Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

[Billfred]

Some of the things I saw:

1) Something needs to be done about opening and closing ceremonies for FVC. Opening ceremonies are during the FRC lunch break, which is marginally passable from a noise standpoint, but closing ceremonies during FRC matches is just not as awesome.

2) The FVC World Championship as it sits could benefit greatly from being extended or split into its own divisions. With four matches, one bad match could kill a team entirely. (Granted, a truly great scout would catch a team with promise regardless of one bad match.)

3) It would be nice if there was a way to scratch FVC teams that did not show up for the competition, as one of the teams from China did. Not so much for the teams that don't show as the teams who're playing with them.

4) Branding. You've got the Rack 'N Roll logo on DaVinci, folks in FLL shirts on FRC fields, yellow representing both FIRST and FRC in the Championship program (with FLL in blue and FVC in red), and so on. Give each competition and the Championship at large a color, and don't switch them around--this can also be quite useful for other things, such as signs that only apply to one competition. Make the crew shirts intentionally non-competition-specific while you're at it (and perhaps do something with the backs--they don't have that visual appeal that the FRC regional shirts do).

4a) I recall the FRC-specific logo being introduced right around Kickoff, so this year, just as when FIRST changed logos in 2005, I'm not griping much about the signage with the FIRST logo and "ROBOTICS COMPETITION" below it (even if it does push the logo standards). But in the interest of keeping things matched between the three competitions, it would be nice to have FRC-specific signs receive the FRC logo and FIRST signs get the FIRST logo.

5) I agree, I miss the visual flair for the Chairman's Award winners. However, skipping the balloons this year was an improvement for the sake of those up in the stands.

6) To go back to FVC in a way, I was confused a bit with the change in meaning of dots on the operator badges. (For those who weren't on DaVinci, badges with dots were used for drivers, while coaches did not receive the dot.) This became a bit more of an issue when those who coach for both FVC and FRC came out wearing both badges--with the visual distinction between the two limited to black text on a purple badge, it was tricky to distinguish. Keeping this parallel across competitions (and perhaps changing the badge color across competitions) would be lovely.

That's all I can think of, mostly of a nit-picky nature. Overall, I highly enjoyed it--and I can't wait for next year!