Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by MrRoboSteve

you have to admit that this decision optimizes for more young people having an inspiring experience. Reasonable people might disagree on the tradeoff, but it is tough to see how the change runs counter to the mission of FIRST.

I think the source of strife comes from the trade-off sacrificing what many people who recently attended championships think are keys to making the event inspiring. They ask themselves "What is the point where the number of teams we invite to championships is irrelevant because the actual championships experience has been diminished?" That point of inflection is not something that can be easily, quantitatively defined, and depends on a variety of a variables and perspectives, but it does exist somewhere.

What makes the Championship Event inspiring? I think the elements that dissenters to the Championsplit find important are not the same elements supporters or enablers of the Championsplit think are as vital.

[MrRoboSteve]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I think the source of strife comes from the trade-off sacrificing what many people who recently attended championships think are keys to making the event inspiring. They ask themselves "What is the point where the number of teams we invite to championships is irrelevant because the actual championships experience has been diminished?" That point of inflection is not something that can be easily, quantitatively defined, and depends on a variety of a variables and perspectives, but it does exist somewhere.

What makes the Championship Event inspiring? I think the elements that dissenters to the Championsplit find important are not the same elements supporters or enablers of the Championsplit think are as vital.

These are good observations.

One fertile line of discussion here would then be:

If we're going to have two Championships, what more can we do to make each of them as inspiring as the current single Championship?

[David Lame]

Originally Posted by MrRoboSteve

These are good observations.

One fertile line of discussion here would then be:

If we're going to have two Championships, what more can we do to make each of them as inspiring as the current single Championship?

I'm not sure how fertile that could be. If you are inspired by the existence of a World Championship, then there's nothing that can be done to make two events, neither one of which is a world championship, be equally inspirational.

[Rachel Lim]

Another very long post...

After considering this some more, debating various options with myself and some of my friends, reading through the various threads on this topics again, and generally trying to organize what I've been thinking, these are all the ideas I've come up with so far. Feel free to criticize them, pick them apart, or otherwise tell me what's wrong with them. Almost everything depends on how much FIRST is willing to compromise on this.

Goals:
These are goals that I'm trying to address for all of the following ideas, some are general ones that I've heard, and some are just things I personally think are priorities.
- Have many teams able to attend a higher level of competition where they will be inspired (higher level = champs, split champs, district champs, super regionals, etc.)
- Have a single final competition so the "sport" part of "sport of the mind" and "competition" part of "FRC" is kept
- Have as few levels of competitions as possible so students miss less school and mentors miss less work
- Have it end at least a week before AP testing starts
- Minimize traveling distance to make it accessible to average teams
- Have a way for FLL, FTC, and FRC to be together
- Have final matches at the competition itself so more people can watch them

Requirements:
These are requirements for all ideas so that they are actually realistic.
- Include locations that can support a large number of teams (enough hotels, an airport, etc.)
- Include locations that have a large volunteer base that can run the events

Idea 1: Super-District Champs
Introduction:
This plan will depend on FIRST being willing to listen to another proposition other than a split champs, which may or may not be true. If they are willing to, though, this is by far my favorite.

Outline:
1. Convert almost all areas to districts. For areas without the team density to create districts, they can choose to either stay with regionals (but will be considered part of the nearest district for the rest of this idea) or join the nearest district. Below is a map of the density of teams by state (and including Ontario, for simplicity I left out other provinces/countries for now):


2. Draw "super-district" lines combining several districts but not creating too large of a geographic area. Below are two maps, one with larger (500-540 team) areas, and the other with smaller (170-340 team) areas. The issue with the second one is that single states with a huge density of teams (i.e. Michigan and California) skew these numbers, so unless these district lines divide states, some areas will have many more teams than others.


3. Replace district champs with "super-district" champs (or give them a different name). Although it will require some traveling, it hopefully won't be much more than it would be with district champs, especially for the smaller area one, and it will be a chance for more teams to see some elite teams and have it easier for them to get to than champs. Also, a split champs will be splitting up the top teams anyway (although admittedly into only two sections).

