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  #46   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 15-04-2007, 19:59
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

The close-ups of the bumpers have to stop. Although, I thought it quite interesting--our pneumatics depressurized, and at the end of the match the camera settled on our pneumatics board. I would've thought it even more funny if I could see the problem from the stands, but there's no way I'd be able to see anything on those horrid LED displays (that have been there since I was a freshman). I mean, there are hundreds of regionals with hundreds of projectors. Why not use them? The resolution on the LED screens was just barely high enough to read the score. And the projectors in the pits needed to be doubled up, like at a regional, because when alliance selections came up I could not distinguish a 6 from an 8.

There were no dedicated speakers towards the left side of the seating for the finals and awards. We heard the echo (which might not be able to be avoided) from the other speakers and understood roughly 50% of what was said.

And I would've liked to see confetti. But I don't want it to get in the way, so leave it out if it's going to block the view.

Overall a great event; I have more positive than negative things to say.

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Unread 15-04-2007, 20:01
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

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Originally Posted by Jon Anderson View Post
A nuisance at the championships was the ridiculous lengths that people are extending to in order to win the safety award. A fine line between safety and annoyance exists and the line was crossed. The award should be done away with completely or modified to include words like professionally or "not in a way that bothers everyone while contributing next to nothing in terms of safety."
I think I received the same safety sheet from 5 different teams. Safety posters are fun, unique safety sheets are OK, but I agree, it was a bit excessive to the point that Safety Kate didn't even read it all. I was also a bit disappointed with the lack of Safety Judge involvement. I saw them congregating quite a bit, but only one ever came to my pit. I spent a lot of time preparing for their visits. Yes, we should be safe anyway, but after being visited twice a day at the regionals, I had prepared the things that I had been missing before and felt it was for nothing when our pit was never evaluated.

I also agree that the sound system in the pits was awful. I realize that there is a lot of noise involved with that amount of people, but I never once could make out an announcement.

Overall, though, this event was one of the best experiences I have ever had!
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Unread 15-04-2007, 20:04
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

It's a fact that nothing can be done about, people will leave before all the awards are given out. Most of the time, it's to catch a flight or some other reason related to having to leave to go home.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 20:06
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

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Originally Posted by Jon Anderson View Post
A nuisance at the championships was the ridiculous lengths that people are extending to in order to win the safety award. A fine line between safety and annoyance exists and the line was crossed. The award should be done away with completely or modified to include words like professionally or "not in a way that bothers everyone while contributing next to nothing in terms of safety."
Our team was thinking of talking to a safety adviser about this very problem.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 20:18
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

I thought it was wuiet disrespectful when people were jumping over the wall to get tubes DURING the awards. but thats my opinion.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 20:28
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

I agree with many of the comments made so far. Here is my list, which may be a bit repetitive, but from a different perspective.

* FREE TUBES
It was disappointed that someone like Mike Wade from NASA Goddard, who works so hard to supply field and field manager for many events on the East Coast, was not able to get ANY of the tubes that FIRST was using during the Championship. I don't mind if extras were given away. However, they would definitely be put to good use if Mike W. had a full-field set of them. Have someone truck them over to the wrap party and distribute thre rest if there were extras.

* TIME FOR FINALS / AWARDS
Either FIRST should shorten the awards/finals or incorporate the actual running time in the program. For the past X years, this part of the Championship has taken longer than allotted in the schedule. Let's just modify the schedule to indicate their true length. Then teams can plan accordingly and, perhaps, will not need to leave before they are complete.

* ENGINEERING INSPIRATION / CHAIRMANS AWARD
Last year, MOE won the CMP Engineering Inspiration Award. Since FIRST considers is the second highest award they present, this award should come right before the Chairman's Award and be given the honor it deserves.

Having won the Chairman's Award, our team was more excited than concerned about teams leaving early. I can understand why some might leave if they had transportation issues and needed to go to the wrap party, which they may have paid for but, due to the length of the finals/awards, could not stay at for long before they had to leave.

With all the emotion at the time, I hardly noticed teams leaving, but considered the comments here, I wish that it would have been run more effectively. Confetti, fireworks, or some special effect would have been nice to demonstrate the importance of the award. I can understand why confetti balls would not be used, but there are also confetti "shooters" which are unobtrusive and just as fun.

The best part of Houston Championship a few years ago for me was the balloons falling all around at the end of the Chairman's Award presentation. That was a reason to stay!!

* GETTING DOWN TO THE FIELD
Due to seating, our team stayed in our Curie seats throughout the finals. When we learned we won the Chairman's Award, we thought we could use the stairs right in front of us to get down to the field. Unfortunately, they had been locked up, so we had to walk up to the concourse, through lots of people, and back down the main aisleway. This took a long time. I felt bad that we did not have more MOEboteers down on the field, but we could not get their easily. It would have been very easy to have someone open the stairs for us. We could have saved 5-10 minutes.

