Lessons learned 2005: The negative

[Termite233]

about the awards done during opening ceremonies...
if they were going to do things so important like these, should they not show them on all fields? not just 3? my team was not allowed to leave the archimedes field (except for a few people who had to scout at galileo) so they didnt see the opening ceremonies. they didn't even know when they started or that awards had been given. They only heard part of the National Anthem. so I think that could have been improved.
-Chris

[Shu Song]

I biggie that I've noticed was inconsistent inspection standards between regionals and championships. Here's why:

At FLR and GTR, our robot was weighed without backup battery and LED's. The inspection people specifically told us, as far as I know, to NOT include those two items. But at championships, our inspector told us the exact opposite, that everything had to be on the robot while being weighed except for the battery. Although that the added LED and backup battery didn't put us over the limit, it frustrated me to know that there was this much inconsistency.

Secondly, at both FLR and GTR, we were allowed to precharge our pneumatic cylinders with a non-kit, non-FIRST, air tank. No one at those two regionals told us not to do so and we even saw other teams doing the same thing. But when came to championships, we were told that we can only precharge with the pneumatic equipment already on the robot. We were told this after other teams complained about our having done so.

Our inspector told us that this might have came about because there were inexperienced inspectors at those regionals. That might explain the LED and backup battery issue, but how can any inspector miss our team taking a giant air tank to our robot and filling it with air?

I hope that we are not the only team that had problems with the inconsistency, if we are, then I guess the inspectors at regionals DID miss those things. If anyone knows differently, please correct me.

[Stephen Kowski]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

Agreed - he did a few matches on Curie.

It is disappointing the biggest problems you all can find is within one volunteer. I am very disappointed....did you have a problem with one of the other volunteers also? possibly a field reseter? a judge? or maybe an inspector? I find it very upsetting that rather than be happy someone is here volunteering, you all would rather disparage the man's performance.....how sad....

[kulisb]

I think that the one thing that could have been better at this year's FIRST competition was consistency of penalty calls. Penalties were worth so much, compared to what the average match scored out to be. If these penalties have such a huge impact (especially when losing one match can possibly knock you out of the top 8), calls should be as consistent as possible, so that teams know how to play the game.

[Doc Wu]

Originally Posted by 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.

Amen! Besides the fact that I (a 51 year-old Team Coach) was exhausted from a 10-12 hour day of nearly constantly being on my feet, all the travelling from pit to field and back is a huge waste of time that teams may desperately need for other things.

I saw a few teams that found a spot half way out in the labrynth to stop and work on their robots, but even that is less than ideal. Someone would still need to run to the pit for any part or tool you didn't have. Communications from a team to their pits is very difficult and a way to legally provide it needs to be addressed.

It's nice to have a big event, but maybe it's gotten too big, or because they are trying to make it run at a pace that remains interesting to spectators, the whole thing is forced to run faster than we as teams can handle. The alternative, making the time between matches longer, maybe by using fewer fields so that the pace could be maintained, would make a three day event impossible.

If the pits could be put closer, maybe in four different, but closer areas by division, would help. I wouldn't care if they were as nice as the room we were in, even the dock areas we walked through could be used for pits, they just probably wouldn't be able to be open to the public. A room with team booths for displays and team promotion could be substituted for the public.

Maybe I'm a bit cranky from a 18-hour drive home pulling a trailer through a blizzard but I'd sure like the pit to arena travel situation improved.

One thing that was done right and helped make things run smoother was the Wednesday night unpacking. For those of us who could do that, it really made Thursday a little less hectic. It probably even helped those who couldn't get there Wednesday, by getting us out of the way at the curb...

[UCGL_Guy]

More concerns than anything else ---
1.Segways mixing with heavy pedestrian traffic - If FIRST is going to start promoting safety we must start looking at behaviors that cause accidents and I saw a couple of near misses with the segways.

2. Grinding in the pits - never saw it but heard it several times - Each division needs an area to do this kind of work in.

