that so many people are key to BOTH programs.

I have a much harder time understanding a collision in 2015, when HQ was looking at other host cities, and significant structure changes are not out of the question, given the current overcrowding at CMP. Seems to me that some combination of shifting weeks, changing host cities, and changing the structure should have come up with a way to avoid it.

Frank has done a fantastic job improving transparency at HQ, which has done a tremendous service to fixing a lot of the problems that were brewing in and around the 2011/2012 seasons. This announcement feels a little too much like the old HQ for my liking. Maybe he'll chime in with some clarity soon.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Racer26

I have a much harder time understanding a collision in 2015, when HQ was looking at other host cities, and significant structure changes are not out of the question, given the current overcrowding at CMP. Seems to me that some combination of shifting weeks, changing host cities, and changing the structure should have come up with a way to avoid it.

Frank has done a fantastic job improving transparency at HQ, which has done a tremendous service to fixing a lot of the problems that were brewing in and around the 2011/2012 seasons. This announcement feels a little too much like the old HQ for my liking. Maybe he'll chime in with some clarity soon.

Again, I fail to see any logical reason to assume that anyone intentionally made them both the same date. Do you think FIRST wants them to be the same? They have to know they run the risk of losing eyes on the event as well as participants who would have been there for FRC but are now at VEX. Maybe there was a venue conflict for other weeks. Maybe they could have resolved that by going to Atlanta or Indy, but it was too financially advantageous to stay in STL.

FIRST deserves to take flack for some (maybe even many) decisions they've made the last few years, but for you to single this event out as being absolutely their fault and a sign of ill will towards VEX is ridiculous.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

This isn't meant to sound critical of VEX and is meant to be a legitimate question for discussion, but is there any reason, aside from venue contracts(and I guess focusing on the competition structure) that VEX Worlds can't be a week earlier?

To take this a little further, Vex made the decision back when it parted ways with FIRST to hold their Championship during the same time frame as the FIRST World Championship. I am NOT saying this is the fault of Vex but the April time works great for both programs so unless one of them chooses a different month to start holding their Championship we will have this problem going forward. Additionally every year both programs change what weekend they are held on in April depending on event availability and other factors.

I highly doubt FIRST made the decision to stick it to Vex by having them on the same weekend it is just bad luck it happened. The odds they would have to be on the same weekend is pretty high considering there are only so many weekends in April.

[Blackphantom91]

This situation is something organizations of the same nature run into. For example, before my days of a FIRSTER, I was a fighter who went to national championships every year. Due to how many qualifiers and when they could do the actual championship, they occurred on the same week of the 4th of July every year. Both organizations didn't do this intentionally, they just couldn't get the venues different dates based on the timeline of the qualifiers.

TBH I think its bad luck honestly. These events have to be planned out so far in advance it's not even funny. Also its kinda out of our control.