3.a. Each of these super-district champs will have ~200 teams for the larger version (~35% or more) or ~100 teams for the smaller one (~0.33 - ~0.5%, size will probably vary by the district in this case). Somewhere around 1000 teams, or ~0.33% of all teams using this year's numbers, will qualify. This will allow more teams to attend more frequently, thus expanding the impact these events can have.

3.b. Each of these will have FRC and FTC (and FLL if possible?). I'm not sure how many FTC/FLL teams normally attend champs, but each event should still not have more than ~350 teams max, so hopefully there are more locations that can support this many teams.

3.c. Each of these events will likely be held during week 7. Below is an example calendar of April using this year's dates:


4. Have a single world championship with ~400-600 FRC teams and the usual number of FTC and FLL teams. This percentage will decrease as the number of teams grow, but the super-district champs will be the one to adjust. Champs will play out as usual with one winning alliance, one set of top awards, and so on.

Questions:
- How many locations can support ~200 FRC teams + FTC/FLL? What happens if that number goes down to ~150? ~100?
- A point I've seen brought up regularly is that average teams, the ones this split champs is aimed at, aren't as concerned about seeing every top team as being able to experience champs. If that is true, will having these super-district champs give the same/similar experience? Is there anything that can be done to help this?
- What type of arrangements has FIRST already set up with cities? Is there any way to negotiate to this type of event structure instead?

Pros:
- Reaches many teams, possibly even more than a split champs would
- Keeps a single champs and the competition/sport aspect of FRC
- Keeps FLL, FTC, and FRC together
- Minimizes travel distance
- Minimizes competition time
- Builds on an existing structure (i.e. district champs)
- Seems to be going where the split champs are going anyway
- More, smaller locations makes it easier to find volunteers

Cons:
(Besides changing what they already said)
- Teams will be more restricted by geographic area, likely even more than with the split champs
- Requires more venues
- Teams not in a location that will convert to districts, or far away from any of these super-district lines (i.e. teams outside of US/Canada) will either have to travel twice or depend on qualifying for champs to be in a higher-level competition

Idea 2: Split FLL/FTC and FRC
Introduction:
Would require FIRST to view keeping FRC champs as a single event as more important than keeping FLL, FTC, and FRC together.

Outline:
1. After a regular season, whether it's in regionals, districts, or super-districts, have all FRC teams attend a single FRC champs and FLL/FTC attend another one.

Questions:
- What is the most number of teams Houston / Detroit / St Louis / other locations could handle? 400? 600? More?

Pros:
- Simple (this one was so much faster to outline)
- Keeps the two locations FIRST set up
- Doesn't change much to the existing structure of events within FRC
- Doesn't require the addition of more districts, or of super-districts
- Doesn't change traveling time

Cons:
Besides having to change what they told cities they would get (i.e. a mix of FLL/FTC/FRC)
- Splits up FLL/FTC and FRC (both for the inspiration and for student/mentor overlap, although having combined super-districts might help with some of this)
- One location may not be able to host that many FRC teams anyway (may still have to be combined with super-districts or another idea to reach more teams)
- Doesn't deal with traveling distance
- May be harder to find volunteers

Idea 3: Final Matches between Split Champs
Introduction:
This is one method to try and keep the sport/competition aspect if FIRST isn't willing to change their split champs.
Since these are smaller, related ideas I'll just list them all below with individual notes.

Possibilities:
- Have the winners of the first champs fly (expenses covered by FIRST) to the second one to compete in a final match, which one is first is alternated.

