[FRC Blog] FRC Events Being Posted and AMAA on FUN

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

If any NY state teams don't get into Hudson Valley, where can they go for a second event?

Montreal? Hopefully Buckeye? One of those requires a border crossing, and the other is >6 hours away for any teams east of Syracuse. If those don't work for whatever reason (or heaven forbid they are also week 3), I think there's a regional in Cincinnati, which is ~10 hours away. Beyond that, there is the Midwest Regional in Chicago, which is obviously getting ridiculous in terms of travel (but it's a great event!)

If FRC is going to continue to put these brick walls where non-District teams are never, ever, ever allowed to compete in a District event (even without the possibility of qualifying), and FRC is going to continue to let scattered pockets of the country stick to the outdated regional model, they need to do a better job coordinating event dates to allow teams a realistic possibility of competing at two events. This is unacceptable.

If you got money I guess you can go out of state but most teams are tethered to the very slim pickings around here.

[mwmac]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

If FRC is going to continue to put these brick walls where non-District teams are never, ever, ever allowed to compete in a District event (even without the possibility of qualifying), and FRC is going to continue to let scattered pockets of the country stick to the outdated regional model, they need to do a better job coordinating event dates to allow teams a realistic possibility of competing at two events. This is unacceptable.

2 things:
1. Absolutely agree that better event date coordination is required between RD's and First HQ. Last year was bad for teams doing two events (given the travel distances involved) for the intermountain west, (with Utah, Sacramento, Colorado, Idaho, Las Vegas and Western Canada events all scheduled within three weeks) but the 2017 schedule for Pittsburgh, FLR and Tech Valley is now the poster child for poor event scheduling.

2. Some scattered pockets of the country will not have the team/mentor/volunteer density required by the district model for the foreseeable future. This factor is often overlooked by FRC participants in densely populated parts of the country.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by mwmac

2 things:
1. Absolutely agree that better event date coordination is required between RD's and First HQ. Last year was bad for teams doing two events (given the travel distances involved) for the intermountain west, (with Utah, Sacramento, Colorado, Idaho, Las Vegas and Western Canada events all scheduled within three weeks) but the 2017 schedule for Pittsburgh, FLR and Tech Valley is now the poster child for poor event scheduling.

2. Some scattered pockets of the country will not have the team/mentor/volunteer density required by the district model for the foreseeable future. This factor is often overlooked by FRC participants in densely populated parts of the country.

When I talked to Frank a couple of years ago at Tech Valley he admitted that there are places that just cannot go district because of the lack of teams/mentors/volunteers. There are also places that have a high number of team/mentor/volunteers that are struggling to convert to districts for varying reason. Right now FIRST is split into two worlds and it looks like it'll be that way forever due to geographical barriers that cannot be solved.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

When I talked to Frank a couple of years ago at Tech Valley he admitted that there are places that just cannot go district because of the lack of teams/mentors/volunteers. There are also places that have a high number of team/mentor/volunteers that are struggling to convert to districts for varying reason. Right now FIRST is split into two worlds and it looks like it'll be that way forever due to geographical barriers that cannot be solved.

Ultimately, the direction I feel FIRST as a whole eventually has to go in is to have multi-tiered competition for all styles of play. Qualifying Events, Region Championships, and World Championship(s) everywhere, no borders, some method to allow teams that can only do 1 Qualifying event to still participate, etc. What are we going to do when we have less than a dozen regionals left, scattered in tiny pockets in random places around the country? At some point (not soon) the change has to sweep through every region, ready or not.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Ultimately, the direction I feel FIRST as a whole eventually has to go in is to have multi-tiered competition for all styles of play. Qualifying Events, Region Championships, and World Championship(s) everywhere, no borders, some method to allow teams that can only do 1 Qualifying event to still participate, etc. What are we going to do when we have less than a dozen regionals left, scattered in tiny pockets in random places around the country? At some point (not soon) the change has to sweep through every region, ready or not.

Isolated teams are going to have to either do local only events or spend big bucks to travel far and wide to go to other events. I don't even know what foreign teams are going to do.

[TheBoulderite]

Originally Posted by mwmac

2 things:
1. Absolutely agree that better event date coordination is required between RD's and First HQ. Last year was bad for teams doing two events (given the travel distances involved) for the intermountain west, (with Utah, Sacramento, Colorado, Idaho, Las Vegas and Western Canada events all scheduled within three weeks) but the 2017 schedule for Pittsburgh, FLR and Tech Valley is now the poster child for poor event scheduling.

Agreed with mwmac. Travelwise, our team, among others, had to go farther. Last year, the Utah Regional was scheduled for Week 3, and the Colorado Regional was for Week 4. Traditionally, a lot of Colorado teams go to Utah and then Colorado a few weeks later. However, due to the week change, most Colorado teams that would have gone to Utah opted to go to the Arizona North Regional, and Utah ended up being a lot smaller this year than in previous years. Few Colorado teams went to Utah, and there were some that opted to go to Las Vegas, a Week 5 event, instead of Utah.

That being said, I've never seen a scheduling mishap like this before. The teams that are close to all of them now have to decide between one, when they would otherwise go to more. Sorry to hear you all have this decision to make. Hope this doesn't happen again in the future.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Isolated teams are going to have to either do local only events or spend big bucks to travel far and wide to go to other events. I don't even know what foreign teams are going to do.

This is basically the same problem as it exists now, albeit made worse if they do well enough at their 1 event to qualify for the next tier. Perhaps certain isolated regions / foreign teams will do Points style advancement directly to the World Championship without a Region Championship, similar to how states in regional areas determine their off season State Championship qualifying teams.

