So what happened at the FIRST forum

[Chris Hibner]

Originally posted by Ian W.
ugh, i don't like one more thing i heard. if they keep pushing nats back, it will be during APs, and that will extremely screw over many people.

By not pushing nationals back, they were screwing people as well. This past year, the Championship was during finals week for most colleges and universities so all of the college and university teams were put in a real tough spot. I was lucky in that my final was the day before I had to leave for nationals.

I guess no matter what date you pick, someone is going to be screwed.

[Ashley Weed]

No matter what, someone will always be unhappy. I thik they are making a wise decision, because the first of May the prices drop in FL, and everything should be more reasonable for teams. Also, if you are smart/crazy enough to take that many AP's, you probably don't need to study. Somewhere there will be something going on that time of year. Everything is beginning to wrap up after April.

[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by sanddrag

I'm west coast and a later kickoff time would be good so we could capture the whole thing awake.

They do need a vBulletin or comparable forum. Brandon keeps this one maintained so there's no reason they can't do the same.

Last, I'm cool with the new controller, we could use the smaller size and less cables.

Pushing the time later for the sanity of our west coast friends was something brought up at one of the east coast forums(MI to be specific), and nobody really had a problem with it...

As far as a new system for Q&A/forum goes, there was a few ideas kicked around...[alt+tab to dreamweaver]hmmm, this might work...[alt+tab back to IE]

One thing about the EduRobot system which was made very clear at the MI forum is that it is for training purposes only, you would still have the full system(which is being improved as well) to use on your main robot, and the EduRobot controller would be explicitly disallowed on your competition season machine.

[sanddrag]

I know about the EduRobot. When I said new controller I was referring to the Issac 16 with integrated radio. 1 less 6 ft. serial cable.

[Nate Smith]

We're still getting the full version control system...the Issac 16 is the version which comes with the edurobot...however, I do know that an integrated radio system for the controllers we actually use in our robots is in the works as well...whether or not it will be ready for this year, i'm not sure...

[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by Ian W.
so dean, woody, who ever from FIRST that is reading this, please reconsider the timing of nats this year, and if it's impossible to change this year, at least try to make it after APs next year. thanks.

One thing I can say is that at this point, it is very unlikely(read: almost impossible) that the dates for the Championship will be moved. As FIRST is moving forward in finalizing the schedule, I do know that several venue contracts have already been signed, and I have a feeling that Epcot is one of them...

[ahecht]

Sorry if I was unclear. The Issac 16 is the EduRobot controller, and is not being considered as a replacement for the FIRST robot controller.

Also, at least at Manchester, they said that the May 1-3 dates for nationals were very tentative at this point.

[Madison]

Originally posted by weedie
I thik they are making a wise decision, because the first of May the prices drop in FL, and everything should be more reasonable for teams.

Actually, late April/early May is the beginning of Disney's 'Regular' pricing season. Prices go up, not down.

[Ashley Weed]

Hmm, I don't know... from my sources (my parents) they go every year, and I know they always wait until the beginning of May to leave, because Motels are cheaper. During March and April, prices are up because of Spring Breakers.

[Madison]

Originally posted by weedie
Hmm, I don't know... from my sources (my parents) they go every year, and I know they always wait until the beginning of May to leave, because Motels are cheaper. During March and April, prices are up because of Spring Breakers.

Well, I don't know about hotels outside of Walt Disney World property because I don't usually stay in them.

As per Disney, though, the regular season at Value and Moderate resorts begins on April 21, meaning the prices go up.

[Ian W.]

but, what about group rates? if FIRSTers reserved some number of rooms, they give a discount, and a few extra bucks is worth it. i'd rather pay a lot more than worry about all my AP teachers flipping out on me.

[Rob Colatutto]

we can't use issac 16's in the robot, they lack a lot of the features the issac 32's that we use have

[Bill Gold]

Here are my notes from the San Jose Team Forum. Sorry if it's hard to follow. This is the first year I actually took notes .