Pros: doesn't create a second event
Cons: only the second champs gets to see the final matches, the first "winners" have to compete more and take more time off

- Have the winners of both champs attend another competition to play it out

Pros: no advantage to being at either competition
Cons: no one else would get to watch the final matches, everyone has to take more time off, starts to become an excessive number of competitions

General pros:
- Keeps the competition while keeping FIRST's split champs
- Very few other changes to competition schedule

General cons:
- Makes the competition aspect smaller, as not everyone can watch the final matches
- Additional playing time for the winning alliances
- All regular split-champs cons (not all elite teams together, issue of whether teams can choose which one they attend (and for the first possibility, it does become a much larger issue), gets rid of the goal of attending "the world champs," etc.)

Idea 4: Leave it as it is
Introduction:
Because it is technically a possibility, even if I don't like it.

Pros:
- Is everything FIRST said it would be

Cons:
- Is everything that has been complained about
No, I'm not writing them here. This post is long enough as it is.

[David Lame]

I think I stumbled onto this thread before I stumbled onto others that are discussing general complaining, so probably some of my discussion should have gone in there. Sorry about that. In this post, I'm going to offer an actual suggestion that I haven't seen yet.

This is a long term suggestion, as I think at least 2017-2018 has certain elements set in stone that cannot be altered.

Have a single championship event, but add 1 or 2 days to the time of the event. Create a "preliminary round" in which teams are eliminated from the competition more quickly than they currently are.

In other words, today, we have competitions Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in which everyone competes. Then alliance selections happen and we have an elimination round. Change that to half the teams compete Wednesday, and some are eliminated. Others compete Thursday, and some are eliminated. The teams that are left come back and compete in a two day competition.

This is based on the observation that of all the constraints, I think pit space is probably the most difficult to deal with. One obvious downside is that it makes everyone stay an extra day, adding cost. Another is that it actually requires teams to move in and out of pit space during the course of competition. That's a major hassle.

The up side is that it retains everything we like about the competition that exists today.

A variation on this theme would be to add one or more secondary venues in the host city. Some teams compete in the secondary venues during the preliminary round. There are obvious down sides to that scheme as well, but it does solve some problems.

[kgargiulo]

Is there a database or spreadsheet that lists every active FRC, FTC, and FLL team (globally) with their name, number, city, state, country? The OPR spreadsheet would cover FRC for 2015, not sure about FTC and FLL though.

I ask because I would like to create a GIS picture of team locations vs. departure and arrival airports for St. Louis, Houston, and Detroit. It might be very helpful to have these facts and data vs. current state of the discussion on the "global travel cost minimization problem".

Not sure if i can get it done, but I am willing to give it a shot.

I have pages of other commentary I could write on these topics, but I'm still gathering information and forming my opinion. Yes, even after three whole days since the announcement.

[kgargiulo]

Originally Posted by kgargiulo

...I would like to create a GIS picture of team locations vs. departure and arrival airports for St. Louis, Houston, and Detroit. ...

Made some progress (with help, and in so doing identified a new programming challenge for the team and a possible new mentor, but that's another story). I have all FRC teams from the OPR sheet on a Google Earth globe.

Only 16 failed to geocode correctly (they're all at lat/long 0 / 0). I attached a North America picture (low team density in other countries requires too much zoom to make a useful picture).

The pins for each team can pop up with whatever information we want to embed, such as "nearest airport" or "distance to Houston". There are a thousand possibilities.

Going to do some more work to elaborate on this and then of course will publish it, even outside this thread and the CMP topic it might be a very interesting thing to see. But probably not going to do more about it until after CMP.

Good luck to everyone attending, looking forward to seeing you there.

[microbuns]

Originally Posted by kgargiulo

Made some progress (with help, and in so doing identified a new programming challenge for the team and a possible new mentor, but that's another story). I have all FRC teams from the OPR sheet on a Google Earth globe.

Only 16 failed to geocode correctly (they're all at lat/long 0 / 0). I attached a North America picture (low team density in other countries requires too much zoom to make a useful picture).

The pins for each team can pop up with whatever information we want to embed, such as "nearest airport" or "distance to Houston". There are a thousand possibilities.

Going to do some more work to elaborate on this and then of course will publish it, even outside this thread and the CMP topic it might be a very interesting thing to see. But probably not going to do more about it until after CMP.

