2009 BAE Granite State Regional

[Amanda Morrison]

I will echo everyone's sentiments and note that this was a poorly run regional. Yes, participants understand that there are issues that may come from a new control system, volunteer errors, field problems related to game elements, or isolated incidents related to the venue. I am disappointed to say that this event was plagued by all of these.

Yes, there were control system issues. I won't even go into this except to say that whether related to static or not, it put a complete damper on the event. During the original alliance selection, some teams were not even asked whether or not they accepted the alliance invitation, and in one instance an alliance was almost paired that would have completely violated the rules. (Thank goodness a hundred people or more were screaming in the stands and the rule was finally recognized.) Not to mention teams having to correct volunteers' interpretations of written rules during practice day. All of these incidents just compounded until participants were exasperated.

To cap off all of this madness, I was an unfortunate witness to a few EXCEPTIONALLY rude Verizon Wireless Arena employees who treated attendees with disgusting disrespect. One employee manning the front doors of the arena at the end of the event ran toward two students with a cart of tools and loudly berated them until they left, including the gem that "You won't be ruining my doors with your little robot". Once he was done with those kids, he stopped a girl attempting to enter to meet up with the rest of her team - something that VZW Arena employees told students was okay as long as they were returning to assist teams in the pits. She was belittled and then turned away even after explaining her situation. Even more disturbing, other Verizon employees stood on the pit floor with the EMTs staffing the event and made comments about a few teams that were still packing up their robots and pit areas after the event. (These are comments I don't even want to repeat on CD for inappropriateness.)

The worst part was attending the event with someone who was completely new to FIRST, never having seen a robot or the competitions. Essentially, the entire regional was spent noting "...but it's not normally like this" or "...really, I've never seen this before". I'm sure that made a great impression.

I was a little more forgiving toward the event when I assumed other events were having the same issues - I was shocked to hear that we were still in the awards ceremonies when the DC event was already completely torn down and packed up. After many years in FIRST, the inexperience and way many issues were handled made the GSR event appear extremely poorly run. I'm not so sure I'll be attending next year.