Future First Championship News

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by 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

Well, this is a discussion forum, so I'm not entirely sure what else you expect to happen here.

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.

There isn't one.

[Rachel Lim]

Originally Posted by gblake

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.

That's what we're doing. See http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...Were-Listening--FIRST does listen to CD. I do agree that this thread grew very quickly (and perhaps got a bit out of hand), but the fact that everyone feels so passionately about this subject made FIRST take a look.

Originally Posted by bduddy

There isn't one.

There's CD. It's not official, but it does work. I doubt the answer to Q461 would have been changed otherwise, and the same for the follow up blog post about the split champs.

[Mr. Tatorscout]

So I mentioned to a rookie parent that they were splitting champs to Houston and Detroit. He's not from this country and the first thing out of his mouth was "Why wouldn't they do east coast/west coast?"

Really, Houston and Detroit? Last I looked, the US is longer than it is tall. Pretty simple geometry proof can be inferred here.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Rachel Lim

...
That's what we're doing. See http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...Were-Listening--FIRST does listen to CD. I do agree that this thread grew very quickly (and perhaps got a bit out of hand), but the fact that everyone feels so passionately about this subject made FIRST take a look.

...

There's CD. It's not official, but it does work. I doubt the answer to Q461 would have been changed otherwise, and the same for the follow up blog post about the split champs.

Trust me, for exerting the sort of influence most folks writing here appear to want to exert, there are better avenues than CD. Finding them (it's not that hard), and learning how to use them, is an exercise left up to the reader.

For those authors who simply want to do some discussing of this particular done-deal. This is a great place to do that.

Blake
PS: CD is also a great place to do many other things - I love it; and I hold its owners/admins in very high regard.

[XenObliv]

There are many things wrong with this approach, meanwhile the number of things that are right seem either insignificant or feel nonexistent. It was said that "We would like more teams to have the Championship experience." Well by being in FRC for now five years I define the "Champs experience" by being able to see the amazingly design robots from all across the World. It's been said that "It's about the journey not the destination." -Carolee Dean I always have viewed the Inspiration aspect as the build season, not the competition. If we don't find a winner, you defeat the purpose of a Competition. The name no longer fits the game. FIRST should just change the name to FIRST ROBOTICS LEAGUE (FRL). By not crowning a World Champion the reason OF the World Championship is now brought into question.

[jlmcmchl]

Originally Posted by XenObliv

If we don't find a winner, you defeat the purpose of a Competition.

Frank specifically noted in the new blog post that they will be looking into how to handle having two winning alliances from the championships.

Originally Posted by Frank

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.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by jlmcmchl

Frank specifically noted in the new blog post that they will be looking into how to handle having two winning alliances from the championships.

That means they dont have one in the plan they are putting forth for the future of Champs. So, as of now, we wouldnt have a single World Champion Alliance.

[pntbll1313]

Originally Posted by Mr. Tatorscout

So I mentioned to a rookie parent that they were splitting champs to Houston and Detroit. He's not from this country and the first thing out of his mouth was "Why wouldn't they do east coast/west coast?"

Really, Houston and Detroit? Last I looked, the US is longer than it is tall. Pretty simple geometry proof can be inferred here.

I'm not sure it's that simple. You can't look at the US in terms of land. I think you need to look at it based on team density. If you were to split the US down the middle I would say that the number of teams in the Eastern half of the US is over 80%. (that map is from 2013, so maybe it's different now?)

If anyone has a lot of time on their hands, or knows a way to do it quickly, I would be interested to hear the best 2 cities to minimize driving distance for the majority of teams so that it could be split into two equally populated Super Regionals. I don't know where to draw the line, but I would say Everyone from Illinois over would be considered a "West" team. Maybe East/West is the best way, but I haven't heard anyone actually give a better suggestion when they are complaining that North/South is wrong.
(For the record Detroit is maybe a 10.5 hour bus instead of a 9 hour bus for my team, and neither is as warm and as I'd like)

[the_godfaubel]

So I've been thinking about ways to potentially make the proposed system work. The one that makes the most sense in my mind goes like this:

