2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Carolyn_Grace]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

One of the people in charge of Show Ready Events happens to be from our town, sponsors us, and knows a great deal about the program. Try putting on an event for 40,000 people, it's not easy.

It's definitely not. I'm not proposing getting rid of Show Ready. Perhaps I need to reword my statement in order for people to understand it better:

Managing an event for over 40,000 people is extremely difficult on every level. In order to make it more efficient, every important role should be doubled up to include a production person and a knowledgeable robotics person. This would help Show Ready create a more polished event that ensures a more positive team experience.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

One of the people in charge of Show Ready Events happens to be from our town, sponsors us, and knows a great deal about the program. Try putting on an event for 40,000 people, it's not easy.

Jay, I think you happened on exactly the reason I disagreed so strongly to the wording of the statement. Sandy is a wonderful lady and a great supporter of FIRST. I have no doubt she would do anything possible to make an event go off as smoothly as possible.

[Carolyn_Grace]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Jay, I think you happened on exactly the reason I disagreed so strongly to the wording of the statement. Sandy is a wonderful lady and a great supporter of FIRST. I have no doubt she would do anything possible to make an event go off as smoothly as possible.

Every single Show Ready person I have met is a wonderful individual and great supporter of the program. They clearly love their jobs and the opportunity they have. I greatly enjoy talking to them, and even hanging out with them post-event.

None of that means that the end result, especially at the World Championship, is exempt from scrutiny.

As I said before: why is it that many events can be managed without Show Ready and have a better production overall? What are they doing to have success?

This thread is about lessons learned from the negative side. I do not believe the Show Ready experience at Champs was as great as it should have been this year. I believe something needs to be adapted in order to improve the current system that they use. I offered a possible solution.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

Every single Show Ready person I have met is a wonderful individual and great supporter of the program. They clearly love their jobs and the opportunity they have. I greatly enjoy talking to them, and even hanging out with them post-event.

None of that means that the end result, especially at the World Championship, is exempt from scrutiny.

As I said before: why is it that many events can be managed without Show Ready and have a better production overall? What are they doing to have success?

This thread is about lessons learned from the negative side. I do not believe the Show Ready experience at Champs was as great as it should have been this year. I believe something needs to be adapted in order to improve the current system that they use. I offered a possible solution.

I'd be curious which portions you felt were issues caused by SRE. The two big issues I witnessed were the various delays of things starting (Opening Ceremonies and Einstein, I skipped out for Closing because I needed to eat something that provided nutritional value to me) and the mess that was divisional finalist/winner medals.

In the second case, the SRE guy on Hopper was simply understaffed. He knew exactly what needed to happen but had nobody to help facilitate that. (It's how I ended up doing crowd control wearing a 125 shirt, so if you were on Hopper and got yelled at by some random person from 125, sorry. Was just trying to follow the instructions he'd given me, it was chaos) This wasn't a function of not understanding what it took to run an FRC event, it was just a lack of people. I'd chalk it up to growing pains.

The delays, idk what caused them.

Admittedly, I wasn't in the dome all that much due to my job having me over in the pits most of the time. So, I'm actually curious.

[Carolyn_Grace]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I'd be curious which portions you felt were issues caused by SRE. The two big issues I witnessed were the various delays of things starting (Opening Ceremonies and Einstein, I skipped out for Closing because I needed to eat something that provided nutritional value to me) and the mess that was divisional finalist/winner medals.

The delays, idk what caused them.

My understanding is that SRE is in charge of scripting all of those ceremonies and handling the majority of the production. That's what they're paid to do and manage.

[mklinker]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I'd be curious which portions you felt were issues caused by SRE. The two big issues I witnessed were the various delays of things starting (Opening Ceremonies and Einstein, I skipped out for Closing because I needed to eat something that provided nutritional value to me) and the mess that was divisional finalist/winner medals.

The delays, idk what caused them.

Carolyn was on the field before, during, and after the transition from Telsa to Einstein as was I. I can't tell you who was in charge (FIRST, Show Ready, or both) but that transition was a train wreck! The transition was poorly planned an executed with a number of different people in charge and little to no communication. There is very clearly room for improvement.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

My understanding is that SRE is in charge of scripting all of those ceremonies and handling the majority of the production. That's what they're paid to do and manage.

I can tell you that, at the District level, that is mostly correct. Except for the scripts proceeding the judge's scripts (The "blah blah blah award celebrates blah blah blah"), those are provided by HQ to the Judge Advisor. The JA then fills in the scripts the judges write about the winners. These are then supposed to be proofed by the JA and the production company. The slides are also put together either by the JA or the production company. To my knowledge, these templates are all provided by HQ.

The awards are put together by awards assistants who are also the folks who handle making sure they go to the judges. (Nit pick, the Awards Assistant during opening ceremonies was wearing khakis and it was incredibly distracting, that's a black shirt black pants job at that event)

Otherwise, you're right, the production company is generally responsible for making sure the AV is functional, the cameras are pointed right, and the event goes off on time. I'd be interested in finding out what caused the delays, mostly on Einstein.


(Edit: Carolyn, I'm pretty confident you know all of this, I mostly typed it up for folks who haven't been on the other side of the event. There's a ton that has to come together to make a ceremony go off. And there ARE quite a few different groups that each have distinct leadership.)

[DavidGitz]

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.

There was actually More deliberation time required this year, due to the merging of the sub-division fields. I judged on Tesla. We followed the normal process, and eventually got down to a team pick for each award, just like any other Regional. Then, we did a merge, which consisted of deliberating for each award the team from each field should get. This took approx. 1.5 hours for our 2 fields, Archimedes and Tesla, and probably similar timing for other divisions.