Alternatively, it was very nice to walk by many teams who gave high fives and congratulated us.

* FINAL VIDEO COLLAGE
I remember the video collage at Disney World in 2000, our rookie year. It was awesome and was followed by fireworks and laser lights. It had a profound affect on me and reinforced what was so special about FIRST and the event my team had just completed. It was a fitting close for the event. It's a shame for the people and hours it took to compile that video to not have it more prominently displayed before everyone took off for the wrap party. I only caught glimpses of it as I made my way down to the field.

* WRAP PARTY
Not enough drinks (one whole row was empty) and the sound from the main stage was too loud to have a decent conversation (might be my "old ears").

FIRST did some great planning and execution for much of this event. However, the issues above bring down their overall rating for me.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 21:11
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

The Algorithm
Seriously, FIRST, this has got to go. A lot of people are complaining about it, and rightfully so. In no world should somebody in the top 10 in tube scoring in their division seed 66th (125). Putting a team at a purposeful disadvantage is borderline ridiculous.
This led to other issues as well. To be quite frank, the finals were boring. I miss the days of the 2005/2006 finals, where it was a clash of the titans. The most deserving team got the #1 seed, and then picked who they thought was second best. Now it's normally a random team at #1, who will either pick a begrudging team that deserved to be #1, or will pick several of the best teams, who will decline (Newton 2006, Curie 2007 are examples, although the former didn't have the algorithm of doom).

The opening ceremonies
Please, show them on Galileo and Newton. I missed the WFA because I was in the stands in Galileo keeping some seats for the team. It would also make for a much faster transition from opening ceremonies to the first match. Speaking of the WFA, I would like to see it moved to Saturday afternoon. It seems devalued to have it when so many people can't see it.

The schedule
I don't like the way that the championships is structured. Practice day seems a bit pointless. I think that Thursday morning should be used for calibration and open practice, and then Thursday afternoon should have the opening ceremonies and a set of matches until about 6 or so. It lets all of the teams in a growing championships get more matches in.

The awards/finals
I don't like how *all* of the awards are intermixed with the finals. If the opening ceremonies are on Thursday, it gives more time to judge technical awards and they can be given Friday afternoon.


That's all I can think of for now, I'll post again if I can think of more.
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Last edited by Daniel Brim : 16-04-2007 at 00:44.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 21:28
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

there should be more excitement when the team wins nationals...confetti balloons and i think there should be better announcing of the winning teams

Also i think the announcers should announce all the regionals win for [u]each teams it seems sometimes they didnt do that

Finally i notice a few times the possesion rule wasn't inforced and it could of made a difference of the mathcs but besides that ATLANTA IS AWESOME better weather than indiana
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Unread 15-04-2007, 21:30
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

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Originally Posted by Daniel Brim View Post
The Algorithm
Seriously, FIRST, this has got to go. A lot of people are complaining about it, and rightfully so. In no world should somebody in the top 10 in tube scoring in their division seed 66th (125). Putting a team at a purposeful disadvantage is borderline ridiculous.
This led to other issues as well. To be quite frank, the finals were boring. I miss the days of the 2005/2006 finals, where it was a clash of the titans. The most deserving team got the #1 seed, and then picked who they thought was second best. Now it's normally a random team at #1, who will either pick a begrudging team that deserved to be #1, or will pick several of the best teams, who will decline (Newton 2006, Curie 2007 are examples, although the former didn't have the algorithm of doom).

YES!! Gah, so many good teams were in places they shouldn't have been and they lost those matches due to bad alliances. We were greatly suprised how low Robonauts were, but at least they got picked, I wasn't able to watch their matches though.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 21:53
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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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Unread 15-04-2007, 21:53
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Brim View Post
The Algorithm
Seriously, FIRST, this has got to go. A lot of people are complaining about it, and rightfully so. In no world should somebody in the top 10 in tube scoring in their division seed 66th (125). Putting a team at a purposeful disadvantage is borderline ridiculous.
This led to other issues as well. To be quite frank, the finals were boring. I miss the days of the 2005/2006 finals, where it was a clash of the titans. The most deserving team got the #1 seed, and then picked who they thought was second best. Now it's normally a random team at #1, who will either pick a begrudging team that deserved to be #1, or will pick several of the best teams, who will decline (Newton 2006, Curie 2007 are examples, although the former didn't have the algorithm of doom).
I like to think of the sorting algorithms and ranking systems as part of the challenge of the game. Yes, it's entirely possible that a poor performing robot gets lifted up because of their match schedule just as it's entirely possible that a well performing robot will get torn down. I think every team who's been around for a couple years has been on both sides of the fence.

