Lessons learned 2005: The negative

[Kevin Sevcik]

Ah yes, the fabled Golden Years. I'll admit that the events at Epcot were pretty nice, but they too had their problems. For one, the heat. The events were held in a parking lot, which was the venue's greatest strength and weakness. It was hot outside the expensively air conditioned tents, and it was cramped inside them. Since it was in a parking lot, it was also prone to flooding of all things. You were at the mercy of the weather, and Disney hasn't figured out how to control that yet.

There was virtually no seating for teams at the division fields, and teams most certainly did end up sitting in the stands for long lengths of time. Especially during the Elims. And seating at Einstein was worse than at these new venues. A sea of seats actually below the level of the stage and then stadium seating starting about 200 feet back.

I also remember being charged $70 per person for the wrap party if your team didn't spend the extra cash to stay on Disney property. This would be when my team starting saving money and skipping FIRST packages and wrap parties to stay at cheaper nice hotels and go to Medieval Times or Benihana for our own personal wrap party.

Epcot was far from perfect, and I'm certain setting up an entire stadium with AC and generators in a parking lot cost an awful lot more than renting an actual stadium for the same time period. Plus this way you get AC all the time and don't have to worry about rain. The rainstorm Friday would've been a near disaster at Epcot. Basically, though, Epcot got too expensive, and FIRST moved on.

And don't get me started about people complaing about Houston. You can search out my previous posts on the matter if you're curious about my opinion on the subject.



On a completely other subject, I had an idea to help with rules consistency. BEST robotics typically has a "prototype game kickoff" where the game is presented to the hub directors months before kickoff and is open for comments. This is followed by a prototype day where basic prototype robots are brought to play a simulated game. All of this helps iron out bugs in rules that inevitably pop up when the game commitee's perfect game is implemented in our sadly imperfect reality. I realize building several prototype FIRST robots would be expensive and difficult, but I'm sure the idea could be adapted somehow and ex-FIRST mentors could be drafted to help.