Lessons Learned - The Positive

[AndyB]

Originally Posted by Richard

I didn't catch the name of the Game Announcer on Arch, but he is clearly among the best in FIRST. Having Tyler Olds beside him for color commentary really added to the entertainment value. As MC Mark Leon said, those two made FIRST sound like Monday Night Football.

I totally have to second this one. It was like watching Madden and Michaels do their thing. I knew Tyler was a great MC. But I didn't realize that he was just as great of an announcer. I can't name the guy on the other side of him either, but he sounded very familiar and did an excellent job as well. I'd love to see this kind of setup brought to every event. It really makes it a lot more interesting in between matches. Especially for someone who was stuck watching the webcast back at home.

That being said, the transition to the new control system was done so well this year. I was very sceptical about how they were going to subsitute the amazing work that IFI has done in the past and I'm pleased to say that they didn't leave me disappointed. The NI reps at the regionals were very knowledgeable and with the exception of the field static issues, there weren't too many problems at all this season.

[DonRotolo]

Lots of things went well this year.

1. The cRio beta, early ship and overall intro went REALLY well. OK, some issues with the DS and DSC but not bad at all.

2. The playing surface and wheels were a brilliant stroke. Many experienced teams had to actually design a drivetrain this year. As Doug G stated: 3-D and other devious playing surfaces, bring it on!

3. The match scoring, field control system* and reset process was very smooth, not much in the way of difficulties.

*OK, week one FCS issues notwithstanding. We had fewer replayed matches in 2 regionals & CMP than in the past several years.

4. Bills Blog. Good source of info, increasing transparency to FIRST.

5. Much improved breaker panel, DSC, the various breakouts, Jaguars, WAGOs, even the camera... overall better connector retention, easier to wire up, better performance.

6. Inspections seemed more consistent from venue to venue.

7. More webcasts than ever (I think). Thank You NASA.

8. Great idea to have the game pieces available through a large retailer, like WalMart. What actually happened couldn't have been predicted (I don't know if there was any communication to WalMart over the GDC's plans. Probably would not have changed things much)

(I'll think of more later)

Don

[rspurlin]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The match preparation sequence seems to have been worked out perfectly, with the DS and cRIO boot times not really causing a noticeable delay.

Your Galileo field team (FTA, FTAA, Scorekeepers/Field Power, field reset, queuers and others) worked very hard to make it this way. I won't clam it was perfect, but we were very focussed on not letting delays cascade and get out of hand. The schedule calls for us to start a match every six minutes. Given 30 secs to announce teams, 2:15 to run the match, 60 secs to count the balls, 15 secs to announce the score results, 30 secs to electronically set the field for the next team plus whatever time it takes for DS and radio links to sync, it's very hard to turn matches in less than 5 minutes. You can compute the match turns yourself by viewing the match results at the FIRST website. Hopefully all of this can be improved for next year.

[AlexD744]

I'm not in Michigan, but I think that system is very nice, except althought the cost is more efficient for match's played, you would still like to go to state tourny and Atlanta, however, that is more expensive. Maybe with a less expensive more light weight feild could cut transportation costs. Maybe reducing kit costs, I don't know but, I know for some teams, 2 districts a state champ and Atlanta would be way to much (e.g. us). On the bright side there would be less transportation costs for districts. And it seems amazing for teams to gain invaluble experience driving and strategy wise. Please bring districts to Forida, even if there's only 4 districts.

[keehun]

Not to get off topic, but I would personally dislike the Michigan system.

[Herodotus]

I thought this was one of the best run years of FIRST I've seen so far. All of the volunteers were awesome, and very rarely were matches running late. Field reset was quick and efficient, and except for some communication errors here and there it didn't seem like there were nearly as many field faults. The district setup was simply fantastic. So many matches for less money, and the point system made the State Championship really intense. Though I understand the complaint of culture changing awards not being given as much importance since they did not qualify your robot for competition, I think that is fine as long as we find a new way to elevate those awards up. I'd like to see the high level of competition maintained at States while also giving a great deal more recognition to the teams that win the culture changing awards.

[Cory]

40 lb witholding allowance

Referees couldn't influence the outcome of matches.

That's about it.

[Nawaid Ladak]

webcasts and twitter really made things like Gameday or keeping up with your team while they cmpeated on the oppisite end of the country much easier than in years past.