1. Hold the two Championships and go about the things that Championships do (except maybe changing the name to something like Super Regional).
2. Each Championship will have FOUR divisions.
3. Each division finalist will be invited to a Grand Championships to crown a true Champion. Thus EIGHT alliances from each "Super Regional" (SR) and a total of 64 teams invited.
4. The division winners will advance to Einstein at each SR to determine a Champion of the event.
5. Each of the 16 alliances advancing to the Grand Championships will play 15 matches (One against every other competing alliance) to determine seeding for the Final Tournament. The winners of the two SR will be awarded the top 2 seeds and number 1 will be determined by the 15 matches.
6. Conduct the Tournament as normally run to determine a true Champion.

I believe this could work, but I think it would work best in an EAST/WEST system where the Grand Championships would be held somewhere in the Midwest.

[JoeXIII'007]

Writer's block on a presentation I'm giving at a conference in late May shifted my attention to this ripple in the FIRST universe which was throwing off strong enough of a signal for me to log in to CD for the first time in years and pitch in some commentary.

I haven't been too terribly involved in FIRST since 2012 when 66 and 470 we're still separated by school district. I pondered volunteering this year, but didn't get past getting an account on VIMS. Before 2012, my years of heavy involvement in FIRST were between 2002 and 2008, my wonderful teenaged life.

So about this shift in championship event scheduling and locating. First of all: yay Detroit! There's a lot to be excited about that city, and this only adds to it.

Second, some questions for you all:

1. Are you networking within and outside of your teams?
2. Are you critically analyzing (AKA: studying) what makes a great team and vice versa?
3. Do you have a working strategy on 1 and an evolving conclusion on 2?

If you're good on these three, relax. Changes in competition structure aren't going to do squat against your bulletproof strategy that works not only in FIRST but also life overall.

We have the internet, so if there are now a couple of Championship events, study the best of the best at your assigned event, and compare with the others you can find online. Thought experiments are fun and a great exercise. It may not compare too terribly to actually being there, but it's certainly better than expending $$$ and limited resources that doing so would require.

Now, given most of you are going to/will be going to university or college (I went to community college before university FWIW), let me rewrite that 3 part strategy in the form of questions:

1. Are you networking within and outside of your College/University, ensuring your network is a diverse set? Scholarships and interships/post-graduation work are hard to get, but your chances will increase greatly if you do this.
2. Are you studying hard, and focusing on what makes a response/answer to things/questions of academic/scientific merit valid (not necessarily 'correct', though it is a goal to aim for)?
3. Do you have a working strategy on 1 and an evolving conclusion on 2?

I believe if you ask yourself these 3 things, as simplistic of a model as it is, you're not going to be in bad shape. Study hard and smart, treat it like you would any job (some of you probably have a word about this, but I'm making a good faith assumption here), and be sure to have some fun in college/university, it helps.

Additionally, forms of these three questions are good to continually ask yourself in the workforce, which given I've been in it for 3 years now, I can safely say is quite a frenzy. No real 'winners' out here, just the occasional flash of success which we celebrate after work every time they occur.

Which leads me to my final point:

TL;DR - The commentary here in this thread is great, but our prince/princess is in another castle, or more directly our championship event(s) is(are) on a different field.

My gut feeling is that this will be a more sustainable strategy going forward, given the way competition structures and necessary logistics have evolved over the time I've known FIRST.

That's about it from me. Good luck out there!

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by the_godfaubel

So I've been thinking about ways to potentially make the proposed system work. The one that makes the most sense in my mind goes like this:

1. Hold the two Championships and go about the things that Championships do (except maybe changing the name to something like Super Regional).
2. Each Championship will have FOUR divisions.
3. Each division finalist will be invited to a Grand Championships to crown a true Champion. Thus EIGHT alliances from each "Super Regional" (SR) and a total of 64 teams invited.
4. The division winners will advance to Einstein at each SR to determine a Champion of the event.
5. Each of the 16 alliances advancing to the Grand Championships will play 15 matches (One against every other competing alliance) to determine seeding for the Final Tournament. The winners of the two SR will be awarded the top 2 seeds and number 1 will be determined by the 15 matches.
6. Conduct the Tournament as normally run to determine a true Champion.

