FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

[cgmv123]

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...day-Priorities

As I said in my last blog, we’re going to be having a meeting with teams at Championship about the move to two Championships starting in 2017. FIRST will be providing some additional information at the start of the session, then we’ll be moving on to questions from the audience. The session will be 12:30PM to 1:30PM on Thursday, April 23rd, in the Ferrara Theater within the America’s Center. We’re in the process of updating the conference schedule now to accommodate this. If you will be at Championship, and are interested, please attend, and bring your questions. We will be making information from the session available to the broader community afterward.

The Magic Number is 608

Your probably already know, but Subdivision team assignments for Championship are out. You can find them here.

Some may be wondering – if we said we wanted 600 FRC Teams at the 2015 FIRST Championship, why do we actually have 608? Can’t we count? Well, usually we do pretty good with that – using spreadsheets instead of fingers helps* – but offering slots to teams off the waitlist is tricky, because not everyone accepts. We need to work acceptance estimates into our decisions about how many teams get waitlist offers. At the same time, we want to offer slots to teams as early as we can, so we’re not calling up teams the Tuesday before Championship with the question “Would you like to go to Championship tomorrow”? Also, we did aim for the high side on registrations to make absolutely sure we hit that 600 number to which we committed. I’m personally very happy we’re able to accommodate these eight additional teams with little trouble (and I would bet they’re pretty happy about it also). It does mean playing two more matches per Subdivision, though, and so adding 14 minutes to the 14.5 hours of qualification match time we currently have scheduled. We are updating the schedule to show matches Friday PM going to 6:30, though if things go as planned we’ll end a little sooner than that.

Wednesday at Championship

Wednesday at Championship, teams should be focused on getting through inspection safely. Practice fields in the pits will not be open Wednesday, though officially scheduled practice matches will be taking place on your subdivision fields in the dome from 6-8PM. If you have finished inspection, please find another team to help. For team members not helping in the pit, we do have several conferences going on Wednesday, and it's the first day of a new Championship element, the Innovation Faire!

Frank

*But not for everyone. Have you seen these guys? Be sure to watch until the end when they start using abacuses that only exist in their minds. It’s honestly a bit unsettling.

2017-2020 Championships plan listening/Q&A session will be Thursday at 12:30 in the Ferrara Theater. Bring your pitchforks.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Can somebody film the information session for those that might not be able to make it to the session?

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

Can somebody film the information session for those that might not be able to make it to the session?

Or stream it via Periscope or Meerkat?

...that might be a bit excessive.

[dodar]

12:30-1:30 right in the middle of competition.....

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by dodar

12:30-1:30 right in the middle of competition.....

All divisions are on break for at least a portion of that window. (Which is suspect is intentional. They're bumping a scheduled conference from the theater rather than having the session when it's free.)

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...day-Priorities



2017-2020 Championships plan listening/Q&A session will be Thursday at 12:30 in the Ferrara Theater. Bring your pitchforks.

Leave the pitchforks at home. You probably can't take them on the plane, and they'd make a mess of the seats in the bus. Super ditto for torches (in the non-British sense); pretty sure open flames are banned in the pits.

OTOH, a whole new question for the meeting: why no practice fields on Weds? When/how am I supposed to test any changes to the robot if those fields aren't open?

[Electronica1]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Leave the pitchforks at home. You probably can't take them on the plane, and they'd make a mess of the seats in the bus. Super ditto for torches (in the non-British sense); pretty sure open flames are banned in the pits.

Maybe someone will be handing out pitchforks in the pit

[PayneTrain]

I've been holding all of these torches and pitchforks since SVR last year but I won't be able to bring them to St Louis. Sorry y'all.

[Electronica1]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I've been holding all of these torches and pitchforks since SVR last year but I won't be able to bring them to St Louis. Sorry y'all.

Maybe using canburgler arm would be a good alternative. Even if they are cheesecake ones.

[dellagd]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

OTOH, a whole new question for the meeting: why no practice fields on Weds? When/how am I supposed to test any changes to the robot if those fields aren't open?

I was thinking the same thing. I thought that they would get the most use of any day on Wednesday.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by dellagd

I was thinking the same thing. I thought that they would get the most use of any day on Wednesday.

Maybe he means the match practice fields will not be open (the ones where you run actual matches wirelessly, just in the pits), and the tethered practice field will still be open. Not sure if that's the setup this year though.

[dellagd]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

Maybe he means the match practice fields will not be open (the ones where you run actual matches wirelessly, just in the pits), and the tethered practice field will still be open. Not sure if that's the setup this year though.

Have you seen where those practice "areas" will actually be, if at all? I couldn't find them on any map.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by dellagd

Have you seen where those practice "areas" will actually be, if at all? I couldn't find them on any map.

Dimly labelled to the upper left of Registration in this pic from the blog:

I'm kinda curious what those squares in the corners of each division's pits are, however.

Also that pretty clearly states practice fields in the pits won't be open. I am now moderately worried by the vision of teams testing their new canburglar cheesecake in their pits. That now seems inevitable and also a pretty bad idea since you can't easily keep a 2-can burglar inside a pit.

[Bob Steele]

Practicing for the meeting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq1KeyEARBU

I think I see Frank at the end of this....

[dellagd]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Dimly labelled to the upper left of Registration in this pic from the blog

I was referring to the wooden practice areas ala districts and regionals. They were a few set up last year in each divisions pit area and on the way to the dome.