FIRST realizes that they need to make changes. They’re expanding their game design group, and starting earlier this year. They’re looking for loopholes to proposed rules within this group. The manual should be released in the first half of December, minus the “Game” section. They’re planning on italicizing changes. FedEx is still up in the air. January 4 is the Kickoff date, with 11+ remote kickoffs. There will be at least 22 Regionals in 2003, new locations being Annapolis, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Pittsburgh, and Manchester (there’s a possibility, however it’s unlikely, that one or two more may be added). The even schedule will be posted on the FIRST website within the next week or shortly thereafter. Seattle will be on the same week as Los Angeles. The Championship (apparently Nationals pisses off the Canadians, Brazilians, English, etc ) will most likely be May 1-3. The game will be a competitive one, most likely 2v2 (this was met with a resounding approval from the crowd). The field perimeter and carpet are expected to be the same as the past year. Bob Hammond said that FIRST hesitates to change the flooring because it doesn’t seem fair to force ~500 teams to have to buy an expensive alternative to carpet. The B.O.M for the key obstacles/goals will be released early this year as well.

Website:
- The website needs a clear sitemap. It also takes too long to find information.
- Maybe using a headline system on the front page would make info easier to find.
- .html (searchable) and .pdf manual would be nice.
- Can FIRST post photos of the obstacles and goals?

Yahoo Board:
- The entire crowd thought it was a step backwards.
- Conflicting answers
- No Authoritative voice from FIRST
- The ads were annoying
- Update system worked fine. We’d prefer the updates to come out every Monday and Thursday. Even if there’s no new information. Just say “Update #4... No new information.” This way we know when to look for an update. Don’t have updates come out on Friday. We would like to be able to call FIRST and get clarification on an update.

Manual:
- The CD’s were wonderful
- We told FIRST to stick to the rules, no matter how much we complain about them.
- Everyone liked and made use of the Inspection Checklist.

Calling FIRST:
- Apparently someone answering the 1-800 # was rude to a couple people.
- It would help West Coast teams if we could call FIRST until 5pm PT

FIRST Contacting Teams:
- We would like there to be more than 1 “Main Contact” for each team.
- When “Main Contact” emails are sent, post the email or a notification on the FIRST website.

Kits of Parts:
- FIRST said that no more 1A battery chargers will be in the kit. They were a mistake.
- We like the idea of Rookie Kits.
- Chargers are ok to omit from 3+ year veteran teams.
- We thought it'd be ok if the pneumatic compressor was shipped to a veteran team when they ordered their cylinders.
- We would like FIRST to release a B.O.M. of the kit and/or additional hardware list before the kickoff.

Inspectors:
- They are hard to train, and are inconsistent.
- FIRST floated the idea of having team personnel inspect
- A video for inspectors, or a FIRST built robot with all sub-systems may help inspectors.
- Spot inspections can be done to teams at random before or after a match.
- Robots will be re-weighed throughout the competition

Carpet Damage:
- It was brought up that even an unmodified Skyway wheel could melt through carpet.
- FIRST should give teams a list of materials which is allowed to come into contact with the flooring.
- Test wheels as part of our inspection.
- Enforcement of “Carpet Damage” rules is needed. Tough love.
- Maybe a minimum clearance for frames is needed?
- If there is a min. clearance, then there should be no robot lifting.

Spare Parts:
- One team had to buy a Bosch transmission.
- In response to the previous statement... FIRST: “Don’t worry, it won’t be there this year”
- Training for volunteers needed.
- Priority should be given to rookie teams.
- Teams lose light lenses. Maybe if they were at the players stations with extras at the field it would decrease cost to FIRST.

Pneumatics:
- Overwhelming usage of pneumatics.
- Having different control valves would be nice.
- Using “normally open” as opposed to “normally closed” pressure switches would also be nice.
- The pumps drew more current this year for some reason.

SPI:
- FIRST realizes that they have outgrown SPI.
- FIRST is in negotiations for an $800,000 account with a larger company.
- We want online ordering.
- We would like FIRST to tell them what we can’t use from the catalogs.

IFI:
- We would like them to add shrouds to the Relays and RC (like the ones on the Speed Controllers).

Autodesk:
- We think that the communication is bad. It’s slow and not public.

FedEx / Shipping:
- It was near impossible to ship between events on consecutive weeks, since they don’t pick up on Saturday.
- We would like to be able to contact teams going to the same event the following week and be able to make alternate shipping arrangements ahead of time (i.e. Renting a truck).
- It would be nice if FIRST could have .pdf shipping labels on their website.
- FIRST was very upset about forged shipping with their FedEx code. They will not allow handwritten shipping labels.
- We think that forcing teams to ship directly from event to event is a great idea.

Registration:
- On Sept. 3 the registration system will open up so that teams may edit their data.
- Registration will be staggered this year.
- Oct. 3 = 1 event per team
- ~ Oct. 29 = 2nd event per team
- ~ Nov. 26 = 3rd or more event per team
- FIRST will send your contact info to other teams attending your events if you authorize them to do so.
- We would like to input multiple email addresses per contact in the registration system.
- We would also like the “General Blast” emails to be on a subscribe basis.