I think the main reason why they decided to do the merge was to make the award ceremony less chaotic, though I could be wrong.

[Metonym]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

My understanding is that SRE is in charge of scripting all of those ceremonies and handling the majority of the production. That's what they're paid to do and manage.

I was lucky enough to have field side access the entire event and since no PNW teams made it to the carpet of Einstein (492), I just wrote some notes covering problems in the production during Einstein.

1. Camera ops don't understand where the action is.
2. FMS pops in and out
3. Interviewer and interviewee didn't feel comfortable. Should be dropped.
4. Overhead shot was terrible, should have done an angle shot.
5. Spectators want to see the robots not the kids, however reaction shots are acceptable.
6. Some shots were just grainy to the point that it felt like 2005. My phone can stream better footage.


These are just a few problems I had with the production. There were definitely more problems, but I ended up dozing off too much to remember.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

There was actually More deliberation time required this year, due to the merging of the sub-division fields. I judged on Tesla. We followed the normal process, and eventually got down to a team pick for each award, just like any other Regional. Then, we did a merge, which consisted of deliberating for each award the team from each field should get. This took approx. 1.5 hours for our 2 fields, Archimedes and Tesla, and probably similar timing for other divisions.

I think the main reason why they decided to do the merge was to make the award ceremony less chaotic, though I could be wrong.

I feel like this merging was really under-publicized. Most of the teams I talked to didn't know that was happening. I'm sure we all just missed some blog post or something but I feel like it could have been better communicated.

[Carolyn_Grace]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

(Edit: Carolyn, I'm pretty confident you know all of this, I mostly typed it up for folks who haven't been on the other side of the event. There's a ton that has to come together to make a ceremony go off. And there ARE quite a few different groups that each have distinct leadership.)

Yes, I do. Thank you for acknowledging that.

What you're saying does not go against my point:
There is a ton that has to come together. There are quite a few different groups with distinct leadership. They need to work better together. They need to communicate better. It needs to be fixed. That's my point.

Side note:
I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to help manage one of the Einstein fields. It was a fantastic experience. I already sent my feedback to some people in charge, and received a great email in return from one. I do believe they're open for improvements on an already mostly successful system, and that's all I want.

I said it in a tweet yesterday: Even success needs iteration in order to be more successful in the future.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

Yes, I do. Thank you for acknowledging that.

What you're saying does not go against my point:
There is a ton that has to come together. There are quite a few different groups with distinct leadership. They need to work better together. They need to communicate better. It needs to be fixed. That's my point.

Side note:
I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to help manage one of the Einstein fields. It was a fantastic experience. I already sent my feedback to some people in charge, and received a great email in return from one. I do believe they're open for improvements on an already mostly successful system, and that's all I want.

I said it in a tweet yesterday: Even success needs iteration in order to be more successful in the future.

I think we are in violent agreement. (seems to be a recurring theme for us) I just wanted to make sure it wasn't just a jab at SRE alone. I agree that better communication would make for a better event for everyone.

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

I'm going to be pretty blunt here:

All Show Ready, A/V, or any production staff should always be physically paired with a knowledgeable FIRST person.

Carolyn..you are totally correct. I will give an example.
We had to come out on the field to make sure we could connect on Thursday morning. We were on Newton. We had some time... I spoke with the camera people...They had no clue what the game was about or what was going to happen.

I happily went over the game with them and suggested some areas of special interest that they might want to look for (ie coopertition area during quals, the recycling cans at the beginning, the human loading areas... the landfill... the scoring positions... I tried to help them see how the action would evolve on the field so they could understand what people might want to see.

I don't know if this ended up with a better product for Newton but they were hungry to find out what they needed to do. It seemed that no one had even gone over the game with them.

I checked back with them during quals and tried to see if they had any questions.

Life behind a camera for all of those hours can be pretty boring... especially when they have no one giving them any critique of how they are doing things. They can't even see what they are producing because someone else must be doing the production (camera switching,... etc)

At the end I went back, thanked them for their work and asked them if they had a good time and they smiled and said yes. I may have been one of very few that ever even talked to them during the entire time. I hope that wasn't true....

Putting a knowledgeable FIRST person with them who could assess the shots and the way thing were handled could have really made the production better. The little help I could provide might have been something but putting someone with a good idea of what people want to see is vital.

One of the reasons our PNW video crews put out a good product is that they are all team affiliated... many are students.... they know what THEY want to see... and they go after it.

I think all of the good video production that is going on is due in great part to the people doing it and their knowledge of the game and what those watching want and need to see.

Yes the equipment is important...but the people operating the equipment are more important. My hat goes off to all of the PNW video staff for the entire year and what they accomplished. I am sure the other video crews from around the rest of FIRST can say the same thing....

thanks for bringing this up Carolyn

[MasterMentor]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

As I said before: why is it that many events can be managed without Show Ready and have a better production overall? What are they doing to have success?

I'm curious as to what specifically are your metrics for success?

[MasterMentor]

Originally Posted by Eugene Fang

From what I gather, sending scores to FIRST's servers required a full database upload from FMS, which was slow due to the limited bandwidth. A match score should only be a few KB. The problem seems to be that FIRST hacked the API to use the data from the full database dump instead of implementing a lower overhead solution.

The way it was explained to me by one of the FIRST guys, what's uploaded is a difference between what's already in the "cloud" and what's on the scoring computer, based on tracking information stored on the scoring computer. In most cases the first upload can be "involved", but every subsequent upload is quite small.