Future First Championship News

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

This

In 2012 we got to championship by winning a regional, but so many teams get there by other means that it is easy for a first-time championship team to get overlooked and not taken seriously. I don't want to diminish anyone's experience, but when everybody wins, what is the significance of winning? It's starting to sound like rec league soccer...everyone sign up to bring a snack at one of the events, and when you get to championship...here's your trophy and here's your Capri Sun.

I'm also concerned by this attitude. Champs as the ultimate robot competition is depressing to me since to achieve this you need to:

1. Eliminate waitlists, and probably wildcards. They didn't win in so they shouldn't be there.
2. Eliminate advancing 2nd and 3rd picks. They're usually just along for the ride on the winning alliance.
3. Eliminate advancing chairman's, HoF, and EI robots. Their robot didn't get them there, so that would water down the competition.
4. Eliminate advancing RAS. Best rookie is still a rookie.
5. Eliminate advancing original and sustaining teams. Just cause you used to be good...

I mean, if we're serious about crowning the one true champion and all that.

[Boltman]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'm also concerned by this attitude. Champs as the ultimate robot competition is depressing to me since to achieve this you need to:

1. Eliminate waitlists, and probably wildcards. They didn't win in so they shouldn't be there.
2. Eliminate advancing 2nd and 3rd picks. They're usually just along for the ride on the winning alliance.
3. Eliminate advancing chairman's, HoF, and EI robots. Their robot didn't get them there, so that would water down the competition.
4. Eliminate advancing RAS. Best rookie is still a rookie.
5. Eliminate advancing original and sustaining teams. Just cause you used to be good...

I mean, if we're serious about crowning the one true champion and all that.

Do all that (in allowing those entries) and keep it in one city. It works. Two cities does not work... always a step-child competition. Is the world clamoring for 800 in champs?

[JaneYoung]

I've always thought of the Championship Event as a Championship event. It is possible to have 2 Championsip events - or more. Much of the chatter in this thread makes me think the mindset is that of a National event that wants to have the Worlds title. The bigger picture is of a much broader and wider scope; an inclusive one. Imagine a Championship Event in Israel, Great Britain, China, Mexico, Brazil... Imagine the Awards given to prestigious members and teams of the FIRST communities in these countries and others. Imagine these members and teams in 2020, 2025, 2030... Not in 2015 where we bicker about the locations of 2 host cities in the USA only.

Much of the basis of the HoF teams has been a foundation of growing FIRST and STEM initiatives in our communities, creating a far-reaching impact. This has happened and will continue to happen. To put blinders on and deny growth and a legitimate need for change that reflects this very real growth and interest, is nothing less than hypocritical.

Since when has FIRST ever accepted/maintained the status quo? Since when have teams, mentors, and our FIRST community leadership chosen to maintain the status quo? This is just the beginning, I think. And it is exciting.

Jane

[Kevin Sevcik]

My wife's suggestion for solving the problem of only ever seeing teams from your region at Champs is to let teams willing to travel sign up for a lotto to swap slots with a team at the other Champs. So you'd have a 50/50 chance at seeing a new set of teams that year. HQ probably wouldn't let teams just pick which Champs because of capacity and the risk of everyone picking Houston to make it the Premier event, but this would still allow for some inter regional mixing.

[Heretic121]

After reading about 10 pages I stopped.

I agree with a lot of Veterans who spoke in those first 10 pages and hope FIRST listens to those who have been around for 10+ years and have been the real backbone of this organization (ex. mentors, volunteers).

I'm going to give FIRST a pass with the hopes of a real explaination of what the reasons for this and not going the way of the Super Regional like planed when districts were announced, as well as a financial reason outside of "this is going to save teams money" shenanigans.

[the programmer]

I haven't read all 500 posts so I apologize if some of my ideas have already been said but to me, FIRST has a few options:

First, they could stick exactly to their current plan. To me, this is the worst option as now you'll only interact with half the teams in the world and instead of qualifying for a true championship, you basically qualify for a bigger regional.

The second option is to have the two championships but for them to culminate in a small event where one CCA winner is announced and one championship alliance is announced. This model would be scalable and the culminating event would be very spectator friendly, especially coupled with FTC and FLL. This still has the issue of region locking teams.

A third option would be for the first "CMP" to be similar to the NIT and the second to be like the NCAA tournament. This let's teams interact with other teams from all over the world but the NIT style event may not be the most inspiring.

A fourth option would be to have teams pick their CMP or have it randomly selected, this could culminate in a final event like in the second option.

I'm sure there are many other options but considering FIRST seems to be locked into these venues, these seem like the best options.

