2004 1st (Annual?) Beantown Blitz - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

[Eric O]

First of all, I want to thank Erin and everyone else for putting on another great New England off season Competition. A special thanks goes out the NU Dean of Engineering for being so supportive of a FIRST event at Northeastern. He was at the event the entire day and I heard that he was also there on Friday for set-up. I thought the event was very well run for its first year and also could use some small improvements.

The goods:
The lunch!: Being a college student, and knowing that every college student loves free food , I thought that having the free lunch was excellent. My one suggestion would be to have more than one table serving the food. The line for food got extremely long.

The Arena: that it was held at was a good size, plenty of room, but not so big that it felt empty.

Location: To hold an event in Boston means that you are going to have to drive in the city. The venue was only a few blocks from the highway off ramp.

Staff: I thought there was an experienced staff running the field/reffing/announcing/scorekeeping etc. They made the event run smoothly.

Irregular Randomness: The ref switching/dueling announcers and other actions that occurred at beantown, which do not usually occur in the regular flow of the rounds made things interesting for those in the stands.

WOODIE!: I thought that it was great that Woodie made an appearance. Although we all know he is a busy man, I wish he had stayed longer.

Needs Improvement:
Parking:
I will have to agree with Elgin that the parking was outrageous. I parked in the Gainsboro garage as instructed by the Beantown website and paid $16 for the day. Given I would pay it again to come help out at a FIRST event, but I think if something can be done to reduce the price of parking it should be.

Where were all the people? :
With a population of over 500,000 people, and many Northeastern students still on campus, holding an event in Boston could attract many more spectators than I saw in attendance. I noticed that none of the Beantown Blitz signs said "Robotics Competition" and therefore the general public did not know what the event one by just reading the signs.

Running behind:
Almost every off season event I have been to runs slightly behind schedule, as did this one. It is very difficult to fit enough qualifiers and the elimination rounds into one day. I noticed that many people had left before the awards ceremonies due to the fact that they had a long drive home and the competition ran a little over. I think this took away from the awards ceremony slightly.


I believe this is my longest post ever… Anyway I hope this helps make next years Beantown Blitz even better than the great event that it was this year.

Eric