I believe this could work, but I think it would work best in an EAST/WEST system where the Grand Championships would be held somewhere in the Midwest.

Unfortunately, any idea that requires another event between the two championships (to suppose, determine a single winning alliance) is tough to do. Someone has to pay for the travel, lodging, meals, etc, and if it's the teams, that's not good, some may even decline to go due to costs, then what do you do? Call the whole thing off? Bring in a substitute team?

Not to mention, as it stands, the Detroit Championships will be the weekend before AP exams, which really sucks for all those students getting home on Sunday morning, all exhausted. The finals event would have to be way later, or else they can cause students to miss the exams, among other scheduling conflicts involving missing school in general and for mentors, missing work.

[the_godfaubel]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

Unfortunately, any idea that requires another event between the two championships (to suppose, determine a single winning alliance) is tough to do. Someone has to pay for the travel, lodging, meals, etc, and if it's the teams, that's not good, some may even decline to go due to costs, then what do you do? Call the whole thing off? Bring in a substitute team?

Not to mention, as it stands, the Detroit Championships will be the weekend before AP exams, which really sucks for all those students getting home on Sunday morning, all exhausted. The finals event would have to be way later, or else they can cause students to miss the exams, among other scheduling conflicts involving missing school in general and for mentors, missing work.

Ah, I forgot to include that FIRST should pay the travel expenses for all teams attending. Another thing, since they want many teams to attend Championships, they could reduce the cost of going to the first Championship from $5000 to $2500 or even be free since the teams that are going to Championships earned their way there and since FIRST is, of course, a non-profit entity. Depending on team size, that money could be used to feed the students.

As for the AP exam conflict, I believe that this Grand Championship would have to be held during the middle of May, or maybe even June to avoid graduation conflicts. Each Super Regional also should be held on the same weekend.

[Connor Mulkey]

Originally Posted by rsegrest

Connor,

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?

You're right. I was terribly unclear as to what specific idea I was referencing; a clear, well-worded post was difficult to produce out of the anger and disappointment of the moment. I'm not backing down from what I originally said, so I won't delete my original post. Consider this one though to be my level-headed post that I hope will clarify my intentions for the original. I was referring to those employees willing to sacrifice one of the greatest things about this program with no warning and no input from the community whatsoever. The trust and transparency being developed with the community up until this point was completely betrayed by this surprise decision, and that's an unacceptable way of managing this program.

A drastic change such as this should have been proposed to the FRC community, whose responses to such a proposal should have been used to shape an ideal path forward to accommodate the growth of the program. Even if their current plan is to eventually arrive at a super regional model that sends teams to a single championship, there has to be a better solution than splitting championship as the intermediary stage between now and then. World championship isn't just the event where we compete to determine the FRC champion for the year. It's the experience of getting to meet and interact with all of the greatest teams from around the world. It's about the friendships and camaraderie developed between these teams that transcend state and national boundaries.

The championship is as special as it is because all of these teams have the opportunity to gather in one place to compete with and learn from one another. I'm not interested in a format where only the two winning alliances of the two championships get to meet teams from the other region. I want the FRC season to culminate in one single world championship event, a finale that this program deserves. All of the other high school sports may end at the state level, but FRC is not like all of those other sports. It's better, so we should have a competition structure that reflects that fact. The students involved in those other sports don't get to meet other students from all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, China, etc. That is an experience that you can't get with any of those other programs, and I don't understand how we could even consider taking that chance away from everyone.

With this two championships model, it's true that more teams than ever before will be able to meet a select few teams from around the world in a championship environment. But you have to ask yourself, is that really worth dividing this community into two halves that will have almost nothing to do with each other? It's time for people to realize that not every team will be able to compete at a world championship. We may like to be inclusive, but that's simply not realistic. Hopefully someday we will have these super regionals right before a championship that provide the "championship experience" to teams that would otherwise never get the chance, but until then most teams will be left out because most teams aren't of the skill level that a world championship should be at.

