2015 Peachtree Regional

[robochick1319]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

Another year, another Peachtree Regional is done. This region is sending a grand total of 11 teams to championships, with winners of previous competitions, and Peachtree's winners, RAS, RCA, and EI award winners. That's a solid representation of southern USA teams at the championships.

Anyway, i wanted to share some thoughts and give some shoutouts for peachtree. First, some positive thoughts:

The second iteration of GameTime was even better than before, with some nice talks on strategic design, match and game strategy, and insights into gameplay. I'm hoping GameTime returns again.

The competition this year was great. This year's regional was deeper than it has been ever. Most teams that made eliminations had already played once before. Clearly, having 2 events in Georgia is making a difference in the level of play as the season goes on.

The full size practice field is one of those things that makes GA events great too. Other regionals can't provide more than a half of the field to practice on, and yet we have a full size field with most of the game pieces.

Now, let's go onto some things that I didn't particularly like:

The pit space. Our individual pits were fine, but with a size of venue we had, why were all of the pits crammed into one corner? FIRST hosted 2 divisions + FLL and FTC pits in the size of venue we had (that's 200+teams). There was no reason to have essentially, the same overall pit space as the 42-team Southern Classic regional, and crowd 66 teams into that space when we have a venue that can handle much more. Southern Classic's venue was much smaller, yet much more comfortable. I felt crowded whenever i went from the stands to the pits.

The stands. The stands were pretty unimpressive. they were far from the field and were really low. The stands at southern classic were so much better. We need high risers for scouting and getting a good view of the action.

The pit announcer was kind of annoying with his "robot robot" spiel, though it might have been because we were near the speaker. It got so bad that our pit mentor mandated the students to wear earplugs in the pit.

Also I realize we were wayyy of schedule thanks to Dean giving us an inspirational speech, but having only a 20 minute lunch break before we had to queue up in eliminations left us almost no time to even formulate a strategy and get a game plan in mind. Also, only 8 matches per team in quals was kind of a downer too, especially to teams who can only go to 1 event every year. Maybe our venue can handle 66 teams, but if our staff can't put 9 matches + per team, it may not be worth it to go above 60 teams.

Anyway, let's not bog down on the negatives too much. I want to give some shoutouts to:

4468: Your team has grown so much in the last 2 years, and it's great to see you guys finally make it not only to the eliminations, but to move onto the finals. I'm so glad you will be coming to worlds. I'm hoping we'll be in the same subdivision! Well deserved finalist medal and EI!

4509 We ended up on the same alliance together again, but we got knocked out in quarters again. Your teams designs are always creative and unique, and continue to inspire me. Hopefully we can figure out the voodoo preventing us from advancing in elims next year.

Anyways, we may see you again next year at Peachtree!

I completely agree! It was an extremely competitive regional and very fun! The layout of the pits and stands was spectacular last year but less convenient this year. I do appreciate there being three sets of bleachers that aren't open at the back. These bleachers provide lots of seating without having to really "compete for a seat." I really dislike the ones where belongings and trash can fall beneath. People lose things and leave a huge trash pile underneath. Plus sitting in a real seat with a back is sooo appreciated.

Despite running behind schedule, the volunteers did an amazing time catching up when they could and making things run smoothly! That's a high pressure situation especially when you're behind schedule and having connection problems with lots of teams/matches. They maintained composure and friendliness the whole way.

Also, GameTime is a great idea. I wouldn't be surprised if it catches on for other regionals!

Congrats to 4188, 343, and 108! You were a great alliance and we'll see you at Worlds.

A big thanks to 283 and 4459 for being such great partners. Things didn't run as smoothly as we planned but we gave it our all. The mentors and students on 4459 worked SO hard before eliminations to be super helpful to the alliance and should be super proud of what they accomplished under such pressure.

Congrats to everyone who competed this weekend. It was an exciting competition with some really intense matches.

[martin417]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

Another year, another Peachtree Regional is done. This region is sending a grand total of 11 teams to championships, with winners of previous competitions, and Peachtree's winners, RAS, RCA, and EI award winners. That's a solid representation of southern USA teams at the championships.

