What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

[jweston]

I would greatly appreciate it if future playing fields are not nearly as expensive/time intensive to build as Stronghold's. Yeah, Stronghold is a really, really cool and beautiful game. And building a practice field is a fine challenge. But I don't think I'm alone in thinking that being able to build even a partial practice field from wood for this year was very difficult, even for some of the better resourced teams.

It felt like the flashiness and effort to build the field this year took some of the focus of the robot. It would be nice if the time and expense of a practice field received greater consideration when designing the game.

I'm expecting next year's field will be completely empty except for gaffer tape.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by jweston

I'm expecting next year's field will be completely empty except for gaffer tape.

Aerial Assist came pretty close: four box goals, a truss (which could be simulated with a net or even a beam of light), and high goals. Only the four box goals were on the field.

Edit: Also, the number of defenses makes doing demos a bit more involved. We've given up trying to set up a tower at demos; the pyramid would have been pretty rough to demo for Ultimate Ascent (we just shot Frisbees).

Edit2:

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

I would get rid of every song at any event that I can identify by looking at how people in the stands are dancing.

I'll have to disagree on that one.

[IronicDeadBird]

I would get rid of every song at any event that I can identify by looking at how people in the stands are dancing.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by jweston

I'm expecting next year's field will be completely empty except for gaffer tape.

Oh god, my poor robot. Only if we limit teams to 2 CIMs or limit travel between zones with rules cuz holy crap I don't wanna take cross field hits with 6 CIMs again.



Improve Team Exp?

Focus on the team experience. Every event needs to understand they are providing a service the teams are buying. This needs to be drilled into every volunteer.

There needs to be a process for removing consistently abusive volunteers.

Transparent and open processes and procedures. (Judging and Field side)

More, events, more often. I wanna see every Saturday in February, March, April, and May have robot events on them, multiple events, around the country. Even if it's just playing scrimmages. We can't just play 2 or 3 times a year. This is all about being the STEM equivalent of getting kids bouncing that basketball for hundreds of hours, we need to provide venues for it. We don't need showy venues, or fancy AV systems. We need the robot equivalent of pickup games. We need bot jams where they show up, find out the game, build a bot, and compete in a weekend. [1] We need portable fields that can be set up by a bunch of kids in an hour to play robots.

Stop focusing on growth. unpopular statement but - teams that don't move don't inspire. Let's focus less on "a team in every school" and more on building sustainable programs. Would a school start a Division 1 football program without a coach with some basic experience or knowledge? No. Why are we doing FRC teams that way?



Those last two really have to go together - don't start teams with people who have no experience with teams. But how do they get experience? By being at these events.

[1] Didn't CD used to do this with the EduBot stuff at the Ford Sweet Repeat? Or is my memory finally going.

[techhelpbb]

I think it would be worth investigating official practice facilities.
I mean people build gyms - and people build escape rooms - why not build robot gyms?

At this time my FIRST oriented Makerspace goals do not provide for a game field.
It's bad enough I am pouring a small retirement into tooling .

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by BigJ

Safety Award reform. Less theater, safety escorts, and taped up signs. More focus on actionable and smart suggestions and practices. I dislike having to entertain or deflect safety captains who want to interview a kid on my team who is usually busy, or having to have an extra person in the pit to be "just safety captain".

My answer builds on this. At competitions for the past couple years we have had to fight the influence of the "safety advisers" at events in order to keep our students focused on actually being safe. So many of the interactions we have with safety advisers make our students beleive that they are only concerned with safety theater and keeping up appearances.

For instance at our events you are given a slip of paper each night ranking you on your "pit safety" when you leave. We strive for a smiley-face versus a straight or frowny-face each time. At our most recent event we were given a straight-face so we asked the safety advisers to point out what we overlooked. They said that they didn't really know and that they didn't see anything unsafe. I then had to keep an ear out for our students grumbling "it doesn't matter if our pit is safe or not, they don't even look" and reinforce the importance of maintaining a safe work space.

Later that day we needed to hammer a difficult shaft back through a variety of bearings and rollers and the safety advisers determined that, because we needed to hit the end of the shaft with so much force, the repair was too dangerous and we needed to stop. Luckily we were able to get them to relent after explaining the details of the operation to them, but I hate the kind of message that this is sending to the students involved. So many of them are getting the impression that "we shouldn't take the safety advisers seriously, because they aren't advising us on real safety issues", an impression that we mentors have been fighting for years now.

My improvement to the FIRST experience would be de-emphasizing all the UL mandated safety theater and increase focus on seriously unsafe behaviors or rewarding intelligently safe policies.

[Road Rash]

Originally Posted by Monochron

[snip]

So in a nutshell, are you're basically saying that the safety advisors are treating safety as an audit of your systems, and overlooking actual safe practices taking place?