Having major field issues in the first few weeks of regionals to running ahead of scedule later on shows that the Volunteers did an amazing job at avoiding issues that had occured earlier in the season, All Volunteers deserve a star for making everything better and better on the field as the season went on

Districts: i know i listed them in the negitive section, but they also deserve some possitive rep. We now know that the system worked, at least in performance on the filed. having four teams from MI in the finals on Einstein was something to see. The Michigan State championship brought in the best Competition from around the state using the point merrit system, maybe FIRST can build on that for the Championship so that it can truly be a "World Championship Event"

[Peter Matteson]

The varied surface was a nice change and gave many of us traction control that we can take forward into future games, and caused us to explore some changes we never considered making.

The give and take created in the trailers/goals was acutally better than I thought because it forced interaction for everyone and meant you had to risk getting scored on to score.

[JesseK]

- Twitter was one of the best decisions this year. It not only kept non-attenders updated on what was going on, but it also sets the stage for more live coverage of the events in the future.

- I'm pretty sure the GDC learned alot (not necessarily lessons) about cumbersome rules. Regardless of whether or not teams agree with a set of subsystem rules, the GDC knows how to make rules that are meant to work together more clear. I'm pretty sure they also realized that using bitmaps in the official rulebook may not be the best way to do demonstrate things since they can become a source of great confusion.

- The new control system is fantastic. The camera was easy to use. The DS data interface was great once we re-wrapped the data our own way, and the new driver's station allows for a myriad of controls in future years compared to previous. I'll also note that our team never had issues with static, etc, and meticulously read every control system tip, trick, and update. While our team probably will not switch to Labview for several years, we found ways to push the limits of some areas of the cRIO and look forward to what new features will allow us to do in the future.

- The FTC game was simple enough that teams perfected their robots by the time the championships hit. Our own FTC team was averaging 120 points per game (double what we did at regionals) yet we were still being beat by 5-10 points in our matches. This is great (no sarcasm, promise!)!. The FTC matches were exciting to watch, and I know our FTC kids had a blast in building the bot because they were beating down the school's doors to come in every day to work on the bot. Ok, so the excessive pricing scheme needs to be addressed, perhaps by introducing an alternate supplier that will induce competitive pricing. But other than that, I'm mostly happy with the current FTC setup.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by AlexD744

I'm not in Michigan, but I think that system is very nice, except althought the cost is more efficient for match's played, you would still like to go to state tourny and Atlanta, however, that is more expensive. Maybe with a less expensive more light weight feild could cut transportation costs. Maybe reducing kit costs, I don't know but, I know for some teams, 2 districts a state champ and Atlanta would be way to much (e.g. us). On the bright side there would be less transportation costs for districts. And it seems amazing for teams to gain invaluble experience driving and strategy wise. Please bring districts to Forida, even if there's only 4 districts.

I bet if they did it down your way they'd do it more like a Southeast (Georgia, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi) type deal to get more teams involved. Only states with high concentrations of teams (like New York or California) would probably be able to do it exactly like Michigan did.

[rees2001]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I bet if they did it down your way they'd do it more like a Southeast (Georgia, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi) type deal to get more teams involved. Only states with high concentrations of teams (like New York or California) would probably be able to do it exactly like Michigan did.

Imagine a North East/New England District event thing! Get to go to a district event in Conn, or NJ, or Mass? Not just NY! Get to see some teams you normally wouldn't see in districts.

[sdcantrell56]

Definitely in the south it would have to be a regional district thing. There are simply not enough teams in Georgia to have multiple district events in georgia. I think some ideas could definitely be adapted. I love the idea of bagging the robot and not shipping it. Shipping is a completely unnecessary cost for events that are close by. Perhaps making shipping optional would work very well. I also love the idea of reduced entry fees and more matches. Right now FIRST is too expensive per regional. With the CRios being donated and probably many more pieces of the KOP being donated as well plus many regionals being held at colleges, what is all of the money per regional going toward? Especially with not getting a CRio every year, next years entry fee better not be $6000. I think there are lots of elements that can be adapted from the district format to make FIRST globally much more accessible and fun. There is no denying that the extra driving experience certainly contributed to the success of the MIchigan teams at the championship event.

[gorrilla]

Originally Posted by squirrel

I met Koko Ed!

I met squirrel
(and The Fro)

[smurfgirl]

1) FTAs: At the events I attended, they checked every robot before the start of every match. If there was a problem, they told the team and showed the team how to fix it, so that they actually knew what was wrong and didn't repeat this mistake in future matches.

2) Robot and game rules that forced people to think outside of the box (even if they whined about it a lot).

3) Withholding allowance.

4) Lots of webcasts.