[Iaquinto.Joe]

FRC in Michigan is going to be so cool!

[asid61]

I dislike the idea as it lowers the number of awesome robots I can see at champs. I want a good look at 148 and 1114 while I'm there this year, and other bots in other years.
More district championships, followed by one big champs event would be my choice. To allow more teams to come, we could try moving it around the world, at least when more countries become involved.

[Squillo]

I think most of the kids (probably all of them) on our "middle-of-the-road" team would be just as happy, excited and inspired to go to a "half-worlds" championship, get to play with and be inspired by half of the best teams in the world, as to go to a true "World Championship." I can see both sides of that part of the argument. If this new arrangement actually accomplished that for a majority of teams, it might have SOME merit. Though a "super-regional" on the west coast would do just as well in that regard.

It's just a shame that their attempt to "lower travel costs" does absolutely nothing for the teams on the whole west side of the mainland US, not to mention Hawaii, Mexico, Australia, China, Japan, and the other teams we play with over here. Nor for teams in Europe/Israel/etc.

When I started reading the post, I thought - "Wow! Geographical split! They're finally going to have a championship event on the west coast! (Because west coast/east coast, or something similar - Detroit/Las Vegas, maybe? - was so obvious...) But then I read on.... You can't tell me that they couldn't find any city in the whole west side of the continent that could host this event???

This makes things easier for the MI/Toronto/NE/MAR teams only, as far as I can tell. Someone should figure out exactly what percentage of all the teams are benefited in any way by this, and ARE they the teams that really NEED that help the most? Does this actually benefit teams that are NOT currently attending champs BECAUSE of the travel cost? I'd like to see some data on that. Where are the teams who qualify for champs but can't go because of cost - are they in Michigan or NY? Or in Washington State, China, and Israel? Or in Florida? Just curious. I know if we'd qualified any year between 2011 and this year, inclusive, we would most likely not have been able to go, due to cost.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

While my initial reaction was very similar to many of those expressed earlier in this thread, I think there's something that we're missing, and that we need to reserve judgement until we find out what it is. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but Dave Lavery's post has made me believe that we're not seeing the entire picture, and that the final result will be better.

The sky, contrary to popular belief, is not falling.

[nerdrock101]

Originally Posted by Jacob Bendicksen

While my initial reaction was very similar to many of those expressed earlier in this thread, I think there's something that we're missing, and that we need to reserve judgement until we find out what it is. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but Dave Lavery's post has made me believe that we're not seeing the entire picture, and that the final result will be better.

The sky, contrary to popular belief, is not falling.

This is my thought too. I'm taking a Hanlon's Razor approach to it: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity". Though, in this case I might change that last word to ignorance. Reader's choice.

I volunteered for a regional last weekend and it completely changed my perspective. There were many teams that were just happy that they finally got the stack of three they designed their robot for, or got a buzzer beater tote onto the scoring platform. It's about what the students can do, not about who else they can beat. If we're proud of them for winning, it's little different from a traditional sport. I'm proud of the robot that comes out at the end and all the work they put into learning how to make it.

[madhav]

Originally Posted by Squillo

I'd like to see some data on that.

This might help. Posted wayyy back.

Originally Posted by Madison

For the sake of informing the discussion, the circles on this map represent a 750 mile radius drawn from each of the three cities. It's pretty clear that these areas encompass a majority of current FRC teams.

I chose 750 miles because that's the furthest I've ever driven without wanting to die. It's about a 12 hour drive.

[Karibou]

Its been a while since I've posted on CD and i havent been directly involved with a team since 2011, but for what its worth:

I can't speak for "higher level" teams who's goal is to win a world championship. I see how you're disappointed in the split. I'm not saying you're wrong for wanting to win big and be the definitive winner. But, I'd like to remind everyone that FIRST IS growing. Would you rather have one, proportional championship event, with no wait list and potentially nearly 1000 teams attending one event in several years? Or would you rather have more, equally competitive teams spread between two events? Or force teams to travel three weekends in a row at the end of a season to attend a district championship, then a super regional, then the world championship? Even two weekends for a super regional+worlds would be bad

Remember that these venue contracts have to be signed a few years in advance, and while the propositon may seem unreasonable now, it may work a lot better in 3 years when there are more, more competitive robots, from fantastic teams. You cant wait until growth happens, and then change the model that year, or even the year after. From my perspective, FIRST is just planning ahead.

Would you be more disappointed if you were a crucial component of a winning alliance and had a high performance robot, but could not attend CMP because only first round picks were invited to attend to keep the number of teams attending down, but you were the second round pick of the #8 alliance?

