New FIRST competition structure in Michigan

[ChristinaR]

Something that hasn't (I think) been touched upon in this thread yet is the lack of the practice day. Instead, teams will have an 8 hour window to fix/build their robots in the week leading up to the event. This places a lot of trust into the hands of the teams, doesn't it? I'm not saying that teams would abuse the privilege of being able to access their robot prior to the competition, but it's unfortunately not a guarantee. The FAQ says robots will be stored at a local facility, so for the 8-hour window, they can pick it up and must return it on time? It's the only way I currently see that is feasible for monitoring this.

Also, with the lack of a practice day, what about things such as scouting? Of course you still get the first day of competition, but I've always viewed the practice day as an all-important resource to get some valuable scouting done. Rookie teams being tossed into the fray of the competition with possibly no experience in facing opponents at an event may suffer as well. The old adage "Practice, Practice, Practice" comes to mind.

[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.

[EricLeifermann]

First question is this mandatory for all Michigan FIRST teams? If it is it should not be.

We are in almost the very most northern tip of the upper peninsula and even if they think it is cheaper to only have to pay for 1 comp to get to play in 2 the cost of busing down 10+ hours to lower Michigan twice is not going to save us any money, and we are a low budget team. In all reality unless they have a district competition in the UP this is not cost effective for any of the teams in the UP.

We go to the Wisconsin regional because its the nearest one and its the cheapest to travel to.

Also this, to me that is, is taking away one of the best things i liked about FIRST, the fact that i can compete and talk to people from around the world. This is just limiting it to teams is Michigan, and that is not as exciting. Yes Michigan has lots of good teams and interesting people but its not even close to talking to someone and competing with people from New Zealand or Israel or Brazil.

[GaryVoshol]

Michigan is in a great situation to try this as a pilot program. If it works in Michigan it can work in a lot of other areas - IL/IN/MO, CA, New England, NY/NJ/PA, maybe DE/MD/VA, etc. Pick any reasonably sized region with about 100 teams, and although you wouldn't be able to call it a State Championship, you could hold several districts advancing to Regional championships. Right now it would NOT work in a lot of other areas - the Northwest, Plains, most of the Southeast - because there isn't a high enough density of teams. Michigan will provide a little experience for teams from sparser regions of the country - even though there are two districts in the Upper Peninsula there are currently only 3 teams in the UP. (Two of the 16 geographical district, which I presume is to allow for eventual expansion - there will only be 7 district events the first year). Those teams plus a few more from the northern Lower Peninsula will be able to provide some input as to how this would work in an area where one district might be nearby, but the other would involve a bit of travel.

The Kettering Rookie District last year was a "real" event, tempered somewhat by the fact that all the teams were rookies and thus it didn't necessarily have the same amount of spirit and traditions that you might find at established regionals. There was a screen, there was sound and a DJ, an MC and announcer. There was a full referee crew, although about only about half were certified. There was a smallish panel of judges and, as a rookie-only event, an appropriate number of awards. There was a full-spec competition field (although that doesn't guarantee anything, the 3+ hour delay proves that!)

I think the biggest question in this is one that has been voiced, what about teams that like to travel to a distant regional? This year they can still do that, subject to time and money. It will be interesting to see what would happen if more regions adopt the district concept - would teams be able to "share" points earned at a district away from your region?

As I understand it, there are two primary goals to be met - lower cost and managing growth. Michigan has a very ambitious goal of having a FRC program in 50% of high schools - some schools would have joint programs. Even now, with 3 regular regionals, there was very little room for any expansion. Detroit Regional filled up within hours of registration opening. (And at only 33 teams capacity, it serves as the model for the district events. Many HS or community college fieldhouses would be at least as large as Wayne State's.) Lower cost comes about by being able to compete in two district competitions for the same cost as one regional, nearer to home than having to travel to an away regional. Plus the district events will be Friday-Saturday only, so teams that do have to travel won't have as high of lodging expenses and students will miss less school.

