Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Jardanium

One of the things I found particularly annoying is a couple of times I went to pit admin to ask a question I was told to "download the app".

I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly don't have the room or time to download an app I'll only be using for four days. Having the information available in other places would be very helpful next year.

I tried downloading the app at the venue and it failed multiple times. I gave up.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I'm sure there's a minimum subset of things we could all agree on. Like not harassing people and calling them cheaters, or not cat calling folks. Something along the lines of "try to treat people as if your grandmother were watching"

Wait.

Unfortunately the lack of decorum in this year's Presidential campaign seems to indicate we're headed the wrong way.

[Kevin Leonard]

I agree with much of what has been mentioned so far. One thing that they did right sometimes and not at other times at the championship is to give credit to the backup teams.

This has always bothered me (not just because 5254 was a backup this year), but when they announce the teams competing before every match in championship eliminations, they should also announce the backups for each alliance. Or at the very least before each new series.

[Kai Hefner]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

I thought the opposite and thought it was the best pit announcer I've ever heard. Usually they're so bland that after 3 days I don't listen anymore, but I found myself still listening even Friday afternoon. Never had a pit announcer make me laugh before - 'You! No Running! You in the Green Shirt! You're still going! Stop! I can still see you doing it!" Pure gold.

It's just the pointlessness, I'm trying to go over game strategy with alliance partners or review scouting data while someone is yelling over the intercom. I'm not saying that the pit announcer is bad, some of his comments should have been left off of the pit microphone and rather directed individually to the person who was running or whatever. My main point however, was that he got mad at everyone during the day and I don't believe that it was acceptable behaviour. Some kids genuinely don't know certain procedures but there is no reason to voice anger over the microphone, at least be calm before making general announcements.
I respect your opinion though, some of his comments were humorous but I believe that he got out of hand at one point.

[jweston]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

The tension over seat saving will continue until FIRST recognizes that scouting is an integral part of the competition and the scouts need the same level of treatment as pit and drive crews. No one would agree that if a team leaves a pit to go to a match that another team can move in and take it over. Being able to seat scouts together is critical to competitive success.

FIRST also encourages seat saving through its "spirit award" which is often given to the team with the largest coherent cheer squad. FIRST needs to decide which conflicting objective is more important.

I believe FIRST needs to come up with a sensible policy on seat allocation / saving. 148 should not have to arrive at the Champs venue at 4 am...

I wouldn't mind reserved seating for, say 6 scouts per team, at each competition. Our scouts spent the entirety of Day 1 at Hartford on their knees behind the judges (Hartford has a ton of room between judges seating and stands) because we got there only 1/2 hr early instead of an hour early and ended up seated in a location where we couldn't see the screen and could see very little of the field.

Regarding teams grabbing seats from drive team or pit crew... unfortunately we had an incident last year where our mentors and a few students got up to retrieve boxed lunches for the pit crew and strategy team who stayed in the stands. A few members of another team swooped in on their seats and spread out their stuff since there were more seats than of them. When our team returned with lunch and asked if they could move their stuff, they complained and yelled, "No saving seats!" Very weird. Thankfully this has been the exception.

[OZ_341]

The speed at which robot carts were moving down the aisles was very dangerous. I have never seen so many teams, moving so fast with nobody walking in front of the cart.

I saw 3 people get clipped HARD in just the short time I was down in the pits.
One girl went to the ground. I went up to the pit admin and a safety advisor on two different occasions and was told the classic, "We'll look into it".

On Galileo, we were in K22, leaving the pit and stepping out onto the cart superhighway at our intersection, was risky business.

There needs to be education, supervision, and ENFORCEMENT of cart safety. Its out of control. FIRST is simply getting too big I guess.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by OZ_341

The speed at which robot carts were moving down the aisles was very dangerous. I have never seen so many teams, moving so fast with nobody walking in front of the cart.

I saw 3 people get clipped HARD in just the short time I was down in the pits.
One girl went to the ground. I went up to the pit admin and a safety advisor on two different occasions and was told the classic, "We'll look into it".

On Galileo, we were in K22, leaving the pit and stepping out onto the cart superhighway at our intersection, was risky business.

There needs to be education, supervision, and ENFORCEMENT of cart safety. Its out of control. FIRST is simply getting too big I guess.

This is another thing that should be covered by a good harassment policy with actual enforcement. Enforcement seems to be mostly what's lacking. There needs to be staff dedicated to investigating these things and addressing them, instead of just pawning it off on the free time of safety advisors or something. I'm not saying immediately boot people for the first offense, but you need to convey the seriousness of the issue. Detain them and explain things and if they miss a match, it's better than if they break someone's ankle later.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by OZ_341

The speed at which robot carts were moving down the aisles was very dangerous. I have never seen so many teams, moving so fast with nobody walking in front of the cart.

