FrankAnswersFridays: October 25, 2013: Safety at Championships

[BrendanB]

They really should start looking into using more areas to let teams in! You have swarms of pit crew members rushing in to either start working on their robots or head to practice combined with swarms of team members heading to the stands to save seats.

It would be great if FIRST used rope on the sidewalks in front of several entrances around the dome to create lines with entrances labelled (2+ for dome and 1+ for the pits). Creating an orderly line of entrants along with volunteers/security at the doors to slow down the flow of bodies going through doors can help.

I am not a fan of a designated scouting section. If divisions have 100+ teams in them and your scouting system requires 6-8 individuals to scout, not to mention room for equipment you will need a minimum of 600-800 seats sectioned off although one could argue most of the stands are just scouts. Now most teams don't scout and some don't need that much room, but with the district model increasing the competitiveness of regions the competitiveness of the divisions will increase as will scouting.

I am open to the idea of assigned seating but unless a group steps forward to handle the logistics of handing out enough assigned seats but not too many FIRST most likely does not have the man power to start assigning daily seats. Also if every team asks for 3-5 too many seats (x 400 teams= 1200-2000 extra seats) then we really won't have enough room for teams to watch Einstein.

As Chris said, anything that involves significant additional manpower is a hard sell to FIRST who is a small volunteer organization running a massive program!

With that being said FIRST really needs to step back and examine where they want to go and how to get there keeping safety in mind. If we want to be the superbowl of smarts and grow the championship to that level its going to to take a lot of work. The superbowl draws a massive volunteer base from its host city, security is very high not only to ensure safety from threats but also safety in masses, etc. I really hope FIRST takes this seriously as I have felt very unsafe during moments of mass movement at the FIRST championship in 2011 and 2013. The mass exodus during doors open and the end of the day or the finale is flat out going to seriously hurt someone one day or another!