To address the lack of a practice day: At Kettering there was a block of practice Friday morning. I believe it was a first-come-first-served line. Given that the goal is to have about 12 rounds of play, the teams will get a lot of driving and will improve over the course of the event. And then they get 12 more games at their next event! Scouting will be different, I'm not sure to say more difficult or not, but there will be less teams overall to scout.

I am very excited to see how this concept will pan out.

[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.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by dlavery

What do you think?

I think that whatever I think I'll have to learn to deal with it...

I'm happy this isn't coming to CA next year...

Here are my thoughts:

-One major advantage I see from this is that more competitions will allow teams to improve their robots more over the course of the competition (particularly the rookies). For rookies that only attend one event, they do not get another chance to improve their robots.

-The state championship sounds very fun. I like the idea of regional championships. It would be cool if the top teams from each region got to compete before going to Atlanta. (I'm not sure this would work on the state-by-state basis since many states don't have enough teams).

-I agree with what Cory said. Instead of starting new teams we should really work on improving the teams that are already established. There are plenty of teams here in the Bay Area that are over 8 years old and are still struggling. The experience for students will be better if money, mentors, students, and sponsors are concentrated rather than spread thin...

-I don't like high school sporting events. Actually I just don't like sports period... I'm thouroughly against FIRST becoming more sports-like, and less unique.

-If FIRST didn't take risks, we'd still be playing 1v1 on a feild covered in corn. Right?

[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.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

I also think that some of the more interesting points are being overlooked in this thread...

1. The MI teams being able to keep their robots instead of shipping them (BIG cost savings here!!!).
2. The 8 hour fix-it day before the district events

1. Yay cost savings! Cost savings might be one of the other reasons that the program is going to be piloted in MI. Our economy is completely horrible, since many families have parents working in the car industry, and LOTS of job cuts are happening so that the companies can stay alive. And this isn't just in the car industry; it's getting really hard for anyone to find jobs because of the same reasons. This is affecting sponsorships, too. Sponsorships give us money. I can't speak for anyone else, but 1189 has to stretch our budget over the next few years, because we can't guarantee our sponsorship from GM in upcoming years due to this. We're going to be saving every penny we get, and without shipping costs, we'll be able to save a good amount of money on it. [/long explanation that goes slightly off topic]

2. That's instead of the Thursday practice day. Think about it, we'd only get about 8 hours if we were at the event venue. Though I suppose that the advantage here is that we have access to our own shops, and don't have to rely on what we can bring into the pits.

[Jim Zondag]

To comment on a few items in this thread:

The goal of this initiative is to test a new model of FIRST Competition.

The purpose of this change is to increase the "Return on Investment" (ROI) for teams. All teams who compete in FIRST commit a certain amount of Investment in the areas of Time, Money and Effort in order to build a robot and manage the team. Their Return on this investment is how many times they get to play with this robot, and the experience of the competition events.

In today's system, the ROI for many teams is very low and many teams compete at only one event. Creating a system where teams can compete at 2 events for the price of one effectively doubles the ROI for many teams. The new district events will guarantee 12 qualifying rounds per event compared to many of today's events today which often only have 8 rounds/team. Thus in 2009, a team can get 24 qualifying rounds for the same price as 8 round cost in 2008, a 300% increase in ROI! Odds of advancing to eliminations increases for all teams at the new smaller events.

Other factors further increasing this are, reduced travel costs, no shipping costs, etc.

An earlier post spoke of sustainability of existing teams. This change will help everyone, new and veterans, because it reduces the amount of time, money and effort that all teams must commit while maintaining as much of the experience as possible.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Karibou

2. That's instead of the Thursday practice day. Think about it, we'd only get about 8 hours if we were at the event venue. Though I suppose that the advantage here is that we have access to our own shops, and don't have to rely on what we can bring into the pits.

Actually, you'd get 12 hours at the event on Thursday, plus an opportunity to use a competition field, something very few teams have access to.

I hope it doesn't turn out badly, but I can see all kinds of unfortunate scenarios playing out due to eliminating Thursday.