Gracious Professionalism:
- We thought that part of the problem may be that some kids may lack a sense of ownership of the robot.
- Some people thought that the tether incident this year makes it harder for adults to tell the students that they shouldn’t overstep boundaries of the rules.
- Someone said that the kids understood Gracious Professionalism, it was the adults who didn’t. Maybe a code of conduct is needed?
- FIRST was upset about reports of teams throwing matches.

Team Party:
- FIRST is going to change the name to the “Team Dinner” or “Team Social.” There will be no dancing. The time will be limited to 2.5-3 hours. There must be at least 1 adult per 10 students in attendance, and activities will be aimed at decompressing people.
- Someone thought that maybe it should be held at Dave & Busters.

Kickoff:
- We thought Remote Kickoffs were a success.
- We would appreciate the time of the kickoff to be moved back by 2 hours.
- We would also like to have FIRST sponsored workshops on the Friday before the kickoff. Or a video feed and materials from NH.

Awards:
- We thought the Regional Chairman’s Award was wonderful.
- We want the Chairman’s Awards submission date moved back until after the robot is shipped. We want to have our finished robot in the submission.
- FIRST told us they were looking at 4 new awards. Wether or not they’d count towards qualifying to the Championship is still TBD.
- Regional Website Award
- Regional Animation Award
- Resourcefulness Award
- Communications Award
- Apparently they’re tossing around the idea of a Safety Award as well.


Silicon Valley Regional:
- We liked the pits alternating rookies with veteran teams.
- We thought the team party was great.
- We liked the team viewing area.
- It would be nice if teams were given a pit-map.
- Knowing your partner / opponent ahead of time was great.

Los Angeles Regional:
- Someone thought the machine shop was too far away.
- The team viewing area needed to be marked better.
- Knowing your partner / opponent ahead of time was great.

Championship:
- We liked the lower number of teams attending.
- Rotating fields was a pain.
- FIRST said that it would be too expensive to go back to 5 fields (2001).
- We would like there to be clarification if the rotation is kept. It wasn’t clear on TV.
- Knowing your partner / opponent ahead of time was great.

Award Ceremony:
- We think it wasn’t necessary to have an entire team go up and get an award.
- We’d like the Award Ceremony interlaced with the Semi-Finals / Finals.
- We want to get through the ceremony fast and get into EPCOT or back to our hotels.
- We thought that the video from 2001 was better than Mandy Moore.
- We were disappointed that EPCOT closed all of the fun attractions.
- The food has improved over the past 2 years.
- We would like busses to take some of us back to the hotels from the morning drop off point. It was a pain to drag heavy equipment over to the EPCOT bus station.

[ahecht]

I just found my second page of notes from what the IT guy said, and, while most of what was there has already been covered, this is what was new:

FIRST will be keeping there offices open until 8pm EST during the season. The staff was already groaning about having to work longer shifts, but it sounded like a done deal.

FIRST will add a school administrative contact to the information management system, since many school's have a principal or superintendant who isn't involved with the team, but wants to be the main contact. They will also add a link to the TIMS from the front page.

FIRST will require teams to check their contact information before reregistering.

FIRST Email "Blasts" will probably be posted online, as well as being sent to the main and alternate contacts (and perhaps other contacts). This was met with general acceptance, but a few people felt very strongly that they didn't want their team members seeing that traffic, something about making FIRST too easy prohibiting them from learning from the experience. FIRST was surprised by that, but said that they would consider alternatives, such as locating the "Blasts" archive behind the TIMS login. Another alternative proposed was just posting the links from the "Blasts," not the "Blasts" themselves, on the web.

FIRST is considering a "frequently used links" section to the front page, which would link to stuff like the manual and schedules.

FIRST is also considering putting pictures and QuicktimeVR movies of the field and playing objects on the website.

[sanddrag]

What is TIMS? Also, please make the movies on the website available in a Windows Media Player compatibel format like .wmv or .mpeg or .avi. Quicktime can do some strange things to a PC.

On the topic of food, I feel that this is quite a problem at the LA Regional. While there were sufficient fast food places nearby, there weren't inside the event site. We were not allowed to bring any food at all into the arena and were forced to pay for overpriced sodas and very old pretzels. Come on... 5 grand for that? We have how many kinds who are in there all day for each of the three days and it'd be nice if we could bring in our own food to have something decent to eat.