Anyway, i wanted to share some thoughts and give some shoutouts for peachtree. First, some positive thoughts:

The second iteration of GameTime was even better than before, with some nice talks on strategic design, match and game strategy, and insights into gameplay. I'm hoping GameTime returns again.

The competition this year was great. This year's regional was deeper than it has been ever. Most teams that made eliminations had already played once before. Clearly, having 2 events in Georgia is making a difference in the level of play as the season goes on.

The full size practice field is one of those things that makes GA events great too. Other regionals can't provide more than a half of the field to practice on, and yet we have a full size field with most of the game pieces.

Now, let's go onto some things that I didn't particularly like:

The pit space. Our individual pits were fine, but with a size of venue we had, why were all of the pits crammed into one corner? FIRST hosted 2 divisions + FLL and FTC pits in the size of venue we had (that's 200+teams). There was no reason to have essentially, the same overall pit space as the 42-team Southern Classic regional, and crowd 66 teams into that space when we have a venue that can handle much more. Southern Classic's venue was much smaller, yet much more comfortable. I felt crowded whenever i went from the stands to the pits.

The stands. The stands were pretty unimpressive. they were far from the field and were really low. The stands at southern classic were so much better. We need high risers for scouting and getting a good view of the action.

The pit announcer was kind of annoying with his "robot robot" spiel, though it might have been because we were near the speaker. It got so bad that our pit mentor mandated the students to wear earplugs in the pit.

Also I realize we were wayyy of schedule thanks to Dean giving us an inspirational speech, but having only a 20 minute lunch break before we had to queue up in eliminations left us almost no time to even formulate a strategy and get a game plan in mind. Also, only 8 matches per team in quals was kind of a downer too, especially to teams who can only go to 1 event every year. Maybe our venue can handle 66 teams, but if our staff can't put 9 matches + per team, it may not be worth it to go above 60 teams.

Anyway, let's not bog down on the negatives too much. I want to give some shoutouts to:

4468: Your team has grown so much in the last 2 years, and it's great to see you guys finally make it not only to the eliminations, but to move onto the finals. I'm so glad you will be coming to worlds. I'm hoping we'll be in the same subdivision! Well deserved finalist medal and EI!

4509 We ended up on the same alliance together again, but we got knocked out in quarters again. Your teams designs are always creative and unique, and continue to inspire me. Hopefully we can figure out the voodoo preventing us from advancing in elims next year.

Anyways, we may see you again next year at Peachtree!

Anupam (I still want to call you Wing),

We enjoyed the regional, but had many of the same complaints about the venue, not to mention the drive, the cost of parking and food, the traffic, etc. I really miss the Gwinnett Civic Center.

The volunteers were great as usual, I think we had to get inspected before every match because we were constantly working on the bot. By eliminations, we were where we should have been on Thursday, but that's all part of the experience. Wish we could have done two regionals.

4509 wants to thank 4112 and 1648 for an awesome alliance, sorry we did not reach our full potential.

I hope the rumors of district model play come true for next year.

[rspurlin]

Let me start by agreeing with the previous comments on the negatives.

I was not happy to arrive on Wednesday for field setup and find the seating so far from the field and so little rake. As a planning committee we have input on layout and other issues, but not final control. Sometimes there are also issues such as power, floor access points, hanging or rigging points or other considerations that have to be taken into account as well. Unfortunately if the bleachers can't be set up right the first time, there's no way to rearrange them at the last minute. We will try to do better in future years.

