FIRST Chesapeake Districts

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by TDav540

Yeah, I feel for all the eastern VA teams. It's not a great draw. However, most of the teams competing for that week 1 event will be the teams that attend the week 3 events. So at pure randomness each team has ~35-40% chance of getting that event (because there are some teams that are local to Haymarket and will choose this one during 1st event registration), and it's higher if you're on the ball.

I imagine most teams that want a week 1/3 event list and don't dawdle with registration will be able to get what they want.

It's the problem of the 2 week 3 events trying to get into the 1 week 1 event. You'll have the home teams from the 2 week 3 events along with the home teams from the week 1 event all trying to get into the same 40 slots. It might not be an issue, but I hope the committee keeps this in mind when handing out the set of reserved registration slots for that week 1 event.

[Alex2614]

Will be interesting to see how our friends in western Maryland fare with this. Great news, though!

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmneE_KUYf0

My takeaways:
1. Logo feed back has been given to the company that made the logo, but in general the crappy logo is staying the crappy logo.
2. "Host Team" = sells concessions.
3. Most of this info could have been done in an email.
4. The teams in our district have no idea how districts work.
5. Pipe and drape.

glad I didn't clear my schedule for the "meetings." I watched it on delay. I am not impressed.

[PayneTrain]

Uhh, just dropping a line on here tonight before I forget.

I have not heard any news of Chesapeake blocking off hotel rooms for any event and a cursory look through the email blasts via Ctrl+F search didn't yield this nugget of news, but if you are attending the SWVA district, might want to book your rooms last week. If that's not possible, I'd try to do it NOW.

The Blacksburg/Christiansburg area does hold a couple significant events year round. The notorious ones (VT Football and Men's BBall) will not impact our competition in terms of any logistics. However, my job involves working with Virginia Swimming and various other swim agencies to host their events and I know that the Age Group Championships for the state will be at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center the same weekend. As is the case for our event, a vast majority of participants will be doing team travel into the area as there are very few (read: 1) major local swim clubs. However, most VA swim clubs are what I would call monolithic in nature and very sophisticated operations. They probably have entire hotel floors booked up and meals already tightly planned out.

If you are going to this event and you don't want to bus your kids in from Salem or something crazy, there is no time like the present to take care of this.

I don't know if this is information the entirety of FC is aware of or has published but at the very least an extra reminder to whoever sees this won't hurt.

[fnsnet]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Uhh, just dropping a line on here tonight before I forget.

I have not heard any news of Chesapeake blocking off hotel rooms for any event and a cursory look through the email blasts via Ctrl+F search didn't yield this nugget of news, but if you are attending the SWVA district, might want to book your rooms last week. If that's not possible, I'd try to do it NOW.

The Blacksburg/Christiansburg area does hold a couple significant events year round. The notorious ones (VT Football and Men's BBall) will not impact our competition in terms of any logistics. However, my job involves working with Virginia Swimming and various other swim agencies to host their events and I know that the Age Group Championships for the state will be at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center the same weekend. As is the case for our event, a vast majority of participants will be doing team travel into the area as there are very few (read: 1) major local swim clubs. However, most VA swim clubs are what I would call monolithic in nature and very sophisticated operations. They probably have entire hotel floors booked up and meals already tightly planned out.

If you are going to this event and you don't want to bus your kids in from Salem or something crazy, there is no time like the present to take care of this.

I don't know if this is information the entirety of FC is aware of or has published but at the very least an extra reminder to whoever sees this won't hurt.

If others aren't already, they are now.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by fnsnet

If others aren't already, they are now.

Yeah, thanks. I'm concerned about the teams who aren't super plugged in to stuff like this. Some of the larger FRC teams traveling (and definitely the swim teams) have the infrastructure to handle working from a hotel further away than the ideal, but the <10 student, <3 adult teams are ones I worry about.

[wilsonmw04]

Thanks for the heads-up, Will. We have secured our block of rooms. I wonder why this information had to come from you instead on VAFIRST.

[JesseK]

Wilson I dunno why there is so much silence from VA FIRST. I was told they wanted to take the lead on NCRA this year but we're almost half way through Fall semester and haven't heard anything, and NCRA is meant to be a place for teams to be able to have 1-on-1 talks with each other when they want them. Makes me want to send something anyways (though that'd be against the wishes of my team...). VA FIRST would probably say 'there's a newsletter', but some of the news breaks on CD or FIRST (emails) weeks before the newsletter - so the newsletter is 50% time late and often contains nothing of actionable value.

I will say that the planning committee meeting minutes are pretty detailed and show they're putting forethought into plenty of things. However, room blocking is not one of the things in the minutes. So it's worth it to send an email directly to FIRST.

Hopefully VA FIRST has their stakeholders outlined and in that outline 'teams' isn't represented by some nebulous insignificant block in a corner of the page. Teams have gone to plenty of events before, and have lots of experience in what makes a great experience versus mediocre experience. We also understand what sponsors we're most likely to engage with post-event and which ones we say 'hello' to and move on. I hope they engage more teams as part of this process moving forward.

[PayneTrain]

Got an email today asking to display gracious professionalism by shifting our registration to Hampton Roads or a Maryland event. Is this happening for anyone else for other events or in other districts?

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Got an email today asking to display gracious professionalism by shifting our registration to Hampton Roads or a Maryland event. Is this happening for anyone else for other events or in other districts?

whaa?? why?

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

whaa?? why?

"Presently, there are more teams on the waitlist than spots available and there is still the possibility of late registering rookie teams."

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

"Presently, there are more teams on the waitlist than spots available and there is still the possibility of late registering rookie teams."

for what event? So, someone messed up and they want you to bail them out. nice.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

for what event? So, someone messed up and they want you to bail them out. nice.

Oh, it's for the Doswell event, that should have been more clear.

I was curious if other veterans had gotten the email besides me, I'm the alt for 422.

[wilsonmw04]

Nope. We haven't received anything. Was it your 1st or 2nd event?

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Nope. We haven't received anything. Was it your 1st or 2nd event?

First event. I'd be surprised if we were not the first or second team to register.

Not really keen on trying to get pushed out of our home event. We already are increasing travel this year.