2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Andrew Y.]

There was a bottle neck getting into the Dome for normal matches. IF you were running late, you had to pass a bunch of people in really narrow lane.

The line to get into the Dome for eliminations was awful. We stood in line to get in basically at the practice fields.


It is also frustrating when you are showing a sponsor around and the event staff tell them they are not allowed on the field area even though there is a sign right behind them that says they are allowed.

[bigbeezy]

Originally Posted by Mr. Rick

The awards never should have been split per "sub-division" anyway.

And then they would have needed twice as many judges...

Maybe Highest Rookie Seed could have gone to each division (or sub-division).

[Kevin Sevcik]

I'm putting my annoyance at seat saving into a separate post to save people the trouble when replying.

Seat saving was a problem. I know it's theoretically not allowed, but having to explain that to the ignorant is extremely trying when you're already tired from 2 days of competition and just want somewhere to sit while your match comes up. One of my NEMOs had to shame a team that should really know better into letting a physically disabled student take a seat in a row they were "saving". I personally decided I'd rather sit somewhere else than argue with a scout that needed two nice seats at the end of a row for filing boxes. Because he had to FILE in those boxes. Thank goodness I wasn't escorting any VIPs or sponsors or I'd have to explain why filing boxes needed a better view of the field than themselves.

To the suggestions that we smaller teams should just suck it up and get in there and save seats like the big boys:

No.

We bring a skeleton crew to Champs and travel regionals. We do not have people to spare to plop in the stands indefinitely just so we don't have to argue with you when the pit crew finally gets a break to watch a match or two. Nor do I feel like stooping to your level of ignoring the rules and trying to intimidate teams into accepting it.

And please don't tell me that this is an isolated problem stemming from parents/mentors/tagalongs that just don't know better. If they don't know they're being jerks, it's not my job to educate them at the competition; it's your job to educate them beforehand. Believe me, its for the best that you do so, because I and some of my mentors are going to be much less polite about it than you will be.

This is not to say I don't appreciate the problems faced by large teams attending events. You have far more people bringing far more stuff than you could ever hope to stash in your pits between matches. Thus everyone parks with all their stuff in the stands. And then there's a load of stuff spread out in the stands that you really don't want strangers moving about and sitting amongst for completely understandable reasons. These are entirely legitimate concerns. It's just that you always seem to park yourselves and your stuff in the best seating available, and then we have to wonder why the pom-poms and backpacks (and filing boxes) always seem to get the best seats at the event.

It seems like we've been arguing this issue for over a decade now, and clearly the community is no closer to a solution. The team viewing area certainly helps, but it doesn't do much to provide argument-free seating for casual observers or people who want to catch a match or two that doesn't involve their team. I think more action on the FRC side of things is the only way things will get better.

My proposed solution would be adding an additional "No Saved Seats Period" seating zone around the current match team viewing area. Preferably with large-print easy to read signs and an usher or two to cut down on arguments. Teams would be welcome to reserve space outside of this zone as a home base, but seat saving in the zone would be banned or strictly curtailed to only support scouting teams (1-2 seats per person, up to 4 saved seats per team). This would obviously take some tweaking, but I think it'd work a bit better than the jungle rules that currently seem to reign in the stands.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by bigbeezy

And then they would have needed twice as many judges...

Maybe Highest Rookie Seed could have gone to each division (or sub-division).

No, they wouldn't have. The number of judges scales based on number of teams interviewed (at the event) not with the number of awards given out.

In short, we had enough judges there to give out awards per field.

[waialua359]

Champs never ever ever ever ever finishes on time.
We've learned over the years, and proven once again, that we need to plan things 2-3 hours after the proposed schedule of events end on Saturday.

Better communication in general needs to be made DURING the Championship.
Lots of planning and emails go out to teams prior to the event. When major changes occur, such as the annoucement of the Chairman's Award, there should be email blasts after every day of the event of such changes/suggestions/revisions.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

The only thing I disliked was how long the DS<->Robot communications took to get established (I previously have called this "mDNS issues", but Greg McKaskle later clarified that the issue is more complicated than that).

In every other way, I thought the RoboRIO was an improvement over the cRIO.

Originally Posted by Oblarg

I'll add one more minor quibble in that the signal cables, when plugged into the RoboRio, seemed mechanically less-secure than they ought to have been, though this is fixable by simply dabbing some hot glue on the connector once it's plugged in (thanks to team 1678 for showing us this trick at championships last year).

Since I've seen a handful of roboRIO replies here, I've spawned a separate thread to collect them so they don't get lost in the mass of grumping about the game/competition.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

No, they wouldn't have. The number of judges scales based on number of teams interviewed (at the event) not with the number of awards given out.

In short, we had enough judges there to give out awards per field.

The number of awards given out is related to the the number of teams interviewed and the deliberation time required. Twice the awards means twice the deliberation time, which either means longer deliberation periods or more judges.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

The number of awards given out is related to the the number of teams interviewed and the deliberation time required. Twice the awards means twice the deliberation time, which either means longer deliberation periods or more judges.