[Jonathan Norris]

I agree with Cory on this one, FIRST Robotics Challenge is not for every high school... there I said it. I have seen too many situations where FRC just doesn't work at a high school, and I am now seeing it first hand trying to start a team in a city and region that hasn't ever heard of FIRST. Trying to convince a cash strapped school that you can run a $10,000+ robotics program when there are easier and cheaper alternatives available isn't easy.

It comes down to one simple fact: the cost of entry is too high. Yea I know FIRST does a great job getting sponsors to subsidize some of the cost, but $10,000 to run a basic team is still too much for a large number of schools. The major selling point of FIRST is that it really isn't just your average high school competition, it is an advanced robotics competition that is run more like a professional sporting event then a simple one day high school science competition.

By having these small regional events leading up to the normal sized state event, you are reducing the quality of the regionals, and by association will reduce the quality of the competition, robots, and ultimately the great learning experience that FIRST is.

FRC needs to continue to be what it is, the most advanced high school robotics competition in the world. Where students get a unique opportunity to work with engineers on an advanced very real world engineering problem. Lets not water-down what is a great competition and learning experience just so we can accommodate teams that don't have the resources to compete. Let FTC and VEX be the platform that gets the ideals and competition of FIRST into every high school. There is no reason why FTC and VEX can't be in every high school, but there are plenty of reasons why FRC can't and shouldn't try to be.

[Jonathan Norris]

Originally Posted by Cory

Actually, you'd get 12 hours at the event on Thursday, plus an opportunity to use a competition field, something very few teams have access to.

I hope it doesn't turn out badly, but I can see all kinds of unfortunate scenarios playing out due to eliminating Thursday.

Again I'm agreeing with Cory on this one (seems to be turning into a trend...). Thursdays are boring for a reason, because 95% of the robots don't work properly yet (at the first regionals at least, but it isn't that much better at second regionals). Practice matches are a HUGE reason for why the competition gets interesting Friday afternoon. Without Thursday.... Friday is going to be ugly.

[EricH]

I'm almost inclined to agree with Cory and Jonathan. There are quite a few valid objections to the new structure. These have been raised already; therefore, I won't go into them.

There are also good reasons to make the change permanent and even more widespread. Again, these have been brought up already.

However, I would like to remind everyone that this is a PILOT. As such, it may fail. It will almost certainly lead to changes. It may succeed. We won't know until next April/May whether it worked; more importantly, whether it worked the way it was intended to. We can only observe how it goes and give FIRST feedback as spectators and participants. I'm going to give FIRST the benefit of the doubt on this one, because it's an experiment. But if it doesn't work out, then someone will need to figure up some other way of reducing costs and/or improving return; i.e. increasing the "value" (in this case, bang-for-the-buck) of FIRST.

[smurfgirl]

Wow this sounds really interesting, I can't wait to see how this turns out. Is this the key to the future of FIRST? I will definitely keep my eye on Michigan this year.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

It comes down to one simple fact: the cost of entry is too high. Yea I know FIRST does a great job getting sponsors to subsidize some of the cost, but $10,000 to run a basic team is still too much for a large number of schools.

Your dissenting point actually just made the point as to why this pilot is a good idea. The reason for trying this change is due to the fact that the cost IS too high for a lot of schools. So what's the solution? Lower the cost per event. Obviously this isn't the end solution, but if everyone decides that they can enjoy a pared down competition just as much as one with all of the thrills, then maybe they can expand on this solution and find other ways to cut costs without ruining the inspiration.

What bothers me is everyone saying that they shouldn't try it because people won't have the great experience, etc. etc. Well that is why the SHOULD try it. How will anyone know what the experience will actually be like until they try it?

There is a great competition that everyone talks about that acts as a pared down version of a regional. It has scaled back audio-visuals, two day format, and many of the other things being proposed for this pilot. This competition is called the IRI. I'm sure many people agree that they have a pretty good competition experience there.

I guess my point is, let's see how it plays out before we condemn it to failure.