Good luck to everyone attending, looking forward to seeing you there.

Thank you for this map - it's very enlightening. Now I see why they chose to do North and South instead of East and West.

[Squillo]

OK, I'll start out by saying that I *know* this is not perfect. However, I think it's an idea that hasn't been proposed before, and it has some merit (IMVHO).

It seems to me that one thing we are dealing with here (on CD) is the potential loss of inspiration to the top teams, caused by not being able to win/compete for a true "World Championship" (minor factor I hope), coupled with not being able to visit with and be inspired by ALL the other great ("top") teams at a single event.

Let's face it, for the "run of the mill" (RotM) teams (like ours), going to a 1/2-world championship-type-event will be plenty inspiring. Heck, just going to a second regional (with 254 and 1678) was pretty inspirational, in terms of meeting and being inspired by great teams. Also, for RotM teams, traveling to ONE 'championship'-type event, if feasible (in terms of time and money) at all, can be a stretch; adding levels would just make things worse (consider - when VEX recently changed its tournament model here in Hawaii, requiring attendance at more competitions to get to a "big" event, ALL (4 or 5) of our island's VEX teams folded, since they just couldn't afford the multiple inter-island trips that had become necessary to get to the "fun" level of competition they had previously enjoyed).

I don't think any mentors from RotM teams are going to quit over this new FRC change, nor are most of those teams going to be significantly less "inspired" by the prospect of attending an event with 400 great teams from 1/2 the world, rather than 600-800 "slightly greater" teams from the whole world; the issues here are coming from the top teams, and they are important - we don't want them all defecting to Vex Pro or whatever, as it will seriously damage FRC for ALL of us. So how to solve THEIR problems, which are:
- No chance to see ALL the other inspiring teams in one place, and
- No chance to compete against those teams, and Win the World Championship.

What if FIRST selected a small group of these "elite" teams, maybe like this:
- All HoF teams; and
- All Winning and Finalist Alliance Captains from regionals and District Championships (someone tell me how many this is);
- The winning alliance from the first Championship.

and said this to those teams: If you attend "your" geographic championship, we (FIRST) will pay your way to the OTHER geographic championship - no entry fee, subsidized hotel, travel and food for a set number of people (12 comes to mind).

That way, BOTH championship events would/could include ALL the top teams; all of them, and all of us RotM teams, could be inspired by them; they could compete TWICE, against ALL the best teams, for a World Championship; the Championships would be pretty high-level, with less room for waitlist teams; added bonus - the second alliance captain would have a small incentive to reject a pick by the first, since only an AC could attend TWO championships, making the elims more exciting and competitive to watch while still getting the 2nd seed a good chance at a high honor.

The downside is, of course, the time and expense for the top teams of traveling to two championships. But they'd get to go to TWO championships!! How cool is that? There could be "the grand rematch" at the second championship, with the same captains and slightly different alliances, or totally different finalist alliances - in which case, the winners of each championship could still be proud of having won at a competition with ALL the best teams.

And the top teams are, generally, those with the most resources in terms of people (i.e., 'second string' teams, more mentors), sponsors, money... so if anyone can afford MORE competitions, it's them.

Why isn't this a good idea? Someone shoot me down, I can't wait to hear it.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Squillo

Why isn't this a good idea? Someone shoot me down, I can't wait to hear it.

I don't know that it's a bad idea, I'm just not sure the problem it solves is correctly defined. I lost track back on Friday of the number of "RotM" team members that said "this sucks". A principal argument, though certainly not the only one, isn't so much about seeing Worlds as it is qualifying for that top tier event. This isn't the position of all RotMs, certainly, or of the entirety of any group. At this point neither you nor I nor anyone knows what most RotM or most elite members think or why. It would be wise to consider and phrase proposals with this in mind, rather than attributing one's own opinions to an entire cohort of people.

