Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

[Mike Martus]

Many great accurate suggestions I hope FIRST is looking at these....

I would also add the "Free Tubes" major error.

I would add one that has not been mentioned:

Sundial - could be great - if it would work. Many problems with it crashing.
There were many teams violating FIRST rules by operating a wireless network. They were asked to shut down but did not. We were told it was all the networks that were causing the problems with Sundial.

Remember an event this massive will always have issues and areas to improve upon.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Originally Posted by Mike Martus

Many great accurate suggestions I hope FIRST is looking at these....

I would also add the "Free Tubes" major error.

I would add one that has not been mentioned:

Sundial - could be great - if it would work. Many problems with it crashing.
There were many teams violating FIRST rules by operating a wireless network. They were asked to shut down but did not. We were told it was all the networks that were causing the problems with Sundial.

Remember an event this massive will always have issues and areas to improve upon.

I agree with all of this, but the bold part the most. Our team got a crap load of deflated tubes, but not because FIRST handed them out but because my not-so-smart brother jumped over the ledge (at least 8ft drop) right after they announced that people could go down to get them. They didn't say anything about getting tubes after the matches were done until after the fact (when only the Einstein stairway was open). This was a potential safety hazard for people in the stands. I'm glad to have not seen anyone else jump over the ledge to get down there. I do blame my brother for him jumping and not FIRST, I yelled at him a lot. He was our Safety Captain and worked hard on promoting safety in the pits but he did stupid stuff like jumping over the ledge and not wearing safety glasses on the floor.

I also think that the walk from the stands to the pits has been greatly improved since the last time I was there in 2004. My feet still hurt though, I made several trips from the stands to the playing field in less than 15 minutes without running... that was a chore.


Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I was kicked off of the side of the Archimedes field during eliminations because I was not a member of any teams on the field at that time. However, I had been walking around the ENTIRE stadium taking photos of all teams the entire weekend. It just so happened that I celebrated with members of 107 ("sister team") when they had made it to the finals. That's pretty much my only personal complaint...

Then there's the problem with my FIRST Behind the Design book getting stolen from my seat on Thursday... that wasn't funny.

[Wayne Doenges]

I would like to see standardized refereeing.
We didn't find, until we lost the first QF match, that the ref had been measuring our lift from the bottom of our wing and not the lifted robots wheel. Someone took a picture, after the buzzer sounded, and it showed that the robot's wheel was a good inch above the line but we only got 15 points for the lift. The match would have been tied.
After our alliance captain protested, and all the refs had a meeting, we got 60 points for the next lift.

I liked Sundial when it worked.

I didn't like the loooooong walk to the arena. My feet are still not talking to me