Future First Championship News

[Cory]

Originally Posted by MrRoboSteve

This is a great concept.

Except still super flawed because the alliances would all be formed geographically and as such would probably be less competitive (and not as compelling for TV) than a situation where district champs are expanded and retitled as "super regionals" that then feed one central championship event with fewer teams.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Cory

Except still super flawed because the alliances would all be formed geographically and as such would probably be less competitive (and not as compelling for TV) than a situation where district champs are expanded and retitled as "super regionals" that then feed one central championship event with fewer teams.

Allowing teams to shuffle between events (with provisions to preserve total numbers and always let local teams attend the nearer event if they want) would break down the barriers at zero cost to FIRST.

I think our collective competitive juices could help keep the events more or less balanced. For every team that thinks "I want to be on an alliance with 1114!", there is one that thinks "I want to go to the other event and meet them in the Superbowl". Plus there are still 'random' divisions at each event.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Cory

Except still super flawed because the alliances would all be formed geographically and as such would probably be less competitive (and not as compelling for TV) than a situation where district champs are expanded and retitled as "super regionals" that then feed one central championship event with fewer teams.

Then you invite the 4 winners, and the HoF finalist, and the top 25 remaining teams from each zone for a double division, 120 team IRI style event.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Then you invite the 4 winners, and the HoF finalist, and the top 25 remaining teams from each zone for a double division, 120 team IRI style event.

You know what you'd have at that point?

The (slightly modified) original plan of super regionals feeding into CMP.

Would anyone have been pissed off if they announced that DCMPs would be expanded to form super regionals and then those super regionals would feed the CMP you're talking about? Probably not.

[Conor Ryan]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Allowing teams to shuffle between events (with provisions to preserve total numbers and always let local teams attend the nearer event if they want) would break down the barriers at zero cost to FIRST.

I think our collective competitive juices could help keep the events more or less balanced. For every team that thinks "I want to be on an alliance with 1114!", there is one that thinks "I want to go to the other event and meet them in the Superbowl". Plus there are still 'random' divisions at each event.

A little league world series format would be interesting, it would really help with regional influence, would a TV Viewer rather say go 1114! Or go Team Ontario! If a Superbowl, TV style event happens, and the Championship acts as a qualifier for it you really need to design the event contestants for a TV audience. The community still has the ability to do IRI type stuff on their own.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Allowing teams to shuffle between events (with provisions to preserve total numbers and always let local teams attend the nearer event if they want) would break down the barriers at zero cost to FIRST.

I think our collective competitive juices could help keep the events more or less balanced. For every team that thinks "I want to be on an alliance with 1114!", there is one that thinks "I want to go to the other event and meet them in the Superbowl". Plus there are still 'random' divisions at each event.

Given the responses to this proposal so far, doesn't it seem like most of the teams want to congregate at a single location?

[Michael Hill]

I really would like to see an actual champion alliance that results. As it is with championships, we're (somewhat) randomly placed into divisions already, so if we were in Galileo and 254 was in Newton and 1114 in Curie (sorry to keep picking on these two teams), we were never going to play against each other anyway. I think what could happen is we have division champions, but we have Einstein a couple weeks later in another location where all the division winners come play tournament style. I don't like the idea, but it's the only way I think we could fairly crown a victor with separate championship events. I don't like it for two reasons, yet another place to get hotels/need leave for work/etc. And the other is nobody leaves either championship event with any resolution. However, some good could come out of it. It could leave a couple of weeks to hype up the competition. Having just an Einstein field with 8 alliances would be short enough to actually provide a TV special if they found a station that would air it. You also invite representatives of teams that won "Einstein"-level awards and award them live on TV.

Again, this has a lot of flaws, and I would 100% prefer a larger event. However, if it HAS to be split into 2 separate events, winners of both events should play each other at some point.

[Jonathan Norris]

Originally Posted by Ricksta

http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/2017-first-championship-announcement



Remember playing in the pits in 2011? That will be the norm in these new cities. Playing in the pits is not inspiring...