When I was in high school, my team's sole goal was to make it to eliminations of any event (regional or district). Our robot wasn't great. Heck, a couple of years we just wanted a working robot. Even with our bar set low, we were still inspired. It didn't matter to me who was crowned the best, all I see through my poor-performance-goggle is "those teams are awesome", not "omg 469 won CMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". 1189 is currently very much in the running for one of MI's bids to CMP. The team has not attended a Championship Event since 2005. We have had two full four-year generations go by without attending CMP. Last year, the team was one of the top teams in the state and had the opportunity to go, but couldn't for financial reasons, since they had not planned for success. They no doubt deserved to go. Its obviously a slightly different view being based out of metro Detroit, but I think 1189 can relate highly to the east coast and Midwest teams (which is quite a lot of teams) who now have a closer CMP to attend with a smaller travel budget. They would be thrilled to just be able to attend. I imagine this viewpoint is probably very different than that of a team who performs well every year and qualifies for CMP every year.

Even if FIRST had split east-west, nobody would win besides those within a 10hr drive time radius. Those in the midwest would still be faced with large travel times, just as how the west coast and other areas are still faced with high travel times for the new model. There is no perfect solution to make travel reasonable for everyone, and I fully support FIRST in their choices of cities. With the current competition model, Michigan has a huge number of teams and is sending a lot to CMP, and Texas has also seen significant growth in the past few years. A LOT of teams come from the east. If we're basically splitting east-midwest+everywhere else, I don't know how someone could argue that Detroit is better than STL diatance-wise when considering convenience for the majority of teams attending, assuming that teams will be able to pick their preferred event (and we don't know that yet). Fact: there is a higher density of teams along the east coast and in MI.

Think about the big picture. Perspective is everything.

[jman4747]

This is not that bad. I don't think north or south will be "easy" to win due to not playing "half" the world. Districts would feel a bit better but we realy don't loose anything when you think about it. It's ambiguously unsettling because it's new and I like the alternative more. And yea it's more of a bummer when your shop is 5min from the former worlds location and the south championship is now 10hrs away. Thats all there is to it.

If you quit because of this you missed the point and maybe you shouldn't have joined up in the first place? Sponsors and aren't pulling out. Apparently FIRSTs sponsors are very on board or they couldn't afford two championships! Mentors share knowledge and show kids what engineering is realy like. If you are a mentor would you realy abandon your current and future students because you can't be the undisputed champ?

Why we are here now and why you shouldn't quit after 2016 is the same reason you do FRC and not just VRC/FTC in spite of the cost. The big robots are still realy cool and the amout of technical knowlage that can be attained is unrivaled for a high school program. Couple that with more sportsmanship and as much teamwork as any other sport and you have the best thing I've ever seen. Watchability is a fuction of team performance and that will go up naturally as more teams spring up and the field gets denser in the north and south.

I'd rather see districts but whatever. Now put it back in Atlanta!

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by jman4747

This is not that bad. I don't think north or south will be "easy" to win due to not playing "half" the world. Districts would feel a bit better but we realy don't loose anything when you think about it. It's ambiguously unsettling because it's new and I like the alternative more. And yea it's more of a bummer when your shop is 5min from the former worlds location and the south championship is now 10hrs away. Thats all there is to it.

If you quit because of this you missed the point and maybe you shouldn't have joined up in the first place? Sponsors and aren't pulling out. Apparently FIRSTs sponsors are very on board or they couldn't afford two championships! Mentors share knowledge and show kids what engineering is realy like. If you are a mentor would you realy abandon your current and future students because you can't be the undisputed champ?

Why we are here now and why you shouldn't quit after 2016 is the same reason you do FRC and not just VRC/FTC in spite of the cost. The big robots are still realy cool and the amout of technical knowlage that can be attained is unrivaled for a high school program. Couple that with more sportsmanship and as much teamwork as any other sport and you have the best thing I've ever seen. Watchability is a fuction of team performance and that will go up naturally as more teams spring up and the field gets denser in the north and south.

I'd rather see districts but whatever. Now put it back in Atlanta!

When most people say they are quitting, I don't think they mean quitting their robotics teams. I think they mean that they won't compete with their teams in FIRST anymore and instead compete in another competition such as VRC. There isn't anything wrong with that either. No one is obligated to stick to FIRST since it's not the only competition around that promotes STEM and they shouldn't be scrutinized just because they do switch. I'm pretty sure these mentors do get FIRST and if they believe competing in FIRST is no longer in their team's best interest, then there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, if a competition could end up discouraging teams so much that they end up leaving FIRST, perhaps there is something wrong with the decisions being made or that have already been made. I'm all for expansion but maybe the focus should be on districts and super regional instead of dividing championships.