What do you feel about the growth of FIRST?

[DougHogg]

Originally posted by Ben Mitchell

FIRST also need to generate more attention. To be bluntly honest, people don't watch sports games to see everyone have a "good time" or see players interacting with one another. They watch for the competition, for the stunning victories and brutal defeats.
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If FIRST wants to grow, they need to become much more friendly to spectators - particularly the media. This involves games that are exciting and clean to watch.

I agree. To continue to grow, FIRST needs to become TV and video friendly. Teams and sponsors need to be able to show compelling videos of robotics teams with exciting action footage. Also as more and more teams seek sponsors, it would really help if the sponsors knew that they would get media exposure to help them with their bottom line.

Watching FIRST videos of our team's matches in Houston, at times I even found myself getting a bit frustrated because the camera was pointed to one side and I wanted to see what was happening on the other. Let's face it. This game is hard to video effectively, because there can be 4 areas of action.

The first and last 15 seconds work pretty well for video because the focus is on the ramp. But if a team is building a stack near the end of the game, probably no one would see it because the camera will be on the ramp.

On the other hand, I appreciate FIRST's efforts in making this year's game. It is a very tough job! Let's face it. We have very smart people working on it.

I have had a couple of thoughts on making the game better and therefore more audience friendly. One thought is to have two game design teams. Group A would be working on the 2004 game, while group B is working on the game for 2005. With that much lead time, the 2005 group could actually get 4 robots build and try out the game. Why?

As stated by Woodie Flowers in the kickoff this year

"Real things are really nasty. They're non linear. They obey rules that you have never heard of.
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"So my advice is from the beginning get started in this do..think..learn loop and just keep doing that. Iterate. Build something. Try it. Mother nature will unambiguously explain to you what's really important as you work it out."

My idea is to have the game designers "try out" the game before it is presented to the teams, so there is time to go through the "do..think..learn loop" and fine tune the game. A tall order, but hopefully as we make the game more media friendly, we will have the resources to do that.

(Hm...sounds like a catch 22. We need the resources so we can make the game more media friendly so we can get the resources... Reminds me of this guy who was alone and couldn't get to the hospital because he had a broken leg. What was the answer to that problem? Well, somehow he just had to get there anyway, even if it was one inch at a time.)