That's a shame if it's true as I just took a safety advisor type of role with my son's team. I'm more concerned about getting the kids to focus on working safely at all times, instead of them focusing on providing the correct answer.

I think we'll just have to come up with a set of simple safety procedures and train them on those procedures. I'll also train them to be able to point out our procedures to the safety advisors, just in case they are unable to comfortably answer a question for whatever reason. I just want them to make good, sound decisions while working as relaxed as we can possibly be at the moment.

[adpalonis19]

One of my contribution to FIRST was already mentioned. Expand the FLL programs and make that a larger event. FIRST is all about spreading STEM to young students and what a better place to start than with 4th and 5th graders. Remove the 1 QT restriction on teams. When I was involved in FLL, the competitions were the coolest thing ever. Nothing was better than watching something that my peers and I worked on for the past few months do exactly what we wanted it too!
Also, FIRST can do a little outreach on its own too. FIRST should contact local news stations to notify them of events. Do press releases for every event. There's always a local news station at my high school football and basketball games. Why not have the local news attend events for "The Sport of the Mind"? It could be argued that it should be up to the host team to do this, but I think FIRST can help with this whether it be the district organization that does this, or FIRST itself.

[Drakxii]

Create districts where there are regionals with 50+ teams.

Add bag time for all regional teams and start quals after lunch on the first day to give teams more matches.

Let regional teams complete in district events, stop letting district teams complete in regional events.

Upgrade the FMS system to a system that reduces the delay between matches, provides a better simulated setup for testing and isn't as affected by wifi/hotspots.

Provide better support for isolated 1 regional teams and less support for unstained rookie grants. The goal should be lower the cost to be competitive, not just lower the cost to play. Being a robot that barely moves and doesn't win 1 game or is just carried doesn't inspire anyone.

Make awards between final matches standard.

Divide FTC into middle school and high school divisions.

Actually celebrate FLL and FTC at their own worlds instead making them second fiddle to FRC.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

We need the robot equivalent of pickup games.

+1 DING DING DING DING DING

[George A.]

I would like to see a process to prevent district teams from competing in full regionals, as well as a system that allows cross district competition to count towards district standings.

My one gripe is that a team competing in a district can travel to a regional and win an award there and qualify for Championships. I'm not here to argue the merits for and against it, but it always left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth that a team A) can pay the same amount as tam B) and gets different competition because of where they are located.

Team A plays in a district event and as a result would get 2 district events (minimum of 12 Quals each) AND can go to a regional event.

Team B would get 2 regional events.

My issue is that Team A can make the semi finals at their districts, and win an award at each which is enough to qualify for District Championships where they then get another opportunity to qualify for the Championship. However, if Team B literally does the exact same thing then their season is over unless they miraculously get off the wait list.

But on top of that Team A can then go to a regional outside their district format and win a qualifying award to go to St. Louis. So either make is so that any team can compete anywhere, or that districts stay districts and regionals stay regionals.

To counteract the "teams like to play with teams from other areas" argument, I would allow districts to count for your standings no matter where you play. If a MAR team wants to compete in Michigan, or a PNW team wants to fly out to NE why shouldn't they?

At this point why not standardize the points gained from each district and allow them to collect the points towards their district standings? Have the first 2 districts count towards your standings at your "home championship" because everyone would be playing the same 2 events, and the same games.

[Taylor]

To improve the FIRST experience, I would improve the spectator (layperson) experience. Set up many displays all over the premises explaining the program, explaining the game, explaining the tournament structure. I would make "you are here" maps throughout the facility, highlighting key areas of interest (field(s), pits, restrooms, concessions, vendor/sponsor booths, etc).
As it was last year, the Championship event was not welcoming to the family-who-saw-it-on-a-bus-and-stopped-in crowd. At all.

[FarmerJohn]

FIRST needs to stop being so arrogant/selfish and admit that IFI has better lower and middle level robotics competitions, and an overall better competition structure. FRC tops all, but VRC is better than FTC in every way possible, and VIQ gives teams more out of their season than FLL does. And they both cost a whole lot less. If FIRST really cared about inspiring students they'd either try their best to actually make these lower and middle level competitions better or just tell students to do VIQ and VRC. If you're promoting an educational program whose alternative is better in every way, you're not in it for the students, you're in it for yourself.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

I'd like to see more FRC sponsor money go towards FRC Teams and STEM initiatives, and less money go towards ShowReadyProductions and Venue Fees.

I think re-allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars of sponsor money could make the FIRST experience better for many struggling and disenfranchised teams.

-Mike

Dangit.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Michael Corsetto again.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Taylor

As it was last year, the Championship event was not welcoming to the family-who-saw-it-on-a-bus-and-stopped-in crowd. At all.

Oh man, don't even get me started on the whole name badge fiasco last year. Is that a thing this year still? Because I really hope it isn't. What a waste of time.