3. Robot traffic mixing with regular people traffic - caused a lot of congestion - needs to be a "robot only trail"

4. Use Einstein field again so teams can have more mathces / at $715 a match that is a little steep. Looked like to me there is enough space for 6 playing fields --- more mathces

5. Closing ceremonies were waaaaaay too long. I did like some of the flash they put into the finals. I did however get a nice nap in.

6. I wonder ---- could they set up a local radio broadcast of each field - so you could listen in the pit - you cannot hear the Pit admin announcements.

8. I agree on the penalty thing - the game should be designed so as to not have the possibilty of bot / human interaction. Other than that I love this game.

9. Again safety related - the announcers should exhibit safe behavior alos - jumping on the field elements is not a good example of this.

10. Hard hats --- Osha would have a field day writing this one up with all of the potential overhead projectiles for the field crew and players.


What I liked
1. Wednesday night unloading this is a must have and would not mind seeing this implemented in the regionals.

2. The building we were in --- keep this arrangement 100X better than last year's fiasco.

3. The police actually helped you out - still ticked about the ticket we got last year.

4. The Game --- this is the best in my six years

5. although the field was crowded I like the 3 on 3

Overall a very good year
congratulations to all.

[allyphant]

overall, the only thing that irks me is seeing teams that are composed of mostly retired engineers, parents, and other adults working on the robot and the kids merely helping by handing over the occasional drill. There are several teams that are organized and run by students and I really admire their dedication. I think FIRST should benefit the kids that participate more than the parents. Its also insulting when other teams came over to our team's pit and requested to "speak to someone in charge"(meaning an adult) only to ask questions that the students who built and designed the robot could have easily answered. This kind of behavior makes us feel incapable and insignificant.

Also, it was annoying how many kids that went to the after party in the park were taking WHOLE CASES of sodas with them instead of leaving some for the rest of us thirsty folks. Max and I were arguing over this b/c he couldn't believe robotics kids could be so rude and inconsiderate. pretty ironic considering he has no faith in humanity whatsoever and I'm much more trusting.

Our team and several others stayed at the Marriot Courtyard and Fairfield Inn. THey had a pool and a hot tub that many of us took advantage of and rightfully so ( we paid for it ). However, some idiots decided to dive into the shallow end and the manager of the hotel imposed a curfew on all the teams and refused to let us use their pool and hot tub. When I went to talk to other teams, some members told me to <disguised expletive deleted - ab> off. which is annoying considering I went to the manager and got her to open up the faciliites for us. Anyway, I was really dissapointed by the behaviors of several members of the FIRST community.

i forgot to say that the sedar was cute and fun and i've never been to a sedar before. also, props to the cute israeli kid at our table that was sad cause we didnt get to finish saying dayenu.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I have exactly three negatives, I think anything else could really be lived with and worked out fairly simply.

- Rules consistency. As everyone has mentioned, it was rather vexing to have rules change from week to week and regional to regional. And sometimes from day to day at a competition. I think it's great that FIRST addressed many of the issues that were brought up, but the sheer number of updates after regionals started is odd. Not to put too fine a point on it, but after this move towards simpler, less complicated, more common sense rules we had a total of 21 updates, 7 after the first regional. In 2004 there were 15 total updates, 1 after the first regional. In 2003, there were 20 updates, 0 after the first regional.

- Penalties. I have no problems with the various 10 pointers for safety and aggression, but the 30 pointers still irk me. My team actually won our last match by one point.... thanks to a 30 and a 10 on the other side. I'm still chagrined by that win. I think the obvious solution is not to design such obvious choke-points into the game that they must be protected by match losing penalties for robots bumping into each other.

- Alright, I forgot my third point while researching the first one. There's a big mish-mash of whining about the trip to-from the pits, no match time announcing, no anything announcing that made our team rep late to alliance pairings, and various other small things, but the above two are the only big problems I had all season.

EDIT: Oh yeah, safety. Needs to be more of it. I couldn't believe it when I saw field resetters standing almost right next to the auto load zones. Didn't they know the some robots go in there at high speed? I saw one or two lean back a bit when an arm whipped in front of them. I'd have been diving for cover, but maybe I'm just a chicken. Not to disparage the ThunderChickens. Those guys are a whole different breed of poultry.

