Registration 2016

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Fun fact about 2016 FiM teams:
over half of all FiM FRC teams have existed less than 4 years. Yep, more than 50% of current FiM did not exist when this year's seniors were freshmen (currently 185+).

And I thought there were a lot of teams when I left...

[Mark McLeod]

For comparison, for all of FRC ~40% of teams are less than 4 years old.

[logank013]

What if registration was more like a draft? This would probably never happen but, it does have some advantages. Please note that the event setting in my analogy aren't real. They just work for the analogy. Say Team A is in KY and Team B is in WV. Team A signed up for their first event in OH during week 2 and Team B signed up for their first event in NC in week 4. Due to the slowness of both teams, the top events on their "Second Event" list are filled up. Team A Notices a not filled event in week 2 in MO but they can't go to 2 events in the same week. Team B notices a not filled event in week 4 that is in PA but they can't go to 2 events in the same week either. So Team A calls up Team be and they decide they want to trade the first event they've signed up for. So team A takes Team B's event in week 4 in NC and signs up for the event they could do in week 2 in MO. Team B takes Team A's event in week 2 in OH and signs up for the other event in week 4 that they could attend. Make Sense?

[Taylor]

If you want to play that shell game with 3,000 teams, go for it.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Taylor

If you want to play that shell game with 3,000 teams, go for it.

Aye. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Regional Directors in question were able to work something out, BUT it'd probably be an "interesting" discussion to put it mildly.

[Nemo]

"Shell game" might not be a fun method, but it's definitely realistic to have teams submit a ranked list of picks for each round and let an algorithm sort most of them out. Using geographical distances and team preference rankings, a cleverly designed algorithm could take care of most of the placements in each round, and the regional directors could use human judgment to sort out the rest just like they do now.

[orangemoore]

Do we have a chance at hitting 3000 teams this year?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Nemo

"Shell game" might not be a fun method, but it's definitely realistic to have teams submit a ranked list of picks for each round and let an algorithm sort most of them out. Using geographical distances and team preference rankings, a cleverly designed algorithm could take care of most of the placements in each round, and the regional directors could use human judgment to sort out the rest just like they do now.

I was thinking of something similar, but along the lines of all teams declaring a home regional (or having it assigned by geography or past regional attendance history, if no declaration was made), and their first event would be their home regional unless they specifically opted to NOT register for their home event in the first round--and the assignments for that could be done just prior to registration opening, just so everybody--particularly RDs--could see what would fill up. When one of the biggest regionals in FRC is the third event to fill by a matter of minutes, something needs to happen...

And then for second round, open registration for any regional. But if a team landed on the waitlist for their designated home regional, then that would be a trigger to the RD in question to contact the team/move them up the waitlist/otherwise pull strings.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

Do we have a chance at hitting 3000 teams this year?

Yes. As of when I'm typing this, there are 2957 teams. MI still has 22 pre-rookie teams in queue according to this. That leaves the rest of the world to cover only 21 teams. Seems manageable.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Yes. As of when I'm typing this, there are 2957 teams. MI still has 22 pre-rookie teams in queue according to this. That leaves the rest of the world to cover only 21 teams. Seems manageable.

Once again, Michigan doing all the heavy lifting in the USA. Way to go guys, you make FIRST awesome.

-Mike

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Yes. As of when I'm typing this, there are 2957 teams. MI still has 22 pre-rookie teams in queue according to this. That leaves the rest of the world to cover only 21 teams. Seems manageable.

Pretty sure Minnesota has that covered, and then some.

[Kingland093]

Originally Posted by DareDad

Pretty sure Minnesota has that covered, and then some.

Do we still have a lot of teams that haven't signed up yet? All of our events are on waitlist

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by Kingland093

Do we still have a lot of teams that haven't signed up yet? All of our events are on waitlist

Sure looks that way. http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-o...eam%20N umber

Now, if all those teams actually register for an event is an open question, but I count 26 new teams in MN that have yet to register.

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by DareDad

Sure looks that way. http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-o...eam%20N umber

Now, if all those teams actually register for an event is an open question, but I count 26 new teams in MN that have yet to register.

The majority of those are 'ghost teams' I would only assume that the ones that already have a name will compete this year (if we're lucky). The rest are usually someone figuring out TIMS for the first time.

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by ehochstein

The majority of those are 'ghost teams' I would only assume that the ones that already have a name will compete this year (if we're lucky). The rest are usually someone figuring out TIMS for the first time.

There are 47 teams on that MN list that are not registered for an event, 26 of which have no number, 5 of which have a name and location listed. Add to those 5 a good chunk of the 8 teams from 2015 who don't have an event yet (all registered in TIMS for 2016), as well as some of the 13 other teams with no event (returners who didn't compete last year and have registered in TIMS for 2016), and that could fill out the ~20 teams needed to hit 3k. And that's just MN, I'm sure other regions will bring a lot to the table too. In all, there are almost 500 teams in US (plus more internationally I'm sure) who are registered on TIMS but have no event yet.

2960 teams now.