Being Proactive About Paper Airplanes on Einstein

[Lil' Lavery]

Do it all at once, as an organized event. When the speaker asks, do it then, and not again. Have fun with it during that set downtime, and get it out of the system.

[Matt_Boehm_329]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Do it all at once, as an organized event. When the speaker asks, do it then, and not again. Have fun with it during that set downtime, and get it out of the system.

This is an idea I like.

[WynS]

I'm not sure I've seen this mentioned but as someone who has been hit in the head repeatably by paper airplanes that were inexpertly made and thrown, I'm not a big fan.

[PayneTrain]

We're only flying paper airplanes because Libby likes them so much.

[Andy A.]

It bears looking for the root cause here; people are bored, paper airplanes are fun and the dome offers a pretty awesome place to fly them.

I'd propose a formal (either FIRST or team organized) paper airplane contest. Each team gets the same paper/whatever, launches from the same place and graded on whatever criteria seems appropriate. Let people get it out of their system in a positive and easier to control manner.

[Taylor]

How about create a schedule that doesn't have 30 minutes between matches?

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by Taylor

How about create a schedule that doesn't have 30 minutes between matches?

This. So much.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Taylor

How about create a schedule that doesn't have 30 minutes between matches?

Please! Yes.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

We're only flying paper airplanes because Libby likes them so much.

Dangit, Wil, I'd been avoiding this thread.

I'm honestly tired of being the broken record on this one.
It's disrespectful. Just don't do it.
Why this isn't common sense is absolutely mind-boggling to me.

Who cares what a random speaker says, Good Guy Frank himself has said in a blog to stop throwing paper airplanes. FIRST should absolutely put out wording (team update, maybe?) that states clearly states a position against it, and continue to make announcements throughout the event.

If the only possible way the kids on your team can have fun at World Championships is by throwing airplanes, you might want to reconsider bringing those students on the trip at all. It's similar to the idea of students who paid all the money for a trip, just to play games on their phones in the stands ... what's your end goal here? On 1923 we ban a lot of things that are disrespectful to the event on our team, with wording similar to Mike Corsetto's above. Paper airplanes are one of them, along with things like headphone use & gaming in the stands.

Yes, there are WAY-too-long breaks between matches. FIRST should work on their end to make them smaller, and fill those breaks with valuable content (team history & match review by knowledgeable commentators, maybe? I know I'm shooting for the stars here...) - but just because FIRST ends up creating a break doesn't mean we get to fill it with awful behavior.

What other ways can we, as a community, think of that a team in the stands could do on their own to fill the time between Einstein matches?

I'll start: Our team, when we're watching elims matches with long breaks, tends to 'bet on' & discuss the upcoming match. Oh yeah, I'll bet it's Red, did you see Team XYZ's high shot now? Or what about something like an "Einstein Bingo" card that your team can play against each other in the stands? A trivia game about your team? I Spy: FIRST event edition?

Doesn't have to be something huge or intense. Just anything that's not littering...

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Libby K

What other ways can we, as a community, think of that a team in the stands could do on their own to fill the time between Einstein matches?


Doesn't have to be something huge or intense. Just anything that's not littering...

Well, let's preface this by kinda throwing the "Doesn't have to be something huge or intense" part out the window - what about expanding on the FIRST Einstein show that was put on last year into a Preview/Season Recap show?
One of my favorite parts of the season is listening to team history recaps during Finals from MCs like Karthik (His recap during GTRE 2012 was phenominal) and Dave Verbrugge (The one that comes to mind was his recap during 2010 Einstein).

So, expanding on this, once the first or second division gets out of division eliminations, over on the official Einstein screen FIRST could start a preshow in somewhat of the same vein as your conventional sports preshow. It could cover everything from the history of the Einstein teams at Champs to significant moments during the season (First capture, first hang, first double hang, first Triple hang, etc.) and cover things like event with best breaching percentage, highest capture rate, etc. [1] to a panel of "experts" predicting general strategies that are expected to be seen on Einstein - things like expected offense/defense ratio, types of defense, over/unders on scores from different points in the match, etc.

It's information that I, and at least a decent amount of people on Chief, seem to love to hear about. It'd be something that would be mildly interesting, but not something that would be unfortunate to miss since your division is still playing. There's plenty of people with much better qualifications to host this show (FUN, RoboZone, GameSense, etc.) but would be a position I'd love to volunteer for / shoot for in the future.

[1] - May require some research on the fly. I suppose access to TBA would be helpful.

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Libby K

<SNIP>
Who cares what a random speaker says, Good Guy Frank himself has said in a blog to stop throwing paper airplanes. FIRST should absolutely put out wording (team update, maybe?) that states clearly states a position against it, and continue to make announcements throughout the event.
<SNIP>

I think, yes, put out an update but if FIRST really want to kill this, I think they need to bring out the big guns.

Have Dean and/or Woodie come out and say something like, "Listen. We are serious. We've put this in the Manual (via an update but still it's in the rules). We want this to stop. If you won't do this out of respect for the rules, then I am asking you to do it out of respect for me. Please. Don't do this. If you see others doing it, remind them of the norms of this community. Thanks."

I think the FIRST community will surprise you with how fast we'd get this under control, but it will take more than a blog post I think.

Dr. Joe J.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I think, yes, put out an update but if FIRST really want to kill this, I think they need to bring out the big guns.

Have Dean and/or Woodie come out and say something like, "Listen. We are serious. We've put this in the Manual (via an update but still it's in the rules). We want this to stop. If you won't do this out of respect for the rules, then I am asking you to do it out of respect for me. Please. Don't do this. If you see others doing it, remind them of the norms of this community. Thanks."

I think the FIRST community will surprise you with how fast we'd get this under control, but it will take more than a blog post I think.

Dr. Joe J.

Absolutely agree! I think the confusion source is that there's mixed messages coming from above, so some folks think it's OK.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Libby K

What other ways can we, as a community, think of that a team in the stands could do on their own to fill the time between Einstein matches?

This is the part that I don't understand. You mean to tell me that a generation of kids that use their phones to occupy their time to fill every down second (and a lot of seconds that they should definitely not be on their phones) all of the sudden decide that something is more interesting than their phones? Seriously, everyone saying that they need to throw airplanes to keep from being bored, where is that creativity the other 364 days of the year?

In other words, stop throwing airplanes and play on your $%^$ phones - here's the one chance that we would rather you do that.

Ok, I'm done being an old cranky guy.

[Joe Johnson]

One more point about having Dean and/or Woodie ask the audience to stop, it empowers cranky old folk like myself to tell young whippersnappers to knock it off. If we know we are standing with Dean/Woodie, then we can confidently (and nicely, at least at first) ask people around us we see folding planes to stop.

Dr. Joe J.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Libby K

What other ways can we, as a community, think of that a team in the stands could do on their own to fill the time between Einstein matches?

I propose a "Waiting for Einstein" bingo app... though none of the boxes should be "someone throwing a paper airplane".