Hopefully the Town Hall will help understand what more people think, but considering it's is only attended by people at Worlds, and FIRST didn't consult anyone outside HQ about this beforehand, the truth is we'll probably never really know.

[Squillo]

Originally Posted by Siri

I don't know that it's a bad idea, I'm just not sure the problem it solves is correctly defined. I lost track back on Friday of the number of "RotM" team members that said "this sucks". A principal argument, though certainly not the only one, isn't so much about seeing Worlds as it is qualifying for that top tier event. This isn't the position of all RotMs, certainly, or of the entirety of any group.

Sorry, I've never been the queen of tact, in terms of how I phrase things. I didn't mean to imply that ALL "RotM" teams feel a certain way; frankly, I was not so concerned about whether all (or even a majority) of RotM teams like or don't like the new proposal, because regardless of whether they like it or not, I think my proposal solves most of the problems that have been raised by "elite" and "RotM" teams alike - getting to either championship would be more competitive (there would be fewer waitlist positions available, since some teams would be going to both events); ALL teams at a championship (elite and RotM alike) would get to hang with and compete with (and against) more of the top teams, and see them compete against each other. I don't understand what argument you are saying my solution doesn't address - you mention "qualifying for that top tier event" but I thought I'd addressed that.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Squillo

Sorry, I've never been the queen of tact, in terms of how I phrase things. I didn't mean to imply that ALL "RotM" teams feel a certain way; frankly, I was not so concerned about whether all (or even a majority) of RotM teams like or don't like the new proposal, because regardless of whether they like it or not, I think my proposal solves most of the problems that have been raised by "elite" and "RotM" teams alike - getting to either championship would be more competitive (there would be fewer waitlist positions available, since some teams would be going to both events); ALL teams at a championship (elite and RotM alike) would get to hang with and compete with (and against) more of the top teams, and see them compete against each other. I don't understand what argument you are saying my solution doesn't address - you mention "qualifying for that top tier event" but I thought I'd addressed that.

I gotcha. I think my point was more that we don't know if this addresses the actual problems behind those you reference, because we don't in fact know what those issues are yet. I got rather caught up in explaining that.

In terms of fleshing out a proposal*, how's this:
Each season there are n, say 30, "double bid" slots. Teams can opt into this program on TIMS before the season starts. All teams worldwide are ranked throughout competition season on a universal points system using the season's District Points document. This is tracked on the Leaderboard website. The top 30 teams on this list that did (and continue to) opt in get an invitation and free registration to both Half-Worlds. This is an alternative to FIRST covering travel costs, which could also be proposed by might be trickier.

Separately, if we're looking to enforce an "equal swap" rule for the lottery, District points may be the closest way to assess equality short of a by-name qualitative decision.


*A proposal that may or may not address real issues and may or may not conflict with non-negotiables within HQ, and overall cannot be weighed cost/benefit due to lack of information. (This isn't meant as a bad thing. At least not for the proposal; for HQ's methods I lack my own tact.)

[David Lame]

Originally Posted by Squillo

Why isn't this a good idea? Someone shoot me down, I can't wait to hear it.

I think it's a pretty good proposal.

I also like that you hit the nail on the head with identifying the cost problem associated with adding another layer, like superregionals, to the mix.

I've thought a lot about this since I saw the announcement. It's a hard problem to solve, for sure. I think there's a reason that high school sports in general don't have national, much less world, championships.

But for those who have to figure out what to really do, the point I would raise to them is that it is not just the "super" teams, i.e. those who might realistically compete for a world championship, that are inspired by the event.

No little kid has ever dreamed of winning 1 of 2 gold medals to be handed out at half of the Olympics. You don't have to participate in those games to be inspired. The existence of that world championship provides inspiration, even to run of the mill teams. The existence of a very large competition with lots of people at it including teams from half of the world, not as much.

Maybe there is just no way to solve the cost problems associated with holding a real world championship as First grows. Let's not pretend, though, that we can hold two events, call them championships, and they will be the same thing.