As for giving every team 9 or more matches, that would be wonderful. We'd just need to make it a four day event and find lots of new volunteers (I took 2.5 days of my vacation time to help run this event, so while I'll gladly give you another day of my vacation,I'm not sure all volunteers can do that). The math breaks down this way: With 66 teams you need to run 11 matches (66/6) for each team to play one. Multiply that by 8 or 9 to yield 88 or 99 qualification matches. Cycle time is the time between the start of one match to the next and has to include the match itself, finalizing the scoring, getting the robots off the field, then getting new robots on the field and getting them linked up and ready to play. With this year's game, it's pretty hard to do that in 6 minutes and probably impossible to sustain that match after match. So if you assume a 7 minute cycle, 88 matches requires 616 minutes and 99 matches requires 693. With 11 hours (660 minutes) allocated in a FIRST three day event to qualifications, you can see why you had 8 matches. one other consideration is that you know there will be a team or teams that has trouble linking with the field; for every minute you hold the match waiting for linkup, you have to run that number of matches one minute faster than your target cycle time to catch up. Or to put it another way, we can stay on schedule by bypassing you if you're not ready at the 7 minute mark, or we can give you every effort we can for you to run your robot and be late. We chose the latter over the former and I'd really like to know if you think we made the wrong choice.

Now let's run the same math for the Georgia Southern Classic regional in Perry: 42 teams means you need 7 matches for every team to play one. Knowing it was a week one regional with a new control system, we targeted 8 minute cycles and still had time enough to give every team 11 matches (77 total requiring 616 minutes). We were never more than 10 minutes behind schedule and finished each segment within 2 minutes of target.

I like everything to run on schedule too, but when it isn't happening, we need to remember we are still in this together.

[JeffersonMartin]

I'm not going to write a lengthy recap post here, but I want to give a huge congrats to Fernbank LINKS 4468. They're a team I've seen work their butts off for the last three years and it's great to see them finally rewarded with the finalist alliance captain and EI. I can't wait to see y'all at champs and I know you can keep up the amazing work in the future.

[Anupam Goli]

Ray,

I agree with you on all fronts. The staff and volunteers did their best to get back on schedule after all of the delays, and I wholeheartedly appreciate their efforts to do so. Looking at the cost of fielding a robot though, I'm not sure if I agree that running 8 matches per team is the way we should proceed. I know the vision of GA FIRST is to get as many teams into FRC as possible, but we may need to step back and think about the experience.

If we count our team's sponsorship pledge that covers our registration, we still pay $4000 for a 2nd regional entrance, $3500 for a robot, $3500 for a practice robot in our case, U-haul rental service, and transport to the event. We're sinking in $11,000 + for the regional season. We played 11 + 8 = 19 quals matches in our 2 regionals. That comes out to about $578 per match for us. If we only did one event (Peachtree), we'd be paying $8000+ for 8 quals matches, $1000 per match. Many other teams don't put in the money we do into the program, and others don't have the sponsors we do. If we assume $5000 + $4000 for the registration and robot cost, teams are paying $1,111 per match. I think sinking that type of money and only fielding your robot 8 times isn't worth it.

I think we need to re-evaluate the experience we give teams, and maybe go away from 60+teams at an event. Even if we go down to 60 teams, we can run the same number of qualification matches, giving 48 teams an additional qualification match. If we go down to 58 teams at the event, every team is guaranteed 9 matches in quals, running on the same schedule we had this year. I don't know how we can make this happen, but maybe restricting the initial capacity to 54 during registration gives room for 4 rookies/exceptions to be added in at the last minute.

Mulling things in my head, it may finally be time for our state to go to districts.

[MooreteP]

Originally Posted by rspurlin

Let me start by agreeing with the previous comments on the negatives.

I was not happy to arrive on Wednesday for field setup and find the seating so far from the field and so little rake. As a planning committee we have input on layout and other issues, but not final control. Sometimes there are also issues such as power, floor access points, hanging or rigging points or other considerations that have to be taken into account as well. Unfortunately if the bleachers can't be set up right the first time, there's no way to rearrange them at the last minute. We will try to do better in future years.