[Nitroxextreme]

one of the biggest poblem in my eyes were the penalties and the incositancies between the matches

it ended up being the refees descrection as to who won many matches

also all of the peopl e that went to the drivers meeting could see how many important problems were discusses BUT none of these conclusions the refees ingeniously came up with were used when the penalities they talked about occured

on a different note:
i disliked the fact that some regionals were within a month of the championship and people that may have gotten a last minute spot could not use the first hotels prices and had to scramble to find any reasonable price for any hotel that may end up being far away and/or poor quality

[DarkJedi613]

- When are we supposed to queue for matches? This needs to be addressed by either announcements, or perhaps on the standing's screen display a "Current match", "First call match", "Second call match", "Final call match".

- Speeches are too long, apparantly Dean found someone who can relate to us, but still didn't relate. We're teenagers, we don't want to hear speeches that are more than 10 minutes long. Also - speeches lasting too long the first day and causing matches to start late - thats so...counter productive.

- If you're on the drive team & pit crew - there is literally no time to do anything between matches if the robot needs to be fixed.

- FIRST just putting things on our tables in the pits (Chairman's schedule & match schedule). Our table is messy and we almsot didn't see them (we actually didn't see Chairman's until 365 told us we had gotten it - thanks.)

- The drivers meeting was great, but it seemed like "We're gonna call these following things, for these reasons" which was all great, but the next day nothing was called!

- Grass on the frisbee field being dead.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Stephen Kowski

It is disappointing the biggest problems you all can find is within one volunteer. I am very disappointed....did you have a problem with one of the other volunteers also? possibly a field reseter? a judge? or maybe an inspector? I find it very upsetting that rather than be happy someone is here volunteering, you all would rather disparage the man's performance.....how sad....

If you would have taken 2 more seconds to read the rest of my post, I clearly said that I thought all of the announcing on Curie was just alright (at best). I could not understand what people were saying most of the time.

And about Sir Charles - don't get on my back just because I don't like the way he announces. He's very repetitive and it really gets on my nerves. I'm sorry but "going for the hook up" is not a valid phrase in this year's game. This isn't FIRST Frenzy.

That's about the only negative thing I could find from this year's National event.

[AmyPrib]

A few not-so-positives:

- Rule and penalty calls very inconsistent between regionals. Rules were being made up at some regionals, and at at least one, almost no defense was allowed. A decision about not refilling load stations in Atlanta defies the rules. There were a lot of rules changes and interpretation miscommunications on various things. Some solutions have been offered in previous threads, but I think something definitely needs to be done to improve this. A few thoughts:
- Simply having all rules/updates, and even Q/A by section available, printed out, at regionals to refer to might have helped the refs on a number of issues.
- Rules/game test perhaps is in order, specifically for refs... Since they're volunteers, and they are interested in the game and helping with organization, there should be no quarrel to taking a game test, as many teams make their team members do. Only seems logical, and shouldn't take much of their time. Updated tests could come out to incorporate Updates to rules.
- FIRST could include a 1-2page summary of penalties and calls within the rules so that there is one place to refer to, for teams and refs, when looking for clarifications. Also helps finding the incorporated updates.
- Maybe not feasible, but any chance FIRST officials could be more active on CD? CD is a huge resource for teams, and it might be nice to get direct feedback to some topics that are highly discussed and controversial on CD, esp if not covered in Q/A. It would show they are actively listening to team concerns and want to improve, and it might even help soothe some of the heated debate over interpretation differences. They might also become aware of big issues early and resolve it sooner. Reason I say this is because there's a number of regional planning committee members that request feedback like these threds and confirm that they want to use it for improvement. So, this thread, will FIRST see it, read it, and use it for improvement? Not really sure. Maybe not reasonable, but just a thought.

- Penalty/scoring weight seemed a little off. I think the 30pt penalty could have been a little less, but still effective. Even 15-20pts, but as someone stated, with 30pts, you can almost expect a loss. When you start seeing numerous matches that result in 0's, because the score itself never even reached 30pts, something might be off. I'm sure none of the 30pt penalties were results of malicious intents - and I understand the need for safety calls, but it seemed a little extreme when scoring was only worth 3pts and some 10pt bonuses. Granted, drivers got better in avoiding it, but still.

