Lessons learned 2005: The negative

[Koko Ed]

What did FIRST do this year that could be done better next year?

[Starke]

I would say less penalties.

[Alex Cormier]

one thing i regretted the most was. the 40 minute waste of time for the robot to go out to the match, wait, play the match and then return to the pits. I had our robot stay out by he filed for a few matches on Friday and i thought it was a great idea until i realized thee is no one in the pits to talk to judges or other teams. this problem should be addressed. the walk for the robots was horrible but not the walk for humans. i believe the walk for robots should/must be shorter then humans. good day. im tired.

[Koko Ed]

Things that did not go so well this year were..
- The scoring software. It really damaged the flow of the cometition and often sealed off the flow of information on alot of regionals.
- The penalties. The 30 point penalty is perhaps a bit excessive considering it's harder to score this year.
- The return of Sir Charles. 'nuff said.
- The lack of respect the animation, website, Inventor and Woodie Flowers award got at the championship. What they're not good enough for the main award cermony?
- The finals were too long. Those two speeches did not help. The flow was all out of whack.
- The food at the afterparty was not so hot.

[xzvrw2]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Things that did not go so well this year were..
- The scoring software. It really damaged the flow of the cometition and often sealed off the flow of information on alot of regionals.
- The penalties. The 30 point penalty is perhaps a bit excessive considering it's harder to score this year.
- The return of Sir Charles. 'nuff said.
- The lack of respect the animation, website, Inventor and Woodie Flowers award got at the championship. What they're not good enough for the main award cermony?
- The finals were too long. Those two speeches did not help. The flow was all out of whack.
- The food at the afterparty was not so hot.

I would have to agree with everything except the last one. I liked the food at the after party. As for the finals, my team took our seats at around 3:30, the championship match did not start until around 7:00. I think that was way to long. Also, in regards to the 30 point penalties, if you got that, you automatically lost the match. I think that is very unfair.


Stevie

[Mr. Lim]

Consistancy in refereeing between regionals.

Maybe next year FIRST can consider having a consistant group of Head Refs deployed to each regional, much in the same way MCs and announcers are distributed.

Having a core set of individuals head-refereeing should make calls more consistant from regional to regional. In addition, it is much easier to garner feedback, and to enact changes when you only have a few individuals to inform. Weekly Head Referee meetings to share experiences from all the regionals become a possibility. Lastly, you don't risk losing all the valuable knowledge from week to week, when you have the same people head-refereeing.

I've heard a lot of "the refs are all volunteers, and they're doing the best they can," which I completely agree with. Refs should be volunteers, but help these volunteers by providing them with the best possible Head Referees to teach and guide them.

Of course there would be significant added expense in carting around Head Refs to 30 regionals, however if FIRST keeps growing and improving the way it has been, I think this is a sore point that needs to be addressed.

-SlimBoJones...

[BadKarma]

there always seems to be a lack of communication between autodesk and first. this has always been a problem it must be addressed.

[omutton]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

- The food at the afterparty was not so hot.

Yah I agree. The potato wedges looked and tasted like they had been in my fridge for a week. Everything cooled down so fast because it was cold outside.

I also think that all announcers should announce who got the penalties and why they were given out, like Steve W does. That is so much easier than asking the head ref.

[Quatitos]

My biggest problem with nationals is the fact that FLL and Vex were in the same place as the pits. Because of the different safety rules for all three competitions many people ended up walking through the FRC pits with no safety glasses on. This was especially worrying to me when I saw lots of little children walking around getting up close to the robots with no protection at all. My team brought a box of about 30-40 safety glasses to hand out to those without them, but because of the staggering amount of people without them we had to restrain ourselves about handing them out to people we believed would return them so that we could get as many people protected as possible. I still don't know how many of the glasses actually returned after being used but I'd like to believe that every one that is in the box when we left was one that was returned.

[Emily Pease]

First, I would like to say that I really enjoyed the whole event. It was my first time to Championships, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was blown away by many things, including but not limited to Vex, Larry Page, Lego League, and the afterparty.

However, one thing that irked me, and maybe I'm just not as informed about this as I should be, so feel free to set me straight if I'm wrong here. My team (125) played 8 matches in the Qualifying rounds, and we were just filling out the alliance in the last match, so it didn't count for us. Our alliance won, but since it didn't count for us, our ranking dropped because our alliance members' ranking went up. It's definitely better that we won, because our ranking would have dropped even more if we had lost, but I wonder if it seems right that we should have dropped at all, since we were just helping to fill the alliance, AND our alliance won. We were ranked 22nd (and marked as 5-2, even though in real life, we were 6-2) after this match, and were not picked to move on to quarter-finals.

I really don't think this one match caused us to NOT be picked, and I don't know if anyone would want to change the ranking system just for such a small minority of teams who would be affected by this situation, but the whole ordeal confuses me, and I am going to stop thinking about it.

Overall, though, I'm so proud of my team and I loved the event and I'm truly happy for 503, 67, and 330, and YAY Newton!

[Stephen Kowski]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

- The return of Sir Charles. 'nuff said.

I am gonna have to disagree with you there. I found his announcing very entertaining and he kills himself because he is so into it. In fact, he is by far one of my favorite announcers....I know several people that thought he was hilarious....so I am gonna have to disagree with him being a negative of FIRST 2005. There are other things to concentrate on other than a volunteer's performance....

[the_short1]

i LOVED seeing larry page, and the patent guy.. and all the VOLUNTEERS ! WE THANK YOU!.. . we had an AWSOME MC at galileo!..

but enuf of that.. the only thing they MUST change, is be more strict on colors, for autonomous, as i will be doing coding next year and i hope the camera is there next year.. i dont want to see a repeat of what happened to team 66 (they broke their bot due to someone wearing GREEN next to field.. in the rules it states no green is to be used as to affect the autonomous.. and it was a bummer that they did not control that so well

[Ryan Albright]

Originally Posted by Stephen Kowski

I am gonna have to disagree with you there. I found his announcing very entertaining and he kills himself because he is so into it. In fact, he is by far one of my favorite announcers....I know several people that thought he was hilarious....so I am gonna have to disagree with him being a negative of FIRST 2005. There are other things to concentrate on other than a volunteer's performance....

I will have to concur with you. I really liked him last year and this year. He gets himself into it and what i can tell he works on getting the people in the stands into it.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Things that did not go so well this year were..
- The penalties. The 30 point penalty is perhaps a bit excessive considering it's harder to score this year.

I agree with Ed on most of his points, but I disagree with this one, even though penalties bit our alliance HARD twice in playoffs (Pittsburgh Regional and Galileo Division).

For the past 3 seasons, I have witnessed teams building Battle Bots to play defense. It didn't matter what you broke on the opposing robot, what only mattered was how hard you could hammer them. I think that FIRST wanted to get back to a more elegant method of playing the game, and these penalties became a serious punishing stick. I commend FIRST for not reversing their decision on enforcing the penalties.

We veteran teams need to emphasize with the newer ones that "playing the game cleanly" is the proper method of winning. Do we suffer for these infractions, of course, but rather than complain to FIRST about it, we need to encourage our allies and competitors to eliminate the actions that cause these penalties.

In an alliance, you win as one, you lose as one, and you commit penalties as one. Any other viewpoint indicates that three individual robots may have played the game, but an alliance truly did not exist.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

- The return of Sir Charles. 'nuff said.

Agreed - he did a few matches on Curie. I thought the announcing on Curie was alright, I really couldn't understand what anyone was saying though. Anyone else have this problem??