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.

[Doctorwho]

It might just have been me but I was surprised when the announcer stated in the semi-finals that the non-BAE sponsored teams were in trouble because they were up against an all BAE supported team. I have no problem with who a team is sponsored by, that's their business but it seems unprofessional to make such a comment to other teams, it made me feel that there was a bias between BAE groups and teams that wern't backed by BAE Systems.

[BHS Bucs]

We just laughed over the comment about being against all BAE teams. We took it as a joke. And then we won.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

I will echo everyone's sentiments and note that this was a poorly run regional.

Everything Amanda has said is true. All of the volunteers (besides Verizon employees) were nice people. When you try to slip something by all the veteran teams at this event, we are going to notice. The teams have spent 8 weeks immersed in this game and now it inside and out. Some of the volunteers seemed like they just started reading the rules this past Wednesday. This could be because almost all volunteers were BAE employees.

The first year of the Boston Regional was more professional than this weekends event (BAE Regional has been around for 7 years now). At times, it felt more like a scrimmage than an FRC Regional.

These are my points coming from a drive team coaches point of view:

• Pit Setup - The pits were completely out of order. No rhyme or reason to how they were set up. Made alliance strategy sessions and pit scouting a nightmare. Please put teams in order.
• Announcer - Please pair up new announcers with veterans. I know Andy Grady was helping his team and saving his voice for Boston. But, there are many other veterans in the area that could have helped. The webcast is hard enough to watch without a good announcer. Although the announcing did get much better.
• Rules - Having to argue with queuers about were human players and robots can start was a headache. This was figured out by Friday morning though.
• Alliance Picking Redo - When multiple teams are telling you the rankings are wrong, please take the 5 minutes to double check. Don't let the picking happen, let teams have half an hour to eat lunch and make a strategy, then decide to redo picking. Also teams had absolutely no time to prepare for a second round of picking. The top 8 changed and teams were unprepared. Unacceptable.
• Scoring System/Rankings - Teams have made Excel spreadsheets more solid than the current scoring and ranking system. No excuse for this.
• Field Control - Multiple teams experienced matches when their Auto modes did not run. Matches were decided because teams sat there and got their trailers filled.
• No Comms - When a whole alliance loses communication 30 seconds into a match, kill the match and replay ASAP. Do not play out the match, score it, and then redo it.
• DJ/Music - Nicest guy. Played what teams wanted to hear during their matches. The YMCA and other line dance songs were saved for down times and not overplayed.

I know that is alot of gripes but they need to be said to hopefully improve the regional for next year. For many New England teams, this was their only event for 2009.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Doctorwho

It might just have been me but I was surprised when the announcer stated in the semi-finals that the non-BAE sponsored teams were in trouble because they were up against an all BAE supported team. I have no problem with who a team is sponsored by, that's their business but it seems unprofessional to make such a comment to other teams, it made me feel that there was a bias between BAE groups and teams that wern't backed by BAE Systems.

As the mentor assisting our scouting, I can tell you that sponsors didn't enter our discussion. We were soley focused on robots that would play into our strategy.

The first time I realized that they were all BAE teams was when he made that comment.

Originally Posted by BHS Bucs

We just laughed over the comment about being against all BAE teams. We took it as a joke. And then we won.

We all laughed about that comment as well.
Y'all were awesome. Congratulations on your win.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by 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.

What was just as bad was the regolith coming up on the edges (There were a number of teams that had issues with the regolith coming up). We had more than 1/2" clearence and we still got caught on the "flat" regolith edge and disabled by the refs for "tearing up the field". They also refused to redo any of those matches where the regolith caused teams to get disabled, yet they were frequently redoing matches for the field control system.

Just frustrating.

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

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.

I, too, saw VZW employees that were "less than Courteous". I had 1 employee tell me how much of a pain it was that he had to come in on Friday, and then continue to say that he 'Had' to be in on Saturday as well. **note: my words are more polite than the words he used **.


I understand the difficulties of a new control system, and I can sympathize with all the issues that they faced at GSR. However, things like picking alliances without doublechecking to make sure the order is correct is just poor decisionmaking. Hopefully the orgainizers will see and fix these things for next year.

[BHS Bucs]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

We all laughed about that comment as well.
Y'all were awesome. Congratulations on your win.

We had a wonderful time - it was a pleasure playing against you and all the other teams. We sure learned a lot!

[Charlie_A]

I would like to lightly scold think pink for not making the phrase "Enigma".

[Isaac501]

Originally Posted by Charlie_A

I would like to lightly scold think pink for not making the phrase "Enigma".

"Gnome Hat" was pretty excellent though, as was "Minigoat"

[GBIT]

Yes my team too was personaly berated by the VZW staff. We had a (i believe) security guard screaming at our team to hurry up and to not take up anymore room on "his" floor. **again nicer words used here**

Though there were a lot of problems the GSR staff were very willing to say they were wrong... And correct their mistakes... as a driver I fond it very frustratiing to have to explain that we didn't deserve to lose an empty cell, or that our PS's could be anywhere, but after explaining it was all good..

