Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative

[Rob3653]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

South Florida Regional:
This event should have been my favorite, a regional 7 minutes from my house, get to sleep in my bed, see my dog, it should have been my favorite, it turned out to be my least enjoyable event of the season. The venue had little to little to no food or drink options, heck Thursday at 1:00 I went to get a bottle of water and the concession was already closed. The parking was at the back of the venue then had to walk all the way around to the front, I get the idea was to attract foot traffic but any local would tell you that you get 0 foot traffic in front of the convention center and actually get more near the back. A lot of the volunteers were rude, I have never said that about a FIRST event but here it was true, volunteers appeared more concerned with getting home then letting teams enjoy themselves. Not all volunteers were like this but enough that is warrants mention. After Fridays award ceremony when they announced pits closed in 5 minutes most teams filed out to leave which blocked off the entrance to the pits, when I tried to walk in to put away the things my team uses in the stands I was told the pits were closed and I would not be allowed entry, despite seeing teams still working, I had a collapsible table, giant green wooden 1, 7, 9, and a box filled with stuffed alligators, I clearly am not going back there to work and actually had to have a friendly safety adviser escort me to my pit to put the stuff away. I have never been more embarrassed to be a Florida team then when interacting with the volunteers and realizing that to many of the out of state and international teams attending this is what they think most people involved in Florida FIRST are like and frankly that is unacceptable behavior, volunteers are as much, if not more, representatives of FIRST and especially the event then the teams are and should be held to and act with a higher standard. Finally once again why did we not receive chairman's feedback forms? Seriously we attended 3 regionals this season and 2 did not give feedback forms, and the one that did was the earliest and had the most teams, so I see no excuse for the other two.

2016 SFL Regional was probably one of the worst experiences I have had in my 5 years of FRC. Some of the volunteer's at the event were quite rude. We would be pulling up to the field to lift the robot and bring it to the field, and we would be yelled at for taking more than 3 seconds. Also, the queuing area was ridiculous, there was no room to move around; I am amazed at how they fit 18 robots in what seemed like a 10x10 box. The Ref'ing at both for Orlando and SFL leave a lot to be desired for, from what I saw there seemed to be a lot of missed fouls.