New FIRST competition structure in Michigan

[IndySam]

From what I read they get to play in two events for one fee and only have to pay extra for the State Championship and whatever outside regionals they choose. Is this correct?

[Alex Golec]

Originally Posted by IndySam

From what I read they get to play in two events for one fee and only have to pay extra for the State Championship and whatever outside regionals they choose. Is this correct?

That is correct.

[Cory]

Perhaps my biggest concern, which I forgot to even mention, is how will FIRST find enough volunteers?

They're already hard pressed to find enough qualified people for the key jobs each regional requires. Now Michigan will have 2.5 times the number of events they held in 2008, plus they will not have the volunteers that potentially came to the event with their out of state teams. Nor can they feasibly expect the same volunteers to volunteer twice as many times as last year. Where will all the new volunteers come from, and will there be enough qualified volunteers to fill crucial positions, without the event suffering?

[Madison]

I've read comparisons to organized high school sports and things like Little League, but it seems to me that these things would not be nearly as popular were it not for their professional counterparts. FIRST agrees, even, going so far as to teach us that a culture cultivates what it celebrates.

This feels to me like FIRST is creating Little League before it creates Major League Baseball.

[Craig Roys]

For those asking about cost structure:

$5000 intial fee (KOP and 2 district competitions)
$4000 State Championship
$4000 Out of state competition
$5000 FIRST Championship

I'm definitely intrigued by this. It does seem to be the way FIRST needs to head if they wish to continue to grow. Of course I'm a little biased being a MI team knowing we will get two competitions for our initial fee.

[dtengineering]

Alright... I had a response written up that was far too wordy, so here's the point form version:

Good:

• More plays for the $$ for Michigan teams.
• Tiered events let low to mid level teams experience the playoffs sometimes.
• Reduces shipping/drayage costs.

Bad:

• Kinda tough if you're from Windsor (or other community bordering Michigan) and were planning to play in Detroit. Now you have to spend MORE and travel FURTHER.
  
• "State only" model might be practical (except for above point) but undermines the broad-based international competition that is part of the great appeal of FIRST. Philosophically I like the fact that FRC is currently "blind" to political borders and would like to see it stay that way!

But how....?

• Will they do a quality tech inspection without the practice day?
  
• Will tech inspectors really keep a team from playing in their first match of the day for a minor rule infraction... say... the wrong colour of wires or incorrect length of pneumatic cylinder? These are all things that get identified by tech inspectors and fixed by a team on a practice day that are not likely to be noticed during an 8 hour fix-it window.

And on that note... will teams really get a better experience if they show up ten pounds overweight and miss their first five matches as they try to meet tech? How will that effect the experience of their alliance partners?


It will be interesting to see how it all works out.

Jason

P.S. There are some interesting parallels between this structure and the one announced for the VEX robotics competition earlier this year.

[acdcfan259]

- I can't possibly see this working in some states. If you look, most (maybe not most, but a lot) states have less than the proposed 40 per district event. What are the teams in Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, Alaska, etc. supposed to do. I honestly can't see this as a feasible competition format for all of FIRST.

- As Cory said, we should strengthen the existing teams. There's enough struggling teams that could use help. Quality not quantity.

- The way it seems is that FIRST wants a team in every school, which won't happen. Sponsorships are already hard enough to come by without trying to compete with 10-15 other teams in your area.

[M. Gildner]

This was a good move. Travel costs were too expensive

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by dtk

The top 3 Chairman's and Woodie Flowers award submissions from the state championship will move on to the championship pool. So there will be the same number of Michigan submissions as last year.

I'm not sure if anyone else has brought up this point as I haven't read all 200 some posts but I didn't see much discussion of Chairman's...

In order for your community efforts to be rewarded you have to have a viable robot able to get you to the State Championship? Since when?

Does anyone else question the reasoning here?

I understand the need for the simplification, as a Chairman's submission at every district is not a possibility, but are only teams who have competitive robots able to get them to the championship allowed to make their chairman's presentation? There has been no correlation between the two in the past. Yes, teams that win the Chairman's award generally are experienced and a great force to be reckoned with on the field, but that is not necessarily the case, and every team has their off year for the robot...

To me the Woodie Flowers submission is even more of a necessity for district competitions. Mentors who win this award aren't necessarily from highly experienced or strongly competitive teams and deserving mentors' teams may not make it to the championship. Are we tossing them aside because there team wasn't good enough? Are all of the submissions statewide judged regardless of whether or not the team is attending?

I know the district system isn't perfect and our criticisms won't have the blessing of foresight until summer but I guess we'll see how this ends up. I simply hope no deserving team or mentor is passed up because they did not have an amazing robot.

[Paul Copioli]

The actual rule for the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award for Michigan (I do not know why it is not in the manual yet as several sections for the WFA are missing) has nothing to do with the robot performance.

Basically, you nominate your candidate at one of the Michigan districts you will be attending. At each district, all of the nominated candidates from that district will be called to the playing field to be recognized as nominees.

