Confirmed New Districts for 2015?

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by JYang

Oh huhhh.... there was a page/document a while ago that said MC's are not allowed to be students (graduate students included).... now I have no clue where that page went

I know at one point that was a rule, but it is no longer. In Mid-Atlantic, for example, both Katie and Kelsey Stevens (MC & GA respectively) are college students. Zach Orr in Michigan. James Spencer, out in Canada, is a graduate student. I'm sure you can find other examples all over the world, but those are just the few I have in my head right now.

No person under 13 years of age may volunteer (at all.) I believe if you're under 16 you're generally assigned with your parent in a role where both people can work together.

As a volunteer coordinator, I make sure to put minors and younger students in 'flexible' roles (field reset, safety glass, pit admin support, etc) since these are not event-critical and can be swapped in for other people.

For bigger roles (MC/GA/Ref/Inspector), it's greatly advised that these people be adults, and beyond that I go by maturity level. If you're 19 and can handle yourself in the role, then you've got it. If you're 45 and can't treat a student with respect - sorry, you're out. It's not about your status as a student, but about how you can handle the role.

In the words of Jess: VC'd!

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

With regards to volunteers, having teams commit volunteers helps with a lot of positions (field reset, queue, etc), but it's the judges and trained positions that usually present the shortages. Avoiding overworking the finite supply of qualified FTAs, scorekeepers (yes, that's already an existing position), field supervisors, etc. is diffult during the first couple years of a district system. You often see the same field crew at many MAR districts, even if their positions have been shuffled around a bit.

This is a big challenge in MAR (the only district I have experience with, so that's where I'm speaking from). The nice thing is, MAR has 8 (9?) offseasons now where people interested in new volunteer roles they may not have tried out before can get involved. I know at MidKnight Mayhem, we're training new FTAAs, Field Supervisors, Scorekeepers, and Refs. Can't speak for any other events, but our hope is to get people with experience in those roles so that by the time the season comes around they'll be another person to throw into those rotations.

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

I find that the "smaller atmosphere factor" while isn't necessarily harmful, is something that often gets overestimated when discussing districts;I personally don't mind it/don't see much of a difference, but I've heard just as much of the opposite.

My advice to new districts: Don't lose the energy, the flash or the 'show' of a big regional. The quote from Zondag's paper clearly rings true in MI, just from seeing their events on a webcast. In my head, I think it's really important to put effort forth to maintain that atmosphere, because if there's not an active move towards maintaining the excitement (and don't forget, the FIRST branding!), the district events just end up looking like off-seasons. And why would I pay $2500 + travel for an offseason?

Other advice: Make sure your events are evenly spread out. In MAR, the team I work with is set pretty closely to the population center of teams, and yet we have to drive an hour or more to any of our district events (2+ hours for DCMP). I can't speak for our neighboring teams, but this is a pretty stressful thing on our budget. In fact, since going to districts 1923 has spent about as much money on hotels/buses/other transport in one season than we did from 2006-2010. Part of that is from team growth (30 > 100+ students), and part of that is because we need a bus and a hotel for each of our events now rather than -maybe- once per year. It's tough on us.

Oops. I'd intended for this to be a quick post. Turned into a brain dump. Sorry all!

[quad]

Originally Posted by AlexD744

Also, Andrew. Do you know of a way to show when there are multiple teams in a city? For example, 108 and 744 are both from Ft. Lauderdale so it covers up one of them and I know there's a handful of teams in Miami, but only shows 1. I think I ran into this problem when trying to do something similar a few years ago, but never figured it out.

FWIW team358.org has that data for >90% of the FRC teams by mapping the school or organization associated w/ the team number

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by quad

FWIW team358.org has that data for >90% of the FRC teams by mapping the school or organization associated w/ the team number

Which actually doesn't work all that well. That data is significantly harder to place on a map than an address. The far simpler approach is merely to indicate that there are multiple teams sharing that team. An approach Google Maps does not allow me to use easily. I've created a map using leaflet.js, OpenStreetMap and D3. Data was geocoded via the datasciencetoolkit api using R. It was then exported as a CSV.

