Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Went Well or What You Liked

[Anastasia]

Great Speakers! I'm amazed at the influential people that were brought in. It was amazing to see how much recognition FIRST is getting. Amazing video from DARPA.

International teams. Just seeing how far FIRST has spread, inspiring so many...It was great.

Queuing was efficient, and the path between the dome and the pits was kept free from any sort of "traffic".

Some rules that were more open to interpretation were explained and taken care of before matches started.

Everything was running pretty well on time!

I was also very impressed with team 1902, Exploding Bacon. I worked at the practice arena for Newton and Galileo for a few hours towards the end of the day on Thursday. Even though I was wearing my team shirt and not a volunteer shirt (and was a high schooler) they followed instructions and listened on the practice field.
I was also impressed how a people from the team came up to me personally just to say "I'd just like to thank you again for all the work you're doing volunteering. You're doing a great job." It felt GREAT and definitely made my weekend! It was just very nice to be appreciated and recognized =] Thank you!

[nerd_dad]

I have to say that Atlanta did a fantastic job for this event. As an old guy who's seen a lot of conventions, expos, and tournaments, I felt that the facilities were top-notch, the staff friendly, the food edible, and even the airport security wasn't the nightmare that I had been expecting.

I'm sure everyone has legitimate gripes -- as a long time Diet Coke fiend, I resented the fact that it was 50 cents more in the Dome than in the Congress Center -- but I've never seen an event of this size run as smoothly as this one did, and I've attended a number of well-funded corporate events in places like Orlando and Vegas. The staff delivering the crates, for example, kept their cool even though there were too few of them for the job; the MARTA staff were always helpful -- the trains ran late enough that we could take them back after a long evening of weather delays. I also appreciated the street banners and finding that the Peachtree Mall food court extended its hours to serve the hordes of kids and adults looking for affordable food.

Nothing is perfect: rules are never 100% consistently enforced; mistakes get made -- engineering is a human activity, and involves much more than just math and science. When all is said and done, though, I had a great time and felt that there were very few things that could have gone better, and a great number that could have gone much, much worse. So much was done right, I hope that we can keep the things that didn't in perspective...

Ken M
(Occasional heavy lifting and crate construction for Team 1732)

[Tom Bottiglieri]

I like that even though there were some inconsistencies with reffing, mistakes brought to the head ref's attention were fixed.

For example, Team 195 used a dead reckoning autonomous mode. For some reason, in two of their matches the tube did not release. In the first match, the ref took the the tube out. In the second match, the tube was not taken out and when tele-op mode started, the claw automatically opened and the tube fell onto the rack. There was no penalty assessed after the matter was brought to the refs attention.

[Stephen Kowski]

Number of matches - I really enjoyed having a smaller match list. This gave my team more time to prepare, and improve certain aspects of our bot. It gave time for the drive team to actually eat and take small breaks. I know that is not what most wanted (from what I understand most everyone wants more matches), but I liked this anyways.

I am not an advocate of the 10 match qualification schedule (looking at you palmetto ). Matches one right after the next is just hectic and more of a chore than anything. Seven or Eight matches is right where I think it should be 4, 5 matches on friday 2, 3 matches on saturday.

[IndySam]

A few thoughts.

Our inspector was great. I always like when an inspector makes a few suggestions to improve a teams reliability.

I met so many great teams and people that I can’t begin to list them.

I loved the venue. Because of the post about past years I was afraid of the long walk but I found it to be tolerable. Walking onto the floor of the Georgia dome is a great experience. We managed to give all of the seniors on the team a chance to go onto the floor.

We had a great time. I can’t believe we waited so long to come (this is the sixth year for our team.) We won’t make that mistake again.

[dangerousdave]

Originally Posted by nerd_dad

I have to say that Atlanta did a fantastic job for this event. As an old guy who's seen a lot of conventions, expos, and tournaments, I felt that the facilities were top-notch, the staff friendly, the food edible, and even the airport security wasn't the nightmare that I had been expecting.

I'm sure everyone has legitimate gripes -- as a long time Diet Coke fiend, I resented the fact that it was 50 cents more in the Dome than in the Congress Center --

I have heard that the WCC made an effort although small, to lower their usual concession prices for First. Their prices are typically the same as in the dome. Like a lot of people I go to CNN center for the best selection and prices. I know that is not convenient for everyone who is on a tight schedule though.
Dave

[technoL]

I was going to originally post in the "What needs to be improved" thread, but I'll post the positive here instead.

I really enjoyed most of the workshops that I went to, even after spending the first 45 minutes of Thursday looking for the location, far far far far away with no signage. Big thanks to Kim O'Toole from 1511 for all of the great resources and an amazing presentation, that will hopefully help our team tremendously next year.

Also, although there were a few issues with the Dome staff, they were quite nice to us towards the end of the event when we were trapped at SOAP after all of the divisions ended and needed to find a way off of the field.

The LogoLoc store was great too. It was much easier this year selecting and stocking up on FIRST gear when the room wasn't as crowded with all of the shirts being printed elsewhere. I didn't mind at all coming back a few hours later to pick up my shirt to avoid long printing/processing times. And as expected, the staff was more than friendly.

-No L

[RoboMom]

I am in awe of the quality and the numbers of volunteers who take time off from work and school, pay their own way (or convince their companies to fund them), travel thousands of miles through rain/snow/thunderstorms/high winds on buses, cars, planes and trains to work hard in return for a t-shirt, a pin, some meals and a lot of thanks.

[Liz Smith]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

I am in awe of the quality and the numbers of volunteers who take time off from work and school, pay their own way (or convince their companies to fund them), travel thousands of miles through rain/snow/thunderstorms/high winds on buses, cars, planes and trains to work hard in return for a t-shirt, a pin, some meals and a lot of thanks.

I don't know about the other volunteers, but I certainly got more out of Atlanta this year than a t-shirt, pin, and a few free meals. I said it in another thread, but this year was one of my best experiences with FIRST. I've met so many amazing people this year, people who I'll be friends with for a long time. I really enjoy just being there and watching amazing robots surrounded by people who really care about the robots, the matches, and the program as a whole. Though I payed for the trip out of pocket, and standing on the floor of the GA dome for 3 days straight definitely was tiring, and I had a whole bunch of school work as soon as I came back, I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Additionally, I was thoroughly impressed by the amount of thank yous I got. During the Galileo award ceremony, the referees were out on the field giving out medals. There were so many people who, while they were recieving their awards, took time to thank the referees for their time and effort as volunteers. Even walking through the pits meeting the teams I recieved a lot of thank yous.