Lessons learned 2005: The negative

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by allyphant

While watching the final matches from the balcony, I noticed that Team 45 Teknocats was sitting in front of us and that everytime an award was announced, the entire team was required to stand up and applaud...

"Required"?

I didn't hear anyone giving instructions to the kids, either during or prior to the finals, telling them they had to stand for the awards. It just seemed to be a natural and spontaneous thing to do, at least for me, and I imagine it was the same with most of the other mentors and veteran students.

How would you prefer we show our enthusiasm and appreciation for the award-winning teams? This is a high-energy sporting event, not a piano recital.

[whakojacko]

i would agree with alan, teams should be showing their enuthusiasm and being spirited. This is supposed to be an exciting competition not formal one. Trying to take the spirit out of first would just be killing it.

[Mark Pierce]

Many of my complaints have already been discussed, such as the long queuing times, which could definitely be handled better.

Here's the rest of my list:

Nearly all the announcing on Curie was not understandable. It sounded like they were yelling into mikes causing incredible distortion. Viewers at home on NASA TV or the Internet felt the same.

The NASA broadcast was terrible, switching fields mid-match, no scores, and the real time scoring (which as already discussed was often wrong) taking up much of the screen. My wife said it would turn off anyone not involved in the program, not excite them to get involved.

The lack of ranking information or even the elimination brackets on the field screen was annoying, but not having updated and correct rankings and awards on the website for our press connections was yet again a real miss. Try explaining results to a reporter who keeps repeating, "but the website says this.." and you get the idea. FIRST still needs a system to generate official press releases immediately after every event. Perhaps that's a project for Google...

The peviously unscheduled, excessively long drivers meeting which conflicted with many teams' planned events was a real annoyance as well. Maybe some of it was useful, but the part I saw was pretty much a waste of time.

Overall the event was successful and a lot of fun. I do plan on posting in the positive thread tonight or during lunch tomorrow.

[dbSparx]

Originally Posted by Mark Pierce

Many of my complaints have already been discussed, such as the long queuing times, which could definitely be handled better.

Here's the rest of my list:

Nearly all the announcing on Curie was not understandable. It sounded like they were yelling into mikes causing incredible distortion. Viewers at home on NASA TV or the Internet felt the same.

The NASA broadcast was terrible, switching fields mid-match, no scores, and the real time scoring (which as already discussed was often wrong) taking up much of the screen. My wife said it would turn off anyone not involved in the program, not excite them to get involved.

The lack of ranking information or even the elimination brackets on the field screen was annoying, but not having updated and correct rankings and awards on the website for our press connections was yet again a real miss. Try explaining results to a reporter who keeps repeating, "but the website says this.." and you get the idea. FIRST still needs a system to generate official press releases immediately after every event. Perhaps that's a project for Google...

The peviously unscheduled, excessively long drivers meeting which conflicted with many teams' planned events was a real annoyance as well. Maybe some of it was useful, but the part I saw was pretty much a waste of time.

Overall the event was successful and a lot of fun. I do plan on posting in the positive thread tonight or during lunch tomorrow.

Thank you!! I can't believe I forgot the drivers' meeting. What a frustrating meeting. I commend their desire to get everyone on the same page, but that should have been taken care of well in advance of the nationals. The last-minute scheduling, as you pointed out, was just unacceptable. Teams, especially large teams from out of town, have to do a lot of preplanning to make these trips come off right. Our drivers missed a team dinner to be in attendance, and we walked away more confused and frustrated by the new interpretations introduced during that meeting. To make matters worse, the calls were no more consistent after the meeting. The problem wasn't the absence of communication, the problem was too many penalties with too much room for judgment.

[Jill1022]

I agree that it was very difficult to scout when teams in front of you were standing up and blocking the view of the field. At times my scouts and I would have to skip entire matches because of this.

But instead of having teams stop standing up and cheering, how about they move to an area where they know no scouts are? Or going further back in the stands to cheer. Or having sections designated for scouts only? I think that's the best idea.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Jill1022

I agree that it was very difficult to scout when teams in front of you were standing up and blocking the view of the field. At times my scouts and I would have to skip entire matches because of this.

But instead of having teams stop standing up and cheering, how about they move to an area where they know no scouts are? Or going further back in the stands to cheer. Or having sections designated for scouts only? I think that's the best idea.

Possibly coming soon to a regional near you. If you live near Houston, anyways. We're looking at options to make something like this happen at LSR next year.