2014: Post Mortem

[Daniel_LaFleur]

This year there were a number of issues with the challenge and how those issues were addressed (or not).

What I'd like to discuss here in this thread is:
1> what went right, and how do we, as a community, institutionalize these things, and
2> what went wrong and how do we, as a community, ensure these don't happen again.

In order to prevent this from becoming a 'bash' session, I'd like to institute the following:
1> every response must have a 'solution' that the community (not just FIRST) can accomplish. I am not looking for answers like "FIRST should do this", but answers like "we should have a open conference call/round table discussion on XXX" is expected. Not every post needs an 'issue' but each response needs to contain a solution.
2> please avoid specific individuals. I am looking for process improvements not people bashing.


I'll start.

Issue: This year was tough on the referees as they were asked to do more than was possible.

Solution #1: We as a community need to assist more in the volunteering department (myself included). Not necessarily volunteering ourselves, but in the recruitment of volunteers. The number of volunteers has not risen proportional to the number of teams (at least it seems that way).
Solution #2: Maybe we need to start requiring each team at regionals to have a volunteer (the districts already do this). I doubt this would be popular, but manpower is important.



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