I will admit the alliance parings was annoying but I'm glad they owned up to their mistake...

I've been to GSR 3 times now as a driver and i will admit this one was the most frustrating, it all ended up being fun in the end and the staff and all great people..

[Mike Betts]

My team did not participate but a few of us drove up to the event. I came in without wearing any team colors, just a spectator.

As a spectator, I was appalled at the teams who had many seats available in "saved sections" and were indignant or downright rude when I asked to sit.

After getting bounced from the fifth "saved section" I tried to point out that saving seats was not allowed (section 3.15.4). What I received was a hostile tirade... I just walked away...

This is no way to treat a visitor... If I were a visiting teacher or engineer looking to start a team, I might have walked away forever...

Regards,

Mike

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Mike Betts

My team did not participate but a few of us drove up to the event. I came in without wearing any team colors, just a spectator.

As a spectator, I was appalled at the teams who had many seats available in "saved sections" and were indignant or downright rude when I asked to sit.

After getting bounced from the fifth "saved section" I tried to point out that saving seats was not allowed (section 3.15.4). What I received was a hostile tirade... I just walked away...

This is no way to treat a visitor... If I were a visiting teacher or engineer looking to start a team, I might have walked away forever...

Regards,

Mike

Sadly, I've seen this many times over the 7 years that I've been at GSR.

My team took up residence in the top tier section 225 (re: nose bleed seats) to try and stay together while not interfering with the general public. I hope that other teams will do this in the future (there are a few that do it now).

[Amanda Morrison]

After a day or two to take a deep breath and think back to this weekend, Yes, I do believe there were many issues at the event. But knowing that I could have done something about these issues, and did not, is weighing heavily on my conscience.

Although simply chastising the event as 'poorly run', that generalization is not what I meant to convey. I was most upset by three different areas - volunteer training, arena staff, and the obvious field problems. All of these can be chalked up to issues we all know exist: people aren't perfect, and field issues, well, electronics and software aren't always perfect either. But to categorize the whole event as a disappointment because of isolated incidents... that is a bit of an overstatement.

I realize there were many times when I saw something that could have been fixed - including some of my examples from earlier - but did little to nothing to actually rectify the situation. Instead, I was perfectly happy to take the stance that "something wrong has happened, and so I will feel wronged" instead of "something wrong has happened, and I will fix it to ensure it doesn't happen again". Perhaps we as FIRST participants have taken this stance all too often; we watch the problem and then complain because the problem happened.

I'm now saddened to see the comments that were left after my post, especially regarding arena staff. If one of us had just let someone know about this issue, so much could have been prevented or at least handled accordingly. If we'd just spoken up, so many of us wouldn't have had that bad experience. But I, as much as anyone, am guilty of simply using ChiefDelphi (inappropriately) as a place to vent about these issues instead of actually DOING something about them. It wasn't the right course of action, and I realize now that I've hurt more than I could have ever helped.

Yes, perhaps I was reiterating that this regional was not the smoothest event that occurred last weekend, but venting on ChiefDelphi was not the place to have had this discussion. I have violated my own morals by being content with simply watching things happen instead of proactively assisting with correcting them. I don't plan on letting that happen again.

[MCoughT-20]

Dose any one have the final and "Right" position standing with the RS and QS scores. The one on the BAE web site is "Wrong".

Thanks

[Trying to Help]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

After a day or two to take a deep breath and think back to this weekend, Yes, I do believe there were many issues at the event. But knowing that I could have done something about these issues, and did not, is weighing heavily on my conscience.

Amanda, thanks for posting this. I'm relatively new to FIRST and definitely new to Chief Delphi. This year was my second year at BAE and last year was a blur as I was getting over the flu.

I certainly knew that there were issues with the game. It wasn't until closing ceremonies that I began to understand what was causing the field problems. And one of our mentors, who has been with FIRST for 4 years, was probably one of the people who others saw messing up. But a team member (along with another mentor and a judge!) helped him rectify his mistake. Thankfully, I never saw Verizon employees behaving badly though I did get great help from two of the Shepard folks.

This is a long-winded way of saying that perhaps because I didn't know that the events were supposed to work seamlessly, I still had a great time. I was on the new FIRST-er rollercoaster of despair and joy. Our robot didn't work, then it did. Then it crashed into the wall during autonomous mode. It worked again, and then a roller bar fell off in game play. In the end, we did as well as I could have hoped.

I know lots of people were/are upset that it didn't go the way it should. On the other hand, I'm grateful that BAE chose to fund us and the regional. Without their funding, we wouldn't have had enough cash to enter. Really. And to go to Boston or Hartford would have been financial distress for a lot of team members. I'm glad that we had so many teams come to New Hampshire -we got a lot great ideas and photos to examine for next year.

Is there any way that the FIRST community can work to make sure that everyone knows the rules? Obviously we can't predict problems like static build-up. What is possible to improve for next year? I'm willing to try to help beforehand. I know build season will be crazy once again.