As for giving every team 9 or more matches, that would be wonderful. We'd just need to make it a four day event and find lots of new volunteers (I took 2.5 days of my vacation time to help run this event, so while I'll gladly give you another day of my vacation,I'm not sure all volunteers can do that). The math breaks down this way: With 66 teams you need to run 11 matches (66/6) for each team to play one. Multiply that by 8 or 9 to yield 88 or 99 qualification matches. Cycle time is the time between the start of one match to the next and has to include the match itself, finalizing the scoring, getting the robots off the field, then getting new robots on the field and getting them linked up and ready to play. With this year's game, it's pretty hard to do that in 6 minutes and probably impossible to sustain that match after match. So if you assume a 7 minute cycle, 88 matches requires 616 minutes and 99 matches requires 693. With 11 hours (660 minutes) allocated in a FIRST three day event to qualifications, you can see why you had 8 matches. one other consideration is that you know there will be a team or teams that has trouble linking with the field; for every minute you hold the match waiting for linkup, you have to run that number of matches one minute faster than your target cycle time to catch up. Or to put it another way, we can stay on schedule by bypassing you if you're not ready at the 7 minute mark, or we can give you every effort we can for you to run your robot and be late. We chose the latter over the former and I'd really like to know if you think we made the wrong choice.

Now let's run the same math for the Georgia Southern Classic regional in Perry: 42 teams means you need 7 matches for every team to play one. Knowing it was a week one regional with a new control system, we targeted 8 minute cycles and still had time enough to give every team 11 matches (77 total requiring 616 minutes). We were never more than 10 minutes behind schedule and finished each segment within 2 minutes of target.

I like everything to run on schedule too, but when it isn't happening, we need to remember we are still in this together.

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

Ray,

I agree with you on all fronts. The staff and volunteers did their best to get back on schedule after all of the delays, and I wholeheartedly appreciate their efforts to do so. Looking at the cost of fielding a robot though, I'm not sure if I agree that running 8 matches per team is the way we should proceed. I know the vision of GA FIRST is to get as many teams into FRC as possible, but we may need to step back and think about the experience.

If we count our team's sponsorship pledge that covers our registration, we still pay $4000 for a 2nd regional entrance, $3500 for a robot, $3500 for a practice robot in our case, U-haul rental service, and transport to the event. We're sinking in $11,000 + for the regional season. We played 11 + 8 = 19 quals matches in our 2 regionals. That comes out to about $578 per match for us. If we only did one event (Peachtree), we'd be paying $8000+ for 8 quals matches, $1000 per match. Many other teams don't put in the money we do into the program, and others don't have the sponsors we do. If we assume $5000 + $4000 for the registration and robot cost, teams are paying $1,111 per match. I think sinking that type of money and only fielding your robot 8 times isn't worth it.

I think we need to re-evaluate the experience we give teams, and maybe go away from 60+teams at an event. Even if we go down to 60 teams, we can run the same number of qualification matches, giving 48 teams an additional qualification match. If we go down to 58 teams at the event, every team is guaranteed 9 matches in quals, running on the same schedule we had this year. I don't know how we can make this happen, but maybe restricting the initial capacity to 54 during registration gives room for 4 rookies/exceptions to be added in at the last minute.

Mulling things in my head, it may finally be time for our state to go to districts.

Go to Districts.
For the same cost, we had two competitions with 12 matches each.
They were held in high school gymnasiums with 33 teams at Waterbury and 40 teams in Hartford.
While the field is not as deep as a 60 team regional, there is more intimacy with fewer teams and scouting is a little easier.

The downsides are that qualifying for the CMP comes later in your season, so travel plans may be more difficult. For most teams, this is not an issue. And a 75 team "Regional" x 8 at the CMP with the "rake" of the seats in a Dome......

I was wary about moving to the District model, but after two seasons I am sold.

Edit: For most of the competitions we load in on Friday evening and have Practice Matches. Then the competition happens on a Saturday and Sunday. I don't need to take any time off of work and the students don't miss any school.

[Kellen Hill]

Does anyone have notes on what happened at the meeting to discuss transitioning to districts in Georgia? This will be the solution to bring down the cost per match ratio. As Anupam mentioned, the current cost per match is frustrating to see when other events (especially districts) allow for much more bang for your buck when it comes to the amount of matches you get to play.