- Not forseeing the potential injuries resulting in tetras over the player station and implementing some protection early. But applause for implementing for Atlanta. If HPs are going to be getting close to robots, something besides penalties should protect them.

- Although Triple-Play got more exciting as regionals went on, I personally like seeing more robot and game variety, and more available tasks in the game, like last year. It was also virtually impossible to help your opponents score if you needed/wanted to.

- Ceremonies should have been broadcast on all field screens in Atlanta.
- Would be nice to ask Georgia Dome staff to open more than 2-4 doors when the bulk of 15k+ people are going in. Not sure if they had any open on the other sides, but the main entrance was crowded at times.
- A couple of the wrap-up party shows were a bit.... silly? I suppose there were younger kids there, but early in the evening, there wasn't much to keep a crowd in the seats. But other than that, pretty good.
-Closing ceremonies on Einstein, speeches a little too long. While there are great speakers, and they are great to have, the length tends to disrupt the energy flow of the competition.

Overall I think this year has been a great experience.

[Starke]

Another part that could be changed was having to leave the pit 4 matches ahead of your teams match. Although a long walk, you could make it in 3 or even 2 matches before.

One time 340 had to change a transmission. We got most of the work done in the pit but had to leave to go to our match. This resulted in putting kids on the cart and finishing the job on the way to the arena. All that was needed was 2-5 more minutes, but we had to go.

Overall, I think the Championship Event went well and ran relatively smoothly.

[KathieK]

I enjoyed being part of the 2005 FIRST Conference, and really appreciated those of you who attended the sessions I was presenting at. However I will suggest to FIRST a different schedule to follow (PM me if you have any suggestions) since I missed Opening Ceremonies on Friday - including missing seeing the mascot I spent so much time making in the parade, missed the awards that were given, missed seeing the scholarship winners, the Regional CA winners and missed the National Anthem. I think Opening Ceremonies should be done at the beginning of Thursday since that is the true opening of the event. And we expected that some awards would be given out on Friday evening as they are at the Regionals. Consistency would help a lot.
The Closing ceremonies were tedious after a long, long day and we could not hear much of what was being said where we ended up sitting - in the far top corner of Curie - despite calling down to the floor to see if the sound guys could adjust the volume/clarity. Several times we turned to one another and had to ask, "What was that award for???" and "Who got it???" The teams who are competing in the Finals and the teams who are winning these awards deserve better!
If we have grown so much then we need to either add another division so that fewer teams are playing on each, and so they end the matches earlier; or expand the Event to start on Wednesday with pits opening Wed morning and practice rounds starting in the afternoon so that matches could start after lunch on Thursday, finish by Friday, have the finals on Saturday morning and the ceremonies and wrap party in the afternoon/evening. I know, the costs would be enormous to all teams if the Event were expanded. Or maybe SHRINK the Event by making it a true CHAMPIONSHIP where you have to qualify in order to attend. No easy solutions...

Please move the Hall of Fame out where it is more accessible to all - I never got a chance to view it because it took me so long to get from one venue to the other that I didn't have any "leisure" time - walking from Archimedes all over to the other building where the pits were and then the walk to Gate C and to go back took a long time. Or open the other Gates for those of us in the far corners of the Dome! Going to the pits, Vex, FLL, LogoLoc store, conference sessions or Hall of Fame was difficult for the people on our team who had difficulty walking to begin with!

Safety glasses were not being worn by many of the spectators visiting the Archimedes field. I was going to speak to someone about it when I realized there were so many glasses-less people that it was simply not being enforced. And why were so many people allowed down there in the first place?

[Ellery]

Awards - We were finalists in Archimedes and the trophies and medals were not presented properly and do they still give out finalist banners anymore or did they forget to give it out too?

After Party- I was alittle disappointed that the food went down hill from its inaugural year. I hope this trend doesn't continue.

I missed the fried Chicken and peach cobbler.

Other than that I was pretty pleased.