Don't get me wrong. Just because I believe champs should be at a high skill level, doesn't mean I'm against rookie all stars, waitlist teams, and Chairman's teams attending world championship out of fear that some of them could "dilute" the competition. I'm not against teams that may not have earned their way there with their robot. I AM against the way they plan to diminish the championship experience in order to "provide inspiration" to an increasingly large number of teams at the expense of those currently earning their way into the championship. There are other methods of inspiration.

tl;dr The world championship is sacred, and should not be touched. Don't ruin the best event of the season.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by the_godfaubel

or maybe even June to avoid graduation conflicts.

Some schools get out in june, maybe not a ton, but there are a good few.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Connor Mulkey

You're right. I was terribly unclear as to what specific idea I was referencing; a clear, well-worded post was difficult to produce out of the anger and disappointment of the moment. I'm not backing down from what I originally said, so I won't delete my original post. Consider this one though to be my level-headed post that I hope will clarify my intentions for the original. I was referring to those employees willing to sacrifice one of the greatest things about this program with no warning and no input from the community whatsoever. The trust and transparency being developed with the community up until this point was completely betrayed by this surprise decision, and that's an unacceptable way of managing this program.

A drastic change such as this should have been proposed to the FRC community, whose responses to such a proposal should have been used to shape an ideal path forward to accommodate the growth of the program. Even if their current plan is to eventually arrive at a super regional model that sends teams to a single championship, there has to be a better solution than splitting championship as the intermediary stage between now and then. World championship isn't just the event where we compete to determine the FRC champion for the year. It's the experience of getting to meet and interact with all of the greatest teams from around the world. It's about the friendships and camaraderie developed between these teams that transcend state and national boundaries.

The championship is as special as it is because all of these teams have the opportunity to gather in one place to compete with and learn from one another. I'm not interested in a format where only the two winning alliances of the two championships get to meet teams from the other region. I want the FRC season to culminate in one single world championship event, a finale that this program deserves. All of the other high school sports may end at the state level, but FRC is not like all of those other sports. It's better, so we should have a competition structure that reflects that fact. The students involved in those other sports don't get to meet other students from all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, China, etc. That is an experience that you can't get with any of those other programs, and I don't understand how we could even consider taking that chance away from everyone.

With this two championships model, it's true that more teams than ever before will be able to meet a select few teams from around the world in a championship environment. But you have to ask yourself, is that really worth dividing this community into two halves that will have almost nothing to do with each other? It's time for people to realize that not every team will be able to compete at a world championship. We may like to be inclusive, but that's simply not realistic. Hopefully someday we will have these super regionals right before a championship that provide the "championship experience" to teams that would otherwise never get the chance, but until then most teams will be left out because most teams aren't of the skill level that a world championship should be at.

Don't get me wrong. Just because I believe champs should be at a high skill level, doesn't mean I'm against rookie all stars, waitlist teams, and Chairman's teams attending world championship out of fear that some of them could "dilute" the competition. I'm not against teams that may not have earned their way there with their robot. I AM against the way they plan to diminish the championship experience in order to "provide inspiration" to an increasingly large number of teams at the expense of those currently earning their way into the championship. There are other methods of inspiration.

tl;dr The world championship is sacred, and should not be touched. Don't ruin the best event of the season.

I think the comments from others about the FLL competition structure are pretty enlightening. In FLL, pretty much no-one goes to champs, and for the VAST majority of teams, you only see people in your region.

That's pretty much a preview of the future of FRC. The program is going to keep growing, barring a complete collapse of the economy. Champs as currently constituted is pretty much as big as it can get. Eventually, a monolithic Champs won't be able to handle even just the teams that qualify at DCMPs and Regionals. Heck, the 56 regionals this year can qualify up to 336 teams for Champs. It's no surprise they had to bump the capacity. Eventually, FRC would have to slap another qualifying layer in there of super regionals and drastically limit the teams that make it to Champs. And then, for the vast majority of teams, you're only ever seeing people from your region and you're not competing against the best of the best. It really just seems to me like this is mostly just a surprise implementation of Super Regionals. I'm sorry the future has gotten here more suddenly than we all expected, but it did have to happen at some point.