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#13
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved
A lot of the things I'm going to say have been said before, but it's a way to let everyone know how important these few things are.
1- Algorithm. Really good teams that I have personally seen perform were seeded very low in Championships because of alliance partners. One or two bad matches are to be expected, but when good teams lose almost all of their matches through weak alliances, something has to be wrong. 2- Sound. I missed almost all of opening ceremonies because the sound on Newton was music and not the ceremonies. I couldn't hear anything Dean Kamen said, or any of the other presenters. By the time i walked from Newton to the back of Galileo, the national anthem was being sung and the ceremonies were over. It was my first time at championships and missing the ceremonies really irked me. Also, during the FVC awards, I couldn't hear anything the judges were saying. We were seated off to the right of the stage, closer to Newton, but not close enough that you would expect to only hear what's going on in the FRC match and nothing from the section you were sitting in. 3- Projection in pits. It usually took me 3 times to read the seeds in Newton because of the lack of quality. One time, after standing for 10 minutes, i gave up trying to find where my team was because i couldnt distinguish an 8 from a 9 or a 6 from a 3. Also, Newton and Curie had two different systems for showing the seeds. Newton showed two pages of scores that divided the 86 teams in half. This is good for teams that know where abouts theyre seeded but when you have 3 seconds a shot to find your team number out of 43, it tends to take a while. But, in Curie, they were showing the seeds one team at a time. Although this gave more time to find your team, it took forever to go back to a number that you may have missed. 4- Lack of gracious professionalism in the stands. I know some teams dont like to stand up and cheer, but for those that do [like mine] we try to sit in the back somewhat so that we dont get in the way of others. However, my team needed to get up and leave one time, and the team behind us started yelling at us to sit down and "what are you doing?!" "this is our match!! get out of the way!!" and when we started to apologize they kept on yelling. I can understand their mentality, but yelling at another team is not something FIRST teams should do. Especially when there are three rows of empty seats in front of us. 5- Saving seats. Before championships, word was that Curie was the powerhouse division this year. Therefore, three friends and I wanted to go watch a couple finals matches. However, in the only seats we could find [to the very very left of the field] there were at least 15 rows of seats saved for teams by 2 people each. When we tried to explain that we were just sitting there for the finals, and not to worry, our team isnt going to sit here for Einstein or anything like that, team mentors/advisors/parents (not sure which of those they were) continued to tell us to move, they were saving those seats. It states clearly in the rules that saving seats is illegal. I know that making sure your team sits together is important and it's hard to have everyone in the stands at all times, but when four students want to sit in one of 3 rows youre saving for a team and an adult yells at you to leave, there's something wrong. A FIRST volunteer sitting in the back of the stands saw us move from empty row to empty row looking for seats and being told theyre saved, and she told us to go ahead and sit wherever we wanted. Turns out, we were only there for 10 minutes to watch. And no one from the other teams had come to claim their seats yet. 6- Free tubes, leaving stands. Everyone has said pretty much everything to say about this topic. 7- Chaiman's Honorable Mentions. Our team was going for National Chairman's, and although we figured that we wouldn't win this year, we were waiting for the Honorable Mentions. That would let our team know how much we needed to improve our program. If we got the Honorable Mention, then we could scope out which of our programs are Chairman's worthy and which of them need a lot of improvement. I'm not saying we wouldnt do this otherwise, but getting a grasp of where we stand was something we were hoping for as soon as we won Chairman's in LA. We were one of the last teams in the stands because we were waiting for those Honorable Mentions. If FIRST decided it was in the better interest of its teams to nix them, they should have made an announcement somewhere to let teams know who were going for Chairman's. We were all disappointed when the ceremonies seemed to just be over without someone saying it was over and without the Honorable Mentions. Congratulations to MOE, and I wish more teams could have understood the importance of that award for you. I understand that some of them had flights to catch and places to go, but guaranteed that at least a few teams headed over to the Wrap Party. 8- Schedule of Events. For first-time Championship goers like myself, I was oblivious to what was going on, for the most part. I knew the series of events that happened in each divison- practice day, two 1/2 days of qualifiers, and finals- that I learned from regionals. But, outside of that, everything was quite confusing. I heard about a parade but no time, I didnt know how the Einstein finals went, what awards were given when, when the pits opened and closed etc. until the events were actually going on. A schedule of events posted at the entrance to the Dome and at the Pit Admin would have helped a lot of newcomers get a grasp of what was going to happen during those days in Atlanta instead of being rushed along. I had an absolutely awesome time, but there is always room for improvement. |
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