This is probably my second biggest issue with the whole concept, playing all your matches in a Convention Center just cheapens the whole experience. FIRST is trying to sell this to us by saying that getting more teams to Championship(s) will increase the number of students that you can inspire, but if you are vastly cheapening the experience by playing in the convention center it will a be much less inspiring experience. I'm so disappointed...

Welcome to the FIRST Robotics Expo.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Cory

Except still super flawed because the alliances would all be formed geographically and as such would probably be less competitive (and not as compelling for TV) than a situation where district champs are expanded and retitled as "super regionals" that then feed one central championship event with fewer teams.

I'm not sure that geographically-determined alliances are less compelling for TV. Think about "up close and personal" at the Olympics (as incredibly annoying as those are to specific sport fans). TV LOVES storylines, particularly for sports/events that viewers are less familiar with. The Super Bowl doesn't need them, but the networks use it for badminton at the Olympics.

[Citrus Dad]

I strongly urge that many of you who are concerned about this organize yourselves to make a set of coherent alternative proposals to present at the town meeting. Given the likelihood that the locations are contractually locked in, keep those sites in your proposal structures.

I also suggest that you start a new thread to organize this presentation, and select specific presenters. Also prepare presentation materials, and even budget and manpower estimates. The more professional and complete, the more seriously it will be taken.

[Matt_Boehm_329]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

This is probably my second biggest issue with the whole concept, playing all your matches in a Convention Center just cheapens the whole experience. FIRST is trying to sell this to us by saying that getting more teams to Championship(s) will increase the number of students that you can inspire, but if you are vastly cheapening the experience by playing in the convention center it will a be much less inspiring experience. I'm so disappointed...

Welcome to the FIRST Robotics Expo.

It is quite a different experience playing in a stadium and watching from those seats than it is playing in a convention center sitting on bleachers. I drove in division finals in 2009 and coming out and playing in a stadium was a crazy experience

[dsergison]

[kristinweiss]

I was involved with FRC for three years and am now a first year mentor. My team was started in 2013 and up until this year, my team has never qualified for worlds. In 2013, I was named a Dean's List finalists and traveled to worlds with my mom and two of my mentors. The experience of walking around the pits and meeting teams from all over the world inspired me to do everything I could to get my team there one day to experience the energy and atmosphere that is unique to the world championships. When I returned home from St. Louis, I was beyond excited to get a start preparing the team for the future year's competition, but was disappointed when my team was not as enthusiastic as I was. Going into the 2014 season, my team went through some major challenges including losing our work space and being kept from our shop for over a week due to snow. Almost half of our team were seniors and most of them had "seniority" and barely showed up. Our team turned into a small group of dedicated students who spend every waking hour working on robotics. To keep us motivated, we would often live stream other regionals while we worked, in particular waterloo. I remember seeing how excited the other kids on my team were to see teams such as 254 and 1114 compete, and I remember how excited I was when I was able to tell them that I had met students from the teams at worlds and gotten to see their past robots in person. Fast forward to this year. I am now in college but have come back to mentor my team, particularly in outreach with the goal of winning EI or RCA. Most of the students I was working with on the team had never watched a chairmans video or heard of any of the big teams, so I gave them the assignment of watching the HoF chairmans videos from the past several years. Just this task alone got them inspired to work their butts off when they realized that for the past 13 years, our team has been doing the same things as some of these teams and our team could actually win an award. And they did. My kids won the EI award at the Peachtree regional and were invited to worlds for the first time in our team's history. I have never seen my team so excited because all of their work paid off and they earned a spot at worlds instead of just piggybacking off of another team or getting a wildcard spot. Since finding out that they are going to worlds, all they can talk about is how excited they are to meet the big teams and possibly get to play with them. I know for a fact that one of the guys on the team will full on fangirl if he gets the chance to meet 254, and quite honestly, nothing makes me more proud. I know that the experience of getting to be at worlds with all of the teams that they look up to will help my team be inspired to continue doing well and push themselves. My fear with the spilt of worlds into two championships is many more teams will be able to qualify for worlds without earning it, and will be less inspired to work harder next year if they know that they can just slide by and still make it. Also, every team has those couple of teams that they idolize, and getting to meet them is basically like meeting a celebrity. If there are two championships, teams may never get to meet their idols and compete with them which makes them less motivated to get to worlds in the future. I'm sorry for how long this post is but FIRST really did shape me into who I am today and I want future students to be able to get the experience that I got out of it!