If you are a truly amazing team who is ranked poorly, more often than not people will notice that. If they don't notice it, you can help them by passing out fact sheets to the highly ranked teams. My team did a considerable amount of scouting at the Championship and I can assure you we looked foremost at the robots ability.

You talked about 1114 and 330 rejecting us (1732) in the Curie division. When we picked them we knew full well that they were both going to reject us because they had told us that before the alliance selection. Since we (of course) wanted to win, we decided to make sure those two got split up. Again, it's just part of the strategy of the game.

If FIRST came up with a way of ranking teams from highest to lowest ability in perfect order I think the game would lose an entire dimension of strategy.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 22:02
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

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Originally Posted by jill399 View Post
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.
Agreed entirely. The list of seedings was nearly impossible to read. In addition, the way it scrolled, it was even nearer to impossible to determine who the number 1 seed was, because it was gone in an instant. I liked the way it was displayed last year much better.

Quote:
Originally Posted by shawger View Post
If FIRST came up with a way of ranking teams from highest to lowest ability in perfect order I think the game would lose an entire dimension of strategy.
It's not going to be in perfect order with any system (see: Aces High last year), but it is the most fair to all teams to make the matches completely random. I don't think that any other system can come remotely close to matching that.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 22:24
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

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Originally Posted by JBotAlan View Post
The close-ups of the bumpers have to stop. Although, I thought it quite interesting--our pneumatics depressurized, and at the end of the match the camera settled on our pneumatics board. I would've thought it even more funny if I could see the problem from the stands, but there's no way I'd be able to see anything on those horrid LED displays (that have been there since I was a freshman). I mean, there are hundreds of regionals with hundreds of projectors. Why not use them? The resolution on the LED screens was just barely high enough to read the score. And the projectors in the pits needed to be doubled up, like at a regional, because when alliance selections came up I could not distinguish a 6 from an 8.
Because the LEDs are brighter. There is no way they could run projectors in the dome and have them any better than the LEDs. Look at the screens in the pits, and how much the ambient light effected them, even when the lights near the screens were shut off. Regionals use the projectors because they're in dark arenas - because of the dome's semi open ceiling, there would just be too much ambient light.

I think that they could of adjusted the text size on scoring computer to better suit the LEDs though. The wide screen display on Einstein was very impressive though.

My complaints -

The dynamic matches. I understand the field running early/late, but at one point its running TOO early. The communication system needs to be greatly improved. FIRST should take a look at Sundial and consider the possibilities for it. Every team has at least 1 laptop with them .. we used it at both of our regionals and it greatly helped us.

Pit announcement system. It's too much. The announcer reads things off non stop, and it seemed very quiet this year. Maybe they need to add a 3rd "message" display for each field that specific messages can be posted onto (at least for part requests). Some kind of a clock that shows how close the field is on time (*cough* sundial *cough*)

Teams leaving early. I realize that some teams have a plane to catch. In that case, they should be seated in an area where they can make a quiet exit. I was very disappointed in the teams that left Einstein before the Chairmans award was given, that was totally disrespectful to the team that wins the highest honor FIRST can give out.
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Unread 15-04-2007, 22:46
JaneYoung JaneYoung is offline
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

Just one or two comments -
I'm reading a lot about teams having to leave before the Chairman's Award was announced. From years past, I have been on a team that had to leave the ceremonies early so that we could make our departure deadline. This year I traveled in a manner that allowed me to stay for the Chairman's and I was thrilled to be a part of it. I'm not sure that what we are seeing is disrespectful or rude, it just is what it is. To manage everything we all do at the Championship, juggling teams' individual schedules, demands, and contending with the weather - is something that has to be taken into account. It is my thinking that FIRST has tried hard in several areas such as the awards distribution and recognition, to try to schedule them in a way that can benefit as many as possible.

Also, regarding the confetti - I had the privilege of doing a little bit of volunteering at the Championship this year and discovered that many of the employees of the arena arrive at 4:00 a.m. to begin preparation for the day's events and attend to our FIRST specific needs, such as the pit. They stay until after we are gone, making for a very long day for them. If confetti is rained down into the stands, those employees have to clean it up. We leave, they stay and clean. I understand that we want to have a very special closing celebration but just the fact that I could stay and participate was enough for me this year. I understand that many events celebrate with confetti but, to me, monies can be better spent on other things and I'm glad no one had to clean it up.

Jane
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Unread 15-04-2007, 22:55
Cartwright Cartwright is offline
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Re: Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

I think a big improvement that could be made for next year is more clarification and reason for each penalty. In our division at least, they announced the penalty but not its cause, confusing the entire audience if it wasn't obvious.
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