I'll echo this. I happened to be having a conversation with Frank in one of the aisles when a cart sped giving very little time to move out of the way. Even Frank was concerned.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

* FIRST's website is worse now than it was a year ago this time.

QFT

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

* This was the last unified FIRST World Championship

For now.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by BoilerMentor

Our bumpers, at the lowest they could physically be, were rarely in contact with the defenses, if ever, event the rock wall. If they'd been 1/2" higher they would have never contacted the defenses period.

Yes, that's the point of having the zone begin as high as it does. Any lower and the bumpers would be bumping some of the defenses. You were free to design your robot with its bumpers another half inch higher if you wanted to make it impossible to contact the defenses.

Yes, if simple physical height from the arena floor is considered they interfere, but once you add the ramp at the edge of the defenses in conjunction with most competition proven drive trains and you don't need nearly the whole bumper zone.

It sounds like you're not aware that bumpers cannot occupy the entire bumper zone. They are only 5 inches tall, while the zone is 8 inches from bottom to top.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

Alliance selection is a process that is difficult to watch remotely (and keep track of the alliances). I would appreciate it if Scorekeepers would show the alliance match-ups more often than a blimp here or there. Similarly, it would be nice if the alliance brackets/match-ups were posted on screen for a while at the beginning and end of lunch (I understand that events like to run the sponsor reel during lunch).

I can't comment on the events you specifically attended, but I can speak for what I do as a scorekeeper at my events and what I've been trained to do.

First, a little background: the way FMS interfaces with AV is via a program called "Audience Display" that is the full screen and sound source for AV. Generally anything that's not a camera feed or a power point (to include the division awards at champs this year) is from our side, with the score bar chromakeyed out. We also have a "blank screen" option on our video switch, which we used to use at the end of matches (for suspense) but due to the "ref review" icon added this year, we were told specifically not to kill the score bar. The point here is that this year, in practice (if you go by what the official training says), any time you see nothing from FMS, it's AV that's doing that, not the scorekeeper.

Now, about your specific comments. The way I do it (which is how it's been done in Indiana as far as I can remember) is that I send the "alliance" screen to AV, until there is a captain who is having "difficulties" and needs a list (cue Jeopardy music), in which case I switch to the "available teams" screen. As soon as they make a selection, I swap back to the alliance screen. AV will often switch to a camera feed of the captain making the announcement; any breaks from the two aforementioned screens is usually AV's doing.

As for the Bracket screen, that was something that was actually mentioned during scorekeeper training this year; scorekeepers (and AV) were originally "suggested" and later supposed to do that. However, since it takes two to tango, AV has to put the bracket up. I can't speak for AV but I got the idea that at some point Blair (or somebody else in Manchester) sent an email to AV crews to among other things show the bracket at lunch.

That's the thing about scorekeeping and audience screens; it's a coordinated effort with AV. AV can only show what we send them. You can only see what AV shows you.

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

At one of our district events, FRC judges came in and asked our team, a few dozen times, in a few different ways, who built the robot. Before entering our pit, I happened to overhear that they were trying to figure out "who the mentor built robots are". The questions they asked my team were "gotcha" questions, all phrasing essentially the same question in different ways until the kids referred to a sponsor or mentor as having helped with some portion of the robot, at which point the judges would harp on that point. I believe these were the culture judges, not the technical judges, and they simply would not ask about anything other than different ways to phrase the question "did your mentors build and program the robot". We were not asked about our STEM outreach, our business plan, our team spirit, and ultimately I can't help but fear we were disqualified from those awards at that district because our kids' answers to the "mentor built" questions didn't pass the judges' standards.

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Which is a shame.

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

Those judges really missed out on the stunning, inspiring, and borderline intimidating amount of passion and knowledge your students have for the machines your team builds. It really blew me away, for what it's worth.

[Metonym]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

That's the thing about scorekeeping and audience screens; it's a coordinated effort with AV. AV can only show what we send them. You can only see what AV shows you.

Back in PNW, we sent an aux feed to the projectors that could be independently controlled from the program(livestream) feed, but would usually display the same view as the program feed. This allowed us to let the audience display be up on the projector all throughout alliance selection and awards making it easier on the people in the venue to see the changes to the alliances and awards, while also letting the people at home see everything that is happening. This is something I should have remembered for Indiana's events this past season, but rest assured it will be fixed next season.

Champs could have done the same thing if they knew it was going to be a problem. It can be as simple as plugging a cable into a different output or extending a previously run cable to reach a different output of the switcher.