[rsegrest]

Connor,

Anyone in the FIRST organization that thinks this is a good idea clearly does not understand this program or share the same goals as many of the teams that participate in it, and they should not be allowed to hold their position any longer.

Emphasis mine and really? Who are we talking about? The people who are FIRST employees who deal with the administrative logistics of FIRST or the volunteers in terms of coaches/mentors/field volunteers? Please explain. I only ask because somewhere else in this thread one poster got irritated with another because they felt like they were being told to just 'sit down and accept this...' Are you really saying that anyone who happens to be reserving judgment or may even like this idea should quit FIRST?

popnbrown

…remember that we are ultimately here trying to inspire students from all different backgrounds that not only STEM is a great opportunity, but that a little inspiration (in whatever form) can go a long way.

Emphasis mine and definitely agreed!!

Kevin

In other news, as a long time attendee of Lone Star and someone moderately familiar with the GRB, I'm not worried about the quality of the event there.

Ditto. LSR is our home event and has been very well run over the course of our 8 years there. I have no doubt that GRB and Houston teams would give a heck of a Texas welcome to everyone!

LeelandS

So I've sat here and read every post on the 16 pages of content in this thread. And it has made me very depressed....because of the response by the community.

To be honest I skimmed some of them because now it's up to 43 but me too. I completely understand that everyone has been caught off-guard and wanted to vent but please remember that our students are reading this too...prime example below...

AndrewPospeshil

I only suggest CD members (and people not associated with the decision making process in general) to consider what you post in this thread - As a student it is by no means my job, duty, or responsibility to police what others say and post, but it appears some people are allowing their emotions to get ahead of themselves.

Out of the mouths of babes…

As far as districts go, remember that not everyone is there yet, not everyone is sold on the idea yet, and we are being pushed to have them in place by 2017. This means that 2017 will be a double-whammy year for many teams (move from regionals to districts and the championship split). Personally speaking, if you have that many concerns step up and volunteer to be on a committee to help steer things.

I also know that several things were said to me recently by different parties that I will leave here with you.

• “Entry into championships is going to become a more difficult goal to attain.” – It seems to me that the split makes champs easier to get into. The only thing I can guess from this statement combined with 'the announcement' is the eventual implementation of an ultimate champ model that is only attainable via the two championships.
  
• “Dean’s vision is to have FIRST programs in every school.” – In light of this the two championships makes sense. More opportunities to advance to a national level.
  
• “Big changes are coming.” – Wow…this was an understatement.

The other thing I will point out as far as ‘money grabbing’ etc. is that hosting a regional is insanely expensive and time consuming. Rumor has it that of the four Texas regionals two break-even and two lose money (yes I know this is another reason to push for district play in Texas). How many others are there like ours?

And after 43 pages of ‘venting’ Frank still does get it…

Franks Blog

In all of this, we need your help in doing what you do best – solve problems. I’m personally very interested in hearing your ideas about how we may be able to arrange for final matches between the winners of FIRST Championship Houston and FIRST Championship St. Louis.
Let’s work together to make these future Championships great.
Frank

[gblake]

Folks,

I have a question. What do the many people posting in this thread want to accomplish?

Venting or registering your opinion is interesting, but ... I haven't seen many people write that they plan to do A at B (or tell A to B) in order to accomplish C.

If you want to affect the plans for 2016 (doubtful), the plans for 2017 (maybe), or the plans for 2018 (decent chance), I recommend finding the person or place that accepts inputs/votes/advice from folks like you, and uses those to influence what will happen in 2016/2017/2018.

I suspect that getting virtually bent out of shape (or not) here in a CD thread is not the most effective way to exert your influence. It can be interesting, it can be fun, it can be an outlet, but ... I don't think it is the most effective way to influence FIRST's plans.

I suggest mulling things over for a while, and then investing some time in a method that will be (more) effective.

Blake