[Jon Stratis]

Perhaps the biggest thing that's missing in the scheduling discussion is that FIRST often doesn't have many options when it comes to scheduling. They sign contracts with venues each year, for the days that are available on the venue's calendar. I have insight into a few regionals, and I can tell you that many times there may only be 1 weekend available for an event, or if there is a second weekend available it may conflict with another nearby event. This sometimes causes nearby regionals to stack up back to back, or for the planners to choose one regional conflict over another.

The only way this can be solved is to contract with the venues earlier (like they do with Champs). But that can't be done until FIRST knows they are going to hold that event in that year and in that location - and I strongly doubt that FIRST knows much more in advance which events will be held again, and which ones won't. Contracting a venue now for the next 3 years locks you into it, which means wasted money if that area switches to districts or wants to change venues. And we've seen events switch venues before, and areas switch to districts (or not), sometimes with very little warning to the community, especially the peripheral community that may have attended regionals in that area but are not part of the new district.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Perhaps the biggest thing that's missing in the scheduling discussion is that FIRST often doesn't have many options when it comes to scheduling. (snip)

The only way this can be solved is to contract with the venues earlier (like they do with Champs). (snip)

Not to , but I think there could be another way. Open up the options for venues in order to find venues that are more flexible/available.

To open up options, the following trade-offs probably have to happen:

• Shrink event size to ~40 teams
• Relax requirements surrounding A/V infrastructure requirements
• Probably host one or two more Regionals in the area (also at smaller venues) to make up for the smaller events

It isn't districts by any means (not as many events required), but it does sound like a little more work. Just an idea for alternatives.

-Mike

[wesbass23]

With you guys discussing different regions options I decided to look into the Midwest options (at least from a Wisconsin perspective) for last year.

With Michigan out of the picture and Indiana moving to districts (taking the Boilermaker regional with it) we are left with the following...

The 4 Minnesota regionals are weeks 1 and 6 but those are nearly filled by local MN teams with a couple of Wisconsin and Iowa teams filling in the open spots. The best options week 2 are Arkansas, Kansas City, and St. Louis (How did both of the MO regionals end up on the same week?). The closest of those is St. Louis, 6 hours away from Milwaukee, but a much better option for some of the Illinois team. Week 3 is Central Illinois and Buckeye (why go to Buckeye when you can go to CIR?). Week 4 is Iowa and Wisconsin, week 5 is Midwest.

If you don't want to travel the 6 hours to MO, you are pretty much stuck with weeks 3-5, with a high chance of ending up with back to back regionals. This may be helped a bit this year with the addition of a new regional in Wisconsin.

While this is no where near the difficulty that is appearing in NY, I know both WI and IL want to go to districts, some people in MN would like to as well. But there is no way they all go at the same time which means some states are going to be left in the dust with few options.

[bdaroz]

Quick Update, current count is now 47. New additions are for the Ontario district events.

[Koko Ed]

Bummer. The Ontario Championship is week 7. MSC will be the same week no doubt....

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

When I talked to Frank a couple of years ago at Tech Valley he admitted that there are places that just cannot go district because of the lack of teams/mentors/volunteers. There are also places that have a high number of team/mentor/volunteers that are struggling to convert to districts for varying reason. Right now FIRST is split into two worlds and it looks like it'll be that way forever due to geographical barriers that cannot be solved.

Well, there is a silver lining of the scheduling issues in upstate NY this year: we can grow our volunteer base since we have to staff two events (plus Pittsburgh) the same week. That's a plus for the march towards districts, I guess

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Not to , but I think there could be another way. Open up the options for venues in order to find venues that are more flexible/available.

To open up options, the following trade-offs probably have to happen:

• Shrink event size to ~40 teams
• Relax requirements surrounding A/V infrastructure requirements
• Probably host one or two more Regionals in the area (also at smaller venues) to make up for the smaller events

Typically, both Tech Valley and FLR are pretty small events. Tech Valley only had 36 teams last year, and I believe FLR was at about 40. Can't go much smaller than that.

The A/V requirements are set by FIRST, and there is less leeway with regionals than with district events. The official regional quality standards are here, I wonder how much those can be bent...

Multiple regionals is an interesting idea, although I'm not sure FIRST would agree to the additional logistics + SRE costs + field trucking + etc. Here's a thought, though: this is all basically like running a district, but still calling them regionals. What if there was an arrangement a region could make with FIRST to allow their local organization to run the state's regionals for a few years (buy a field, do transport, staff events, etc) during the transition period to districts. That would let the region get its logistics up and running before they "officially" move to the district system.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

Well, there is a silver lining of the scheduling issues in upstate NY this year: we can grow our volunteer base since we have to staff two events (plus Pittsburgh) the same week. That's a plus for the march towards districts, I guess



Typically, both Tech Valley and FLR are pretty small events. Tech Valley only had 36 teams last year, and I believe FLR was at about 40. Can't go much smaller than that.

The A/V requirements are set by FIRST, and there is less leeway with regionals than with district events. The official regional quality standards are here, I wonder how much those can be bent...

Multiple regionals is an interesting idea, although I'm not sure FIRST would agree to the additional logistics + SRE costs + field trucking + etc. Here's a thought, though: this is all basically like running a district, but still calling them regionals. What if there was an arrangement a region could make with FIRST to allow their local organization to run the state's regionals for a few years (buy a field, do transport, staff events, etc) during the transition period to districts. That would let the region get its logistics up and running before they "officially" move to the district system.

FLR had 50 teams last year.

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

FLR had 49 teams last year.

??