I think this frustration has to lie with with the regional model. The volunteers and the RPC do a good job with the current situation and I'm excited to see that a move to districts is being more visibly discussed. 60+ team events might seem neat on paper, but when it comes down to quality of experience for teams, this size of event detracts from the event experience for most.



On a separate note, below are links to recorded webcast footage from the event:

Thursday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-itdXB3P8s
Friday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZzBMgtZTfQ
Saturday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY59zTlQqE0

[Gene F]

First of all a big thank you to all the volunteers that made this event happen!!!

Second a shout out to team 4188, Columbus Space Program for picking us to join their alliance and also to team 108, The Sigma C@ts for rounding out our alliance. The consistency you both showed in the playoffs was amazing! Though we were the ones topping the stacks of 6 you guys set us up. Can't wait to see you both at Championships!

As far as the number of matches. The Palmetto Regional (in week one) managed to get 9 matches in with 66 teams.

I agree with the others that a 66 team regional is not the best format. We like competing at the Peachtree Regional but the costs of staying in downtown Atlanta is causing us to reconsider attending in the future. We liked Gwinnett! If we do go to a District model I hope we DON"T run matches on Sunday.

Again thanks to all that competed. It was a great event with great teams!

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by MooreteP

Go to Districts.

Desire isn't necessarily the limiting factor in GA.

Districts has done wonders to many other regions and many in GA would welcome the change for a variety of reasons.

- Sunny G.

[Retired Starman]

[quote=Kellen Hill;1463623]Does anyone have notes on what happened at the meeting to discuss transitioning to districts in Georgia? This will be the solution to bring down the cost per match ratio. As Anupam mentioned, the current cost per match is frustrating to see when other events (especially districts) allow for much more bang for your buck when it comes to the amount of matches you get to play.


I attended the meeting on converting to the district model. It was an informational meeting where we learned the good points of the district model, and also what you give up by going to it. I think Georgia will move to the district model in the next two years, but a LOT of work has to be done by the Peachtree Planning Committee before it will all work out. We would like to take advantage of Georgia's support from colleges and universities to help with putting on the district meets, rather than using high school gyms. All that has to be worked out, and it won't be easy. Not to mention having to haul the playing field around (or two fields if we have a full practice field as in the past) since FIRST doesn't send down a field for each event.

Having and keeping volunteers is a big concern when moving to the district model, so if teams want to go that way, you had better expect to encourage your teachers, mentors, and PARENTS to step up to the plate and help out. Otherwise you're going to kill off all us grandparent-type people who are doing a lot of the work now.

While the district model gives more playing time, and maybe more bang for the buck, total costs for getting to the World Championships will be higher for winning teams, which have to attend two district meets, one state (or super-state) regional, and finally the Championships.

Many of the frustrations with this year's Peachtree were pretty much beyond the control of the Committee. High costs come with all meetings in downtown Atlanta. Other, maybe more desirable, venues were already tied up before we settled on a location. The seating delivered was not what we ordered, and it wasn't set up in the correct place, but once in position, we could do nothing about it. The remainder of the space had to be re-allocated as we were setting up Wednesday.

In spite of it all, I think we had a well-run event with great competition and wonderful winners. And don't forget, we essentially had everyone inspected by 7:00 Thursday. That's NEVER happened before!

My hat's off to Connie, Val, and the others in leadership positions for succeeding in putting on two great events this season in Georgia.

[astro70]

Originally Posted by Gene F

Second a shout out to team 4188, Columbus Space Program for picking us to join their alliance and also to team 108, The Sigma C@ts for rounding out our alliance. The consistency you both showed in the playoffs was amazing! Though we were the ones topping the stacks of 6 you guys set us up. Can't wait to see you both at Championships!

Our 4188 kids were lucky to get 343 as alliance partners! You guys seemed to get better and better from Friday until the last match of the finals. We were waiting to go for a 4th garbage can but 108 was making islands of totes everywhere so we seemed to nearly max out what you can do with 3 garbage cans!

If we go to districts, maybe our Destination Einstein Field could host one of them. It would great to get a bunch of you down to Columbus, Georgia.