Just trust me on this one. There were enough of us to do awards for each field.

And deliberation time is roughly inversely correlated to the percentage of teams in the pool who will get awards. If we are able to give ~40% of teams an award it's much easier than ~10%.

- S

[kgargiulo]

Originally Posted by mwmac

RIP Schadenfreude Rush...

Well done working schadenfreude into a CD post.

[ThePancakeMan]

The only issue I had a real issue dealing with, was with the paper airplanes and litter everywhere. I understand that it is fun to throw them and all but, I feel it was a little bit excessive. I witnessed a lot of people get hit in the face. With everyone focusing on the competition it becomes a little difficult to notice the paper airplane flying at you. Not to mention that it is just more trash wont be cleaned up by the people that threw them. Again, I understand that it is a petty thing and that it is all just meant to be fun. However it did start to get very annoying.

[Kate Muller]

Our team had an amazing year. It is the first time since our rookie year that we qualified for Champs.

I love the district model except our district regional ended at 7 pm on April 18th. That gave us 10 days to plan a trip to ST Louis. We didn't have any mentors on the team that had ever planned a trip to Champs before so it was a painful learning curve.

The hotel reservation and badge registration site was a nightmare. I kept getting emails form First telling me I had to assign rooms or they would drop our block and we hadn't had our qualifying regional yet. Phone calls resulted in confusing and contradictory information.

Find a bus would have been impossible if FIRST hadn't had a bunch reserved.
There were problems with the bus company and I hope FIRST can arrange for better service next time.

I know FIRST is trying to go paperless for many things but that didn't work for us. The app for conference schedule wouldn't download on my phone. Also all the apps requesting access to my contacts and photos was a no go for most of my team.

The lack of maps with location labels was painful. The blue sign labeled innovation faire in the hallway on the second floor of the conference was completely useless and sent many a person on a wild goose chase.

Last minutes email updates are not very useful to a first time attending team. Having a printed copies posted on a wall in the pits would have been very helpful.

The hour + long lines to buy merchandise were a fail. I didn't buy any FIRST souvenirs because I didn't have hours to spend waiting in line. Not labeling the small satellite locations with shirt size limitations was another fail. I had a mentor wait in line for 45 minutes to find out the shirts at that location were all mediums.

I would love to see higher quality food and more options for people with dietary restrictions. Having inconsistent information on being able to bring food into the venue didn't help our team members with severe food allergies.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by hardcopi

Oh yeah... get the API working. It makes us all look bad. We can get over 600 robots to work in an event but we can't update the website? (FYI I do API's and stuff like that for a living, it isn't that difficult)

(Speaking as one of the scorekeepers on Hopper)

This was due to internet connection speed issues between the scorpion (field computer case) and NASA (where our internet and backups come through), not an API problem. With sync enabled it would take too long for scores to be committed to the database and backed up (what happens between the head ref giving a thumbs up and the score being posted to the audience screen). It was slow without the syncing issue (supposedly due to FMS changes to allow for two Einstein fields)... but with sync enabled it was so bad that it would time out half the time.

Sorry about that... We at least (AFAIK) updated things over lunch break and after the last match of the day...

[hardcopi]

There was definitely something not right with it. I assumed since MiCMP used the same system (and had issues at the beginning) that they were testing it out for use on Einstein.

I just hope they get it fixed for next year. I was like a junkie for the rankings.

[nrgy_blast]

0) Stop burning so much time getting Einstein set up.

1) Stop throwing airplanes when matches are going on. It's one thing to waste time when EVERYONE is bored (waiting for something.... anything to happen before Einstein), but there's no reason to do this while a match is going on or between matches. Especially during qualification days.

2) Requiring badges for EVERYONE attending, in the name of security? What a joke.

3) I like the scorekeeping as averaging instead of W-L-T, though only in qualificiations (even more qual matches would be good, too). Go back to double-elimination for the bracked.

4) Seriously, unless someone literally just got up for a bio-break and will be back in 3 minutes, there is no seat saving. Deal with it. As a side note, the seats along the back of the lower stands (direct access, no stairs required) are for people with physical difficulties. If you could walk 1/2 a mile to get to the stands, DON'T sit in that row of seats!

5) I'm not here for a concert or to see celebrities. I'm here for a robotics competition. Please remember this in the future.

[Hot_Copper_Frog]

Originally Posted by nrgy_blast

5) I'm not here for a concert or to see celebrities. I'm here for a robotics competition. Please remember this in the future.

You may not be, but you have to understand that in the spirit of broadening the audience of FIRST and "ramping up" the cool factor of the Championship event, it's not a bad idea. While it wasn't executed in the best way possible, I can see the vision that FIRST is aiming for, and I think it has merit.

Many people attend championships for reasons other than robots. The high level of energy. The intense and grand atmosphere. The feeling that you are a part of something greater than yourself. Meeting people from all over the world. And yes, seeing and possibly meeting some big name individuals.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with that. Please remember this in the future.