Michigan Regional System: Who is asking the hard questions around here?

[Katy]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Rather than a discussion of the specific merits and issues with the michigan structure (which has been discussed ad naseum in other threads), I think Katy's point was to lay out a discussion of what constitutes success.
Regardless of whether or not FIRST puts out an official "criteria for success" of the Michigan district pilot, the community needs to weigh in on what should be considered successful. This is especially imperative since FIRST has not issued such criteria publicly.

Lil'Lavery couldn't have said it better! As a matter of fact as it turns out "Big Lavery" said it better than ever I did or could have! This is a post well-worth reading and if I had known about it before starting this you had better bet I would have quoted it quite a bit. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?p=761241

Originally Posted by Mike Q.

we competed in traverse city this weekend. we played 12 qualifying matches even though there was quite a few field problems. most of the field problems were communication errors. the competition level was a little down from a standard Michigan regional.

Thank you Mike Q! Can you please go into some detail: do you have any more information about the field problems (the issue, count of number of times it delayed a match, number of times it effected match outcomes) etc. Do you have any other information that answers any other questions that have been posted so far?

As our discussion is continuing it is becoming apparent that we will need data in general to compare Michigan to! It is not fair to compare them to an ideal, we should compare it normal larger regionals. If you have data compiled from other regionals for comparison purposes please post it!

Also we're going to need some way to organize this data probably if we ever do get it in serious volume. A google doc...I am not sure how to make it so anybody can edit it. I guess I could paste in an invite and check "invites can be used by anybody" or something but that is somewhat awkward. Thoughts?

Originally Posted by WEHickok

I have been involved with this since our first meeting in Francois' living room last April or May. Our every move has been monitored by FIRST and the FIRST Board of Directors. This has not been done in a secret as some have stated.

Dude! Does that mean party at Francois' house and we're all invited? I approve! Let's go make some robot policy!

No seriously, I do not think "a meeting in somebody's living room" particularly supports your proposal that this process was "transparent policy making."

Originally Posted by WEHickok

Brandis University (I hope I spelled that correctly) has already created a survey that will be used at the close of the season...asking teams, parents, students, volunteers, etc., for their reaction. This data will be studied.

Can we see this survey? Maybe it can help us create some of our criteria! Will we be allowed to see the raw unprocessed result data?

Originally Posted by WEHickok

So, Please give this a try. Let us see where this goes.

I don't think anybody is "not giving this a try." We just want to evaluate the try scientifically. We're engineers, what do you expect?

All trolling aside, I really appreciate the data you are bringing to the table for this discussion. You have a perspective and access to data that most of us do not. Whatever data that perspective provides for our evaluation we will be quite thankful for.