Registration 2016

[Lil' Lavery]

What's that bump that always occurs around the 3rd week of October? 2nd event registration causing more initial registrations? FiM teams getting enrolled? Grant approvals?

[Mark McLeod]

I ran the numbers but didn't have time for a graph. I'm traveling this weekend, so I won't be able to post the graph until Sunday.

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

What's that bump that always occurs around the 3rd week of October? 2nd event registration causing more initial registrations? FiM teams getting enrolled? Grant approvals?

FiM probably contributes to the bump. I'm currently showing 131 FiM teams not registered for their home event. I'm not sure what portion of those are passing on the home event vs. what portion are just slow to register because I didn't get numbers from last year, but I expect many are in the former category and will suddently show up on Thursday.

[Mark McLeod]

Here's another year-to-year comparison of registration numbers by area.
This at the time of the graph in my previous post, so they can be compared.

I'll go review just where the bump came from in previous years, but I think it's just the surge after the weekend, as the week starts and teams start registering during normal business hours. The phenomena is more pronounced early in registration and the effect gradually lessens as time goes by and the registration graph levels out.
In the graphs we can see weekend plateaus and weekday climbs. It's more obvious when the graph is zoomed in.

[Ed Law]

New Michigan district event on FIRST website. It is in Week 2. You would never guess where it is. It is a brilliant idea.

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

New Michigan district event on FIRST website. It is in Week 2. You would never guess where it is. It is a brilliant idea.

I was going to say that the Bloomfield Hills event that had been posted a couple weeks back was happening. Kettering University Event #2 is not what I expected.

[Ed Law]

Originally Posted by Christopher149

I was going to say that the Bloomfield Hills event that had been posted a couple weeks back was happening. Kettering University Event #2 is not what I expected.

If it was at my own school building, first of all I would know, why would I say it was a brilliant idea. Kettering 2 is a brilliant idea because they only have to set up the field once, leave it there for the next weekend and take it down once. It saves so much volunteer time. Imagine finding a place that you can have a district competition every week for 6 weeks. That would be something.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

Imagine finding a place that you can have a district competition every week for 6 weeks. That would be something.

Taking it a step further, have the field available to teams for unbagging windows during the week or on weekends when there is no official event.

This is a luxury enjoyed by every other high school sport.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

New Michigan district event on FIRST website. It is in Week 2. You would never guess where it is. It is a brilliant idea.

Is this the first time that the same venue is hosting two official competitions, during different weekends?

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Is this the first time that the same venue is hosting two official competitions, during different weekends?

Did Georgia have a regional at the World Congress Center when CMP was in Atlanta? Edit: looks like probably not.

[The_ShamWOW88]

Imagine having a number of locations depending on the district that host events each week and the district championship as normal...so teams could choose to attend 2 - 3 events at one location.

It could allow for those teams to have access to the field in between events but I can't imagine the logistics needed for this....

[Mark McLeod]

2nd District registration gave us a bit of a bump at noon today.

We're at 2448 teams registered.

[Drakxii]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

New Michigan district event on FIRST website. It is in Week 2. You would never guess where it is. It is a brilliant idea.

Seems like a terrible idea to me. Hope they only did it because there wasn't any options.

One of the goals of Michigan Districts stated as "This allows teams to play close to home and gives families, schools, local government, businesses and media easy access to local FIRST Competitions." By putting two events in the same place one group of teams get to do this twice while other groups of teams are waiting for their chance to do this.

Additionally I don't believe you will see the benefit one just field setup under a model like this, since I doubt many schools will just let teams leave a set up FRC field in their gym for a whole week. Gym classes, clubs, and other sports will still need to utilize that gym.

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

Seems like a terrible idea to me. Hope they only did it because there wasn't any options.

One of the goals of Michigan Districts stated as "This allows teams to play close to home and gives families, schools, local government, businesses and media easy access to local FIRST Competitions." By putting two events in the same place one group of teams get to do this twice while other groups of teams are waiting for their chance to do this.

Additionally I don't believe you will see the benefit one just field setup under a model like this, since I doubt many schools will just let teams leave a set up FRC field in their gym for a whole week. Gym classes, clubs, and other sports will still need to utilize that gym.

It's not so bad. There were 39 teams assigned as "home" for the original week 1 Kettering event, so having two events allows for all of the local teams to play at their local event while also allowing for visiting teams to come and mix it up a bit.

Also, Kettering is a University and they do actually have a field set up that teams can visit. I don't entirely know the details of how a team would go about visiting but the university is pretty FRC-friendly in general. There's a bunch of KU students on this forum that may be able to address that concern more thoroughly.

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Allison K

It's not so bad. There were 39 teams assigned as "home" for the original week 1 Kettering event, so having two events allows for all of the local teams to play at their local event while also allowing for visiting teams to come and mix it up a bit.

Also, Kettering is a University and they do actually have a field set up that teams can visit. I don't entirely know the details of how a team would go about visiting but the university is pretty FRC-friendly in general. There's a bunch of KU students on this forum that may be able to address that concern more thoroughly.

QFT on both points. If you figure you should have 1 district event per cluster of 20 teams, two events in Flint absolutely makes sense. Also, Kettering is the only college I can think of that would even possibly do this. They're FRC-crazy and my understanding is they will be leaving the field up for the whole week. That said, you're right that it's unlikely this becomes common because only the rare place would be willing to leave a field for a whole week.