I'm posting this with the caveat that non continental US data is flat out wrong. It's probably useful for this discussion for most of you, I apologize to folks who it got wrong. I'm in the process of re geocoding the data in the next few days (I may have stuff I need to take care of tonight so I might not get to it) using Texas A&M's Geo Services. If that continues to be problematic I'll just find the teams that are being problems and do them manually (I'm not looking forward to this).


EDIT AGAIN: Thanks to Nate Laverdue who found my missing Canadians... and a few other teams. Any teams with St (as in Saint) in their location are located in Germany. Don't ask me why.

With my disclaimers out of the way: http://bl.ocks.org/schreiaj/raw/2374ea9049e00a134f24/



Edit: And just so we're clear, Mark's work is awesome. Thank you to him and Team 358 for all their archival work. I'd have a much harder time doing stuff like this without their data resources.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Inside California, 0. The furthest north team in the state is in Oroville (4643).

In Oregon, there's a cluster around Medford of 4 teams.

I believe that the team that had to travel the farthest within Oregon for DCMP was 4057 (KB Bots) from Klamath Falls, roughly a 5 hour drive.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by Libby K

As a volunteer coordinator, I make sure to put minors and younger students in 'flexible' roles (field reset, safety glass, pit admin support, etc) since these are not event-critical and can be swapped in for other people.

In general, I like your procedures. However, I would argue that especially this year, field reset was 'Event Critical'. Several young kids in this role scared me. To be fair, it wasn't just young kids either

It certainly improved over the season, but a lot of people weren't familiar with the rules. Often field-reset wouldn't know who to hand the ball to, what to do in the event of a full-field score, or a ball being scored in the wrong goal, etc. If field-reset continues to have such a large impact on game-play, I might suggest we expand age restrictions to 16+ in that role too.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Libby K

I can't speak for our neighboring teams, but this is a pretty stressful thing on our budget.

Maybe you can't, but I'm sure we'd all agree

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Libby K

Other advice: Make sure your events are evenly spread out. In MAR, the team I work with is set pretty closely to the population center of teams, and yet we have to drive an hour or more to any of our district events (2+ hours for DCMP). I can't speak for our neighboring teams, but this is a pretty stressful thing on our budget. In fact, since going to districts 1923 has spent about as much money on hotels/buses/other transport in one season than we did from 2006-2010. Part of that is from team growth (30 > 100+ students), and part of that is because we need a bus and a hotel for each of our events now rather than -maybe- once per year. It's tough on us.

Why do you have hotel rooms for events that a 1 hour away? 1712 hasn't stayed in a hotel once since MAR went to districts. Granted, Hatboro and Chestnut Hill are both an easy commute for us, but we've also attended events in Lenape (1 hr) and Bethlehem (70min) without booking hotels. Those are equivalent commute as WWPW to Mt Olive or Lenape. We use school buses to commute to events, so we haven't spent a penny of team funds on travelling since MAR districts began.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Why do you have hotel rooms for events that a 1 hour away? 1712 hasn't stayed in a hotel once since MAR went to districts.

Yeah, this is one of the reason districts are supposed to help cut down on costs...

A lot of teams just car-pool or drive to close districts individually. Cutting costs on travel and lodging is a must.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

In general, I like your procedures. However, I would argue that especially this year, field reset was 'Event Critical'. Several young kids in this role scared me. To be fair, it wasn't just young kids either

It certainly improved over the season, but a lot of people weren't familiar with the rules. Often field-reset wouldn't know who to hand the ball to, what to do in the event of a full-field score, or a ball being scored in the wrong goal, etc. If field-reset continues to have such a large impact on game-play, I might suggest we expand age restrictions to 16+ in that role too.

