FRC Blog - 2014 Championship Pros & Cons

[MooreteP]

Originally Posted by JCharlton

Paper airplanes have become as much of a tradition as YMCA, for better or worse.

Here's a thought, two minor competitions:

At a certain point during closing (and only at that point!) have a competition to be closest to a certain marker on the field. Each team given one special sheet in their package and they engineer their best design. Once that's done it's OVER (and a reminder to everyone that it's not GP to continue!) Get NASA or Boeing to sponsor it

Second competition is for the team who collects the most number of spent airplanes. That'll get them out of there.

This^.
However.....
I work the floor and abhor the mess that is made. I try to do my part to assist the dome staff in cleaning up after irresponsible and unaccountable children.

Nonetheless....
I enjoy the spontaneous exuberance and tension as a plane coasts to crash.

Originally Posted by Tom Line

The paper airplanes are a neat idea but poor execution. It's really neat to see the ones that get out in the air currents and go super far. So here is my suggestion. Make it a competition. Each team gets 1. Set up some time for a single team member to release that team's plane - lunch, or whenever. Announce the team number, then let 'er rip, and keep track of which plane went the farthest.

Any other paper airplanes that get thrown result in the individual being asked to leave.

This is one solution.

Originally Posted by Jake177

I think there are two major factors that have contributed to the paper airplane "tradition".

1. In order to avoid getting stuck in the nosebleed seats, teams begin filling the Einstein stands well before the closing ceremonies start.
2. Given no other source of stimulation, most people find making and throwing paper airplanes to be an enjoyable way to pass the time waiting for closing ceremonies to start.

I think the easiest way for FIRST to discourage this practice is to address one or both of these factors.

1. I don't think it is wise or practical to try to keep people out of the Einstein stands until closing ceremonies are ready to start.
2. Give people something else they can pay attention to during this time. - What about a feed of the division elimination matches on the Einstein screen? Once those are over, why not have an Einstein Pregame Show with a recap of the division elimination rounds, and a run-down of the teams in the Champion alliances?

Great Analysis. Good suggestions. It's the lack of engagement that leads to undesirable behavior. (I'm a teacher, trust me, I know.)

FIRST made a great step this year in refining the Einstein experience. Adding the Division Finals and awards on the screens could render the airplanes moot. In fact, if they spread the divisions on four screens, teams might choose to aggregate in distinct areas.

I'm voting for this. +1

[Justin Montois]

What has me the most confused right now is why didn't FIRST just use the event security and the speaker system to stop the paper airplanes if they were so concerned?

A simple announcement of "Teams, the final matches are about to begin. Please refrain from throwing paper airplanes for the remainder of the event. Anyone seen throwing a paper airplane risks expulsion from the event. Thank you."

That way they kinda stop the problem this year and could have set a precedent for next year at the same time.

[M. Lillis]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

What has me the most confused right now is why didn't FIRST just use the event security and the speaker system to stop the paper airplanes if they were so concerned?

They attempted to do something along those lines.

We were walking in the upper level and a plane landed at my feet, I picked it up and chucked it over the edge. Just as I did this, someone on the event staff yelled at me to stop throwing planes. I specifically remember joking with some other teammates about how ineffective that would be, as there were about 2,000 other people throwing planes.

And on a seperate note: the truss system in place for the FTC fields got in the way of seeing the LED screen for Einstein. Our whole section had to go through every match wondering who was in the lead or how close the scores were, it really was not fun.

[blockhead]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

This is a cool start, but it needs to be flawless and cleanly integrated and working for EVERY team at EVERY event.

I can't send sponsors links to webcasts without a huge amount of explanation.

At The Control dose work for every team and at every event. (http://atthecontrol.com/indexbackup.php). I'm a little curious as what you mean it needs to be flawless and cleanly integrated. And since there is a website that already handles alerts (frcmega.com) I won't be integrating a system like that, rather sending the traffic to frcmega.com I'm redesigning the dashboard for next season so pm me if you have any comments.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by blockhead

At The Control dose work for every team and at every event. (http://atthecontrol.com/indexbackup.php). I'm a little curious as what you mean it needs to be flawless and cleanly integrated. And since there is a website that already handles alerts (frcmega.com) I won't be integrating a system like that, rather sending the traffic to frcmega.com I'm redesigning the dashboard for next season so pm me if you have any comments.

