2015 Ventura Regional Feedback/Improvements

[seg9585]

Everyone's already touched on the heat/humidity issue, and I will agree it was a big problem -- especially since we are trying to encourage folks from the community to watch and enjoy the competition, but the heat issue didn't encourage folks to stay long.

For the space we had, the volunteers worked REALLY hard and did a great job guiding teams through the breezeway, into and out of the loading area, etc. Great work volunteers!

The breezeway got really congested, robots running back and forth with no room to move. We were gridlocked a dozen times through those small doors since robots went in and out of the same door, some too tall to fit through. Recommend a one-way flow, find a way to have robots leave on the other side of the court., or even behind the video/curtain system.

Pits were 9' x 10', but really only 9'x9' was usable space due to wiring, signage behind pits.

The practice field was problematic, as the bright sun overheated laptops and were hard to see. Also robots got very hot sitting in the sun waiting for a spot on the field. If it rains next year, does that mean no practice field?
I recommend large canopies over the field or control area (there were only some for volunteers and the sign up area). Practice field registration was not controlled, as some teams just put their own team number in a ton of slots just in case they needed to use it (volunteers didn't restrict this).

[EricH]

Originally Posted by seg9585

he breezeway got really congested, robots running back and forth with no room to move. We were gridlocked a dozen times through those small doors since robots went in and out of the same door, some too tall to fit through. Recommend a one-way flow, find a way to have robots leave on the other side of the court., or even behind the video/curtain system.

Actually, that was the original plan. The problem was that one of the "A/V cave" curtains hung too close to the rail curtain on the scoring-side stands to allow for safe robot transit, and moving the rail curtain would have blocked off the end of the stands (as well as subjected the scorer's table to getting whacked by robots). Moving the other curtain would have needed to be done early, and it wasn't.

I kind of get the impression that some of the inconveniences were caused by "new venue, need to make this work, oops, need to change this plan at the last minute to make this work somewhat".

Oh, and for sanddrag: There WAS supposed to be a pit where the safety advisor's table was, as you seem to have suspected. The associated team didn't show up, for reasons that I don't know. I saw the pit's sign get taken down on Thursday evening, I think during/right before load-in.