For this year, ABSOLUTELY. I'm just speaking generally.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Why do you have hotel rooms for events that a 1 hour away? .

School requirement, as I understand from our teacher/advisor. Both because of our group size and the distance from the school. X chaperones on the trip for Y number of students, and so on. We also have to bump-up to the 'nice' (read: expensive) buses instead of yellow school buses once you're over 45min away. Believe me, if we didn't have to, we wouldn't. But it's still kind of frustrating that we would have to ask our team parents to drive over an hour for every single event when we used to drive ~15 min for the regional. We're just the unlucky ones on the map, I suppose.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Why do you have hotel rooms for events that a 1 hour away? 1712 hasn't stayed in a hotel once since MAR went to districts. Granted, Hatboro and Chestnut Hill are both an easy commute for us, but we've also attended events in Lenape (1 hr) and Bethlehem (70min) without booking hotels. Those are equivalent commute as WWPW to Mt Olive or Lenape. We use school buses to commute to events, so we haven't spent a penny of team funds on travelling since MAR districts began.

Regardless, MAR has a thing for holding events in the middle of nowhere and it really impacts teams with a 'lesser budget'.

[Kevin Pardus]

Since no new confirmed district events have been recently posted; may be it is time to start listing confirmed events, which may help identify possible areas for new potential districts.

Confirmed 2015 FRC Events:

Week 1 / 26-28 Feb 2015 - Palmetto - Myrtle Beach Convention Center

Week 4 / 19-21 Mar 2015 - Virginia - VCU Siegel Center
NOTE: This confirmation means 1) the National Capital Region (VA, DC & MD) will continue to operate under the old regional format (no surprise there) and 2) both the Greater DC Regional & Chesapeake Regional will also function next season.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by Kevin Pardus

Confirmed 2015 FRC Events:

Week 1 / 26-28 Feb 2015 - Palmetto - Myrtle Beach Convention Center

Week 4 / 19-21 Mar 2015 - Virginia - VCU Siegel Center

NOTE: This confirmation means
1) the National Capital Region (VA, DC & MD) will continue to operate under the old regional format (no surprise there) and
2) both the Greater DC Regional & Chesapeake Regional will also function next season.

Yes to the first, but not necessarily to the second. Just because the Virignia Regional is confirmed does not necessarily mean that the Greater DC and Cheseapeake Regional are also 100% confirmed. Just look at what's happening in Nevada, it seems to be likely that the Las Vegas Regional will not be returning due to monetary issues.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Yes to the first, but not necessarily to the second. Just because the Virignia Regional is confirmed does not necessarily mean that the Greater DC and Cheseapeake Regional are also 100% confirmed. Just look at what's happening in Nevada, it seems to be likely that the Las Vegas Regional will not be returning due to monetary issues.

I think he means more that Chesapeake and DC will not be operating as districts since VA is not operating as a district.

[mrmummert]

Two things i know and recall....

One....I've heard that when the National Capitol district is set up that
because of Virginia First's long ties to VCU that supposedly the Seigel
Center will be the site of the district Championship. Also...if you look
at the schedule for the Seigel Center for next year they already list the
dates for the Virginia regional as being confirmed. The dates given indicate
days needed for a regional since a regional takes a day longer to set up
and hold compared to a district event.

Two....When we attended the Chesapeake regional this year it was
mentioned that the Chesapeake regional would be held at the Comcast
Center for the next three years (not sure if it included this year) I think
this was worked out thru the Dean of U of M's Engineering school.
So the Comcast center will be used for either a district or regional
for a couple more years.

On another note....the move of both the DC and Chesapeake regionals
may indicate a early move to district type venues...but thats just
speculation on my part.

[PayneTrain]

Anyone who went to the Patriot Center this year probably can figure it would be a far bettwer district venue than regional venue. With 10 fewer pit stalls the aisles might be wider than 6 feet and you might even be able to see the field because they can push it back further and expand seating.