2012 Lessons Learned :The Positive

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by IKE

With 1114 winning the Chairman's Award, a lot of myths were "busted". Yes an international team can win. No you don't need a team of 100 students (I think 1114 is around 24). Yes field competitive teams are role models too.

Never judge a book by its cover. When Kareem Abdul Jabar was invited to be an honored guest, there a few vocal people against hero worship of pro-atheletes, only to find out KAJ is a huge supporter of STEM complete with even writing a book targeted to get middle school kids excited about inventors.

Both of these, x1000.

Originally Posted by Carol

I challenge everyone to make The Positive thread longer than The Negative thread.

Seconded.

When I'm not in the middle of finals, I will certainly add my few cents to this thread.

[IndySam]

The coop bridge was great. It made teams not only strategies with their own alliance but with the other as well. The extra interaction was a nice addition.

The absolute GP way all of the teams at Einstein behaved. With the field troubles the way these teams acted should be an inspiration to us all.

[omalleyj]

Originally Posted by IndySam

The coop bridge was great. It made teams not only strategies with their own alliance but with the other as well. The extra interaction was a nice addition.

The absolute GP way all of the teams at Einstein behaved. With the field troubles the way these teams acted should be an inspiration to us all.

Definitely to both.

And the bridges in general really engaged the audience. You could watch the body language, whole sections tilting their heads, or shifting to one side as if they could influence the balance remotely. And the universal cheer, or expulsion of held breath, when a last second teetering succeeded.. or failed.

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by IndySam

The absolute GP way all of the teams at Einstein behaved. With the field troubles the way these teams acted should be an inspiration to us all.

Quoted again because it really needs to emphasized!

Wooodie's remarks during kickoff. They were the best.

[LeelandS]

Things I liked about this year:

The match turn around. FIRST really had it with Real Time Scoring this year. Not only were penalties and baskets pretty much instantly assessed, but one the match was over, the score was ready to be displayed within a minute, except under extenuating circumstances. While I admit I miss the climactic wait for the score presentation in the elimination matches, it was nice to have a much shorter match turnaround.

While a lot of people are hating on the Kinect, I thought it was a really cool aspect of the game. While I didn't think it was cool or useful enough to spend time implementing it on a robot, I thought it was a nice element to add to the game (especially considering it was optional). If nothing else, teams got a nice camera. I think, with a little refinement, it could be an awesome addition to the game.

Game versatility. In the past, there has been pretty much one thing you can do, and that's pretty much it. Here, you could have a shooter and a specialized bridge mechanism to be competitive, plus you could choose what baskets you want to score on. I think this game brought the most intense/interested end game in a good while, as well as numerous possible scoring designs for shooting.

The Coop bridge, in my mind, was a great addition to the game. The introduction of the coopertition award last year with minibot sharing was a good step, but incorporating an active game mechanism with it was a great way to demonstrate the ideals of FIRST. Though some teams may have 'abused' it, for the most part, it was still a great game element.

Bridge and bumps. The bridge's and bumps were a unique design challenge. It was kinda like the bumps in 2010, except a bit more interesting. I really liked it because I liked to see what teams came up with to overcome it. From the 1986 talons to the 148 stinger, from 16's drop down system to the many teams who had slides on their drive system, I thought it was a great way to see what teams come up with what.

[Jon Stratis]

You know it's a successful game when people come into the venue looking confused and a conversation like this happens:

- Can I help you?
- I'm looking for the robotics event.
- Well, you're in the right place! The field is right down there.
- No, I'm not looking for the basketball game, I want to see the robots!
- ... I understand your confusion. The robots are the ones playing basketball!


That said, a few other positives:
- The GDC is assembling a knowledgeable team to look at the bumper rules and make them clearer and more consistent for next year
- There were no horrible issues for any teams at both of the events I inspected at, and we managed to get everyone to their first match on Friday.
- The new rule distribution system seemed to work out well (onliine content management versus the old PDF's), and the rules were kept a bit shorter than in the past, which makes it easier to get through.

[Carol]

[quote=IKE;1165694]

With 1114 winning the Chairman's Award, a lot of myths were "busted". Yes an international team can win. No you don't need a team of 100 students (I think 1114 is around 24). Yes field competitive teams are role models too.

QUOTE]

This is a myth still. Most HOF teams have teams in the 25-40 range. And many have had much success on the field as well.

[Tom Line]

1. The game was exciting.

2. The game was fun.

3. The game was easy to watch.

4. The robots will be great demo bots.

5. Championships was a blast, despite the problems encountered.

I could go on an on. The negative list will always overwhelm the positive, because negative events tend to stick in people's minds. Regardless, I had a great time at Champs! We're already talking about changes to make on the robot for the off season

[Debbie]

I agree the game was easy to follow and fun. Having live scoring including penalty points was great. Having a basketball theme in the middle of March Madness was an added bonus, planned or not. Though I did not get to attend the Finale, it was a huge improvement over last year from the description. Playing all teams on the dome floor again was right. Allowing MAR, so more teams could experience the district structure was good! Great Championship. Great support!

[Nemo]

This year's game produced an unbelievable number of dramatic matches that came down to the last few seconds. Yet it didn't suffer from a problem of the end game being worth too much. Almost all of our team's matches this year was close until the end, which made the competitions very exciting. And the game is already pretty spectator friendly because of its simplicity and its basketball theme.

Coopertition bonus was great. It embedded a value of FIRST into the game in an effective way. It also evened out the impact of randomly drawing an easy or difficult qualifier schedule, which was nice.

I like the design trade-offs that this year's game design forced by making the elimination rounds score differently than the qualification rounds. Some people griped about that, but it made for a great engineering design challenge.

Edit: The instantaneous final score in most matches was also great.

[Solidstate89]

The ability they had this year to have the score update nearly instantly and accurately during the match and then having the final score available in under 10 seconds after the match was over is a huge improvement.

I remember during our rookie year in 2005 we had some matches occur at FLR (which also might have been compounded by the fact it was the very first year that regional took place) that we didn't find out what the score was until after the proceeding match was already over with.

[rees2001]

1. I loved the game this year. It was fun and exciting. Eliminations proved that the #1 seed would not always be Champs. Lots of things for teams to do and everybody could do something. I think this game may go down as my favorite, if not a close 2nd to 2004.

2. KOP was terrific this year. Lots of choices in motors, pneumatics and other components available through FIRST Choice, gates, and vouchers.

3.Pretty well written rules. There were some serious gaps but it mostly made sense.

4. Real time scoring. It is nice to know where you stand during the match and if you won or lost as soon as the match ended.

[David13]

The triple balance. It was the single, most exciting thing I have seen at a FIRST event. I don't want to do the research, but I doubt many #8 alliances have won regionals before, let alone three in one season.

[techhelpbb]

The game was cool and encouraged some automation.

The Kinect was interesting, not sure I like it, but it sure was funny watching people mess with it.

The mess with communications was finally acknowledged. (A lot of the positives shown here are fixes for old issues...you can't fix what you don't acknowledge.)

[thefro526]

-Relatively Accurate Real Time Scoring. Made for some nail biting matches, especially at the CMP.

-An "easy" but important Autonomous Mode. It wasn't that hard for most teams to at least contribute something in Autonomous.

-Exciting end game. The bridges were easy to explain to someone at first glance and were huge crowd pleasers. (ALMOST made up for minibots in 2011.)

-Relaxation of many parts rules, including motors and pneumatics. Relax the bumper rules a hair or three and we're onto something good.