All of the nominees from all of the districts will be judged for the Michigan State Championship WFFA. There will be 1 WFFA winner from Michigan, not 3. I will not go into the reasons why on this forum. If you really want to know why, then you can discuss it with me during the 2009 season. However, all of the former WFA (it was unanimous) agreed that this was the best approach for Michigan and FIRST.

Agian, it has nothing to do with the robot for the WFFA, including Michigan.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by ICanCountTo19

In order for your community efforts to be rewarded you have to have a viable robot able to get you to the State Championship? Since when?

No. The current plan has a separate category of awards called "FIRST Culture Transforming Awards", which includes Chairman's, Rookie, EI, Woodie Flowers Finalists, Enterpreneurship and Autodesk Visualization. Winners of these awards at Districts will advance to State without their robot. (Unless the robot also qualifies by scores.) The teams will be judged separately at State for advancement to Atlanta: 3 State Chairman's, 1 State EI, 2 State Rookies, 3 WFFA's.

The whole thing will be similar to how the WFFA worked in the past. Regional WFFA's advanced to Atlanta, whether or not their team qualified.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

No. The current plan has a separate category of awards called "FIRST Culture Transforming Awards", which includes Chairman's, Rookie, EI, Woodie Flowers Finalists, Enterpreneurship and Autodesk Visualization. Winners of these awards at Districts will advance to State without their robot. (Unless the robot also qualifies by scores.) The teams will be judged separately at State for advancement to Atlanta: 3 State Chairman's, 1 State EI, 2 State Rookies, 3 WFFA's.

The whole thing will be similar to how the WFFA worked in the past. Regional WFFA's advanced to Atlanta, whether or not their team qualified.

Must teams that are judged, sans robot, for "culture transforming" awards pay registration for the state event? I hope not.

I guess the days where a Chairman's Award submission and presentation are made by members of my robotics team is coming to an end and, instead, I need to start treating that group as a separate organization. I can't, after all, bring 40 kids to an event wherein only 3 of them will present to judges for ten minutes and then have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of event.

My kids were thrilled to win RCA last season and the best part about that for any of our mentors was watching and being there with them as they went out onto the field. I think that moment might lose some of its impact when I have to leave 90% of my team at home because they weren't involved in our entry.

[Craig Roys]

Originally Posted by Madison

I guess the days where a Chairman's Award submission and presentation are made by members of my robotics team is coming to an end and, instead, I need to start treating that group as a separate organization. I can't, after all, bring 40 kids to an event wherein only 3 of them will present to judges for ten minutes and then have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of event.

My kids were thrilled to win RCA last season and the best part about that for any of our mentors was watching and being there with them as they went out onto the field. I think that moment might lose some of its impact when I have to leave 90% of my team at home because they weren't involved in our entry.

Three things:

First:
Why can't you take 40 kids when only three are presenting? I think it would be a wonderful show of team unity if the the entire team were to be present to support the CA presentation team. As a coach, I would be pretty upset if my team didn't want to go the the competition even though we weren't competing. Given that CA is the most prestigious award, my team would be going - robot or no robot.

Second:
As to the "nothing to do", why not have them volunteer for the competition or help out other teams or watch a fun competition w/out the stress (albeit fun stress ) of competing?

Third:
I believe that any team that is organized enough to win a District Level Chairman's Award would also manage to be one of the over 50% of MI teams who qualify for State's. If they're not, see first point above...

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Craig Roys

Three things:

First:
Why can't you take 40 kids when only three are presenting? I think it would be a wonderful show of team unity if the the entire team were to be present to support the CA presentation team. As a coach, I would be pretty upset if my team didn't want to go the the competition even though we weren't competing. Given that CA is the most prestigious award, my team would be going - robot or no robot.

Second:
As to the "nothing to do", why not have them volunteer for the competition or help out other teams or watch a fun competition w/out the stress (albeit fun stress ) of competing?

Third:
I believe that any team that is organized enough to win a District Level Chairman's Award would also manage to be one of the over 50% of MI teams who qualify for State's. If they're not, see first point above...

We could not justify time away from class for most of our students unless they were participating actively in a team activity. Watching a competition or volunteering at a competition are not, in my mind, important enough to warrant the time away.

Traveling to an event, even for a single day, represents a significant expense to our team. We are responsible for funding and arranging transportation and meals for many of our students -- so even something as simple as visiting an event might represent hundreds or thousands of dollars of additional cost.

All of this, of course, completely ignores my fundamental disagreement with eliminating mediocre or bad robots from competition. While I agree somewhat with ideas that a field of proven competitors increases accessibility by the public of FIRST programs, I also believe that students benefit tremendously by seeing the caliber of work of other students, mentors and teams.

How can you congratulate a team for doing the stuff that matters -- ostensibly the role of the Regional Chairman's Award -- while at the same time telling that they can't play along with the stuff that doesn't matter? If it's not about the robots, why not just let them bring it along and have some fun with it?

Or is it really about the robots?

[Applepwns]

I like how the new structure makes it cheaper for teams with hotel fee's and traveling costs, but i really liked traveling out of state last year