I'm not criticising your app at all, but the fact that it's not controlled by FIRST means you're at their mercy if they change any of the sources you're scraping from.

Also, you're not personally going out and making sure every event has high quality video all the time.

The solve this problem 100%, it really has to come from FIRST.

[blockhead]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

I'm not criticising your app at all, but the fact that it's not controlled by FIRST means you're at their mercy if they change any of the sources you're scraping from.

Also, you're not personally going out and making sure every event has high quality video all the time.

The solve this problem 100%, it really has to come from FIRST.

I know your not criticizing...

Yes at the mercy of FIRST however even at CMP they had issues that were out of my control! Frank was just on game sense and basically said they are making strides towards providing an API tool (or equivalent) for these third party applications. Which seems to me that they won't be stepping up to the plate with applications like ATC, FRCmega, TBA etc. And to be totally honest and I think those who develop these sites can agree, we put many manhours (unpaid remember) into building and promoting our apps that if FIRST came out and basically said hey were not going to allow these sites to be around because we are releasing our own, there would be a lot of angry people. I'm also sure they won't because it would cost a lot to hire people to develop these apps that already exist and have an existing user base... Not every thing is going to come out of FIRST.

I agree that I'm not going to be going out to make sure that the video at each event is high quality... FIRST doesn't handle webcasting though its really up to each regional. At the Wisconsin regional they almost didn't have a stream because they lost sponsorships and couldn't pay for two highspeed internet links.

[popnbrown]

I've always been annoyed with the paper airplanes. Good options added here, definitely need to keep people busy and be more active about this. Saw event staff putting the boot down and I told a few students not to either.

Most everything's been covered so I'll leave with this image.

I was just disappointed to see a volunteer having to do this instead of enjoying the Closing Ceremonies.

[DevBal5012]

Originally Posted by JCharlton

Paper airplanes have become as much of a tradition as YMCA, for better or worse.

Here's a thought, two minor competitions:

At a certain point during closing (and only at that point!) have a competition to be closest to a certain marker on the field. Each team given one special sheet in their package and they engineer their best design. Once that's done it's OVER (and a reminder to everyone that it's not GP to continue!) Get NASA or Boeing to sponsor it

Second competition is for the team who collects the most number of spent airplanes. That'll get them out of there.

This sounds like an awesome idea and I think FIRST should implement it right away!

[Drakxii]

For webcasts I have 2 ideas.

1. Why not have the groups running the divisions do it? Instead of paying a company to do it badly, FIRST could pay PWN/FiM/MAR/NE to broadcast a field each. This could both improve the cmp webcast and the division webcasts, with the practice they would get over the season. Then for Einstein they could either work together or just rotate each year.

2. For Einstein why not make a show of it before the finals? Do something like NFL does with redzone where they would show HoF/Good/Important matches of the different fields, along with short interviews of students and sponsors and maybe some the chairman presentations.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

For webcasts I have 2 ideas.

1. Why not have the groups running the divisions do it? Instead of paying a company to do it badly, FIRST could pay PWN/FiM/MAR/NE to broadcast a field each. This could both improve the cmp webcast and the division webcasts, with the practice they would get over the season. Then for Einstein they could either work together or just rotate each year.

NE webcasts are not run by teams. MAR webcasts leave much to be desired, and the highlight of FiM webcasting is MSC which (I believe) is done by an outside group.


FIRST needs to just buckle down and pay a company to provide strong webcasting services. Frank said on Gamesense last night that Don Bossi called a meeting next week called "2015 Webcasting", so hopefully we'll have something sometime over the summer about this.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

For webcasts I have 2 ideas.

1. Why not have the groups running the divisions do it? Instead of paying a company to do it badly, FIRST could pay PWN/FiM/MAR/NE to broadcast a field each. This could both improve the cmp webcast and the division webcasts, with the practice they would get over the season. Then for Einstein they could either work together or just rotate each year.

2. For Einstein why not make a show of it before the finals? Do something like NFL does with redzone where they would show HoF/Good/Important matches of the different fields, along with short interviews of students and sponsors and maybe some the chairman presentations.

It's probably a contractual/union labor issue.