#FIRSTChampLIVE Announcement

[Francis-134]

GameSense is proud to announce that we’ll be streaming live from The FIRST Championship, and we’ve partnered with FIRST and Twitch.tv to do so!

#FIRSTChampLIVE is going to be the place to watch this year’s Championship online, whether you’re a diehard FIRST fanatic, or you’re joining us from “outside the tent” of FIRST’s usual fans. During the three days of the event, we’ll be doing:

• “Whip-around” coverage of all eight FRC divisions, showing the best match that’s happening on the dome floor at any given time
• Analysis by the #FIRSTChampLIVE crew between matches
• Recaps and highlights from all four of FIRST’s programs
• Interviews with some totally awesome people from FIRST and the FIRST community
• FRC Match video archiving provided by STEMtv

Our goal is to make watching the FIRST championship as interesting and exciting as watching any multi-day sports or esports event, and to make the ultimate celebration of FIRST as loud as it deserves to be!

And what better way to #makeitloud than to webcast the event on the biggest name in streaming, Twitch.tv! Every field at the Championship will be on Twitch for the entirety of the event.

Be sure to tune in at http://www.firstchampionship.org/watch-live, and to spread the word to everyone you know with the hashtag #FIRSTChampLIVE ! We are hoping this a great opportunity to #makeitloud to anyone and everyone who might be interested in FIRST and its mission.

You’ve probably got plenty of questions, so please check out our FAQ in the thread below!

[Eugene Fang]

This is awesome!

Quick link to #FIRSTChampLive: http://www.thebluealliance.com/gameday#champs
Quick link to all FRC streams: http://www.thebluealliance.com/gameday#champs-all

Edit: Holy webcasts.


Edit2: For you FIRST fanatics out there (Looking at you, @Hallry)
Note: 4K monitor and high speed internet highly recommended.

[Hallry]

Of course this is the year I decide to go to champs in person again.

[MooreteP]

What a great idea.
With all of the potentially interesting matches going on at the CMP this year,
you
are
going
to
be
so
busy
!

I hope you have the ability to do "tape delay".

[Francis-134]

OK, here are those FAQ's I promised you!

Q: Who is involved in #FIRSTChampLIVE?
A: The idea for #FIRSTChampLIVE was conceived by the GameSense crew and Collin Fultz, a long time FIRST mentor and formerly an engineer at FIRST HQ before he moved back to Indianapolis. As we have been developing this project over the past six months (yes, six months!), we’ve been honored to have assembled a great team that will be executing the show in St. Louis:

Francis O’Rourke, Navid Shafa, and Ruth Toomey, as well as Evan Morrison, Stephanie Morrison, and Ty Tremblay from GameSense. For the six of us, this has been a dream come true, and we are unbelievably excited to see this thing get off the ground!

Jen Goetting: Jen is a longtime FIRST mentor and coach. Jen assisted GameSense at Chezy Champs last year, helping out behind the scenes. We’re excited to have Jen cut her teeth on this project along with the rest of us!

Nick Lawrence: Nick is a mentor from FRC 5406, and a designer from AndyMark. Nick has been on GameSense as a guest more than any other person in our three year history, and was one of the key people behind last year’s IRI Live show.

Colleen Shaver: Colleen is a mentor, tactics expert, and former drive coach from FRC 190, and is the Event Manager for all the FIRST events that happen at WPI. Colleen is also an amature videographer and photographer, and is instrumental in running some of the best events in the New England.

Gabe Salas: Gabe is a mentor on FRC 233, and one of the members of The RoboShow Orlando If you’ve never had the chance to check it out, RoboShow is by far one of the greatest productions in FRC.

We also would not be able to do it without the help of Toby, Jamee, and especially Erin at FIRST, as well as Steve at Solomon productions, Zach from Twitch.tv, and everyone else at FIRST headquarters who helped along the way. Thank you all so much!

Q: What exactly is this going to look like?
A: If you’ve ever heard of NFL RedZone, a lot of the stream is based on that model. At an event with 30,000+ people, there is always some sort of exciting robot action going on! We’ve developed a special piece of software that will show us which matches are coming up and which one will be the most interesting for the audience based on season and event data.
We are also going to be showing recaps and footage from FTC, FLL and FLL Jr., as well as interviews with some awesome people live on set. Our goal is to give you the best viewing experience possible for every hour of the Championship.

Q: I’m going to the Championship and wanna see this in action! Where are you doing it?
A: We’re going to be pretty busy, so we will not be able to allow folks to come and visit us in the booth during our broadcast. But, we are going to be doing a TON of stuff on social media, so be sure to reach out to us with #FIRSTChampLIVE and via our GameSense Facebook and Twitter accounts, and the official FIRST and FRC social media accounts. Follow us now to stay up to date!

Q: Wait, booth?
A: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention we will be doing this from one of the former NFL broadcast booths way up at the top of the stadium. We may have the best seats in the house!

Q: What platform are you streaming this on?
A: We’re happy to announce that we’ve been working with the folks at Twitch.tv to ensure a great broadcast that we will not only be delivering to the FIRST community, but also to people “outside the tent”! As with any Twitch broadcast, we will be streaming in HD with options to reduce the quality for slower or mobile connections, and you will only see ads when you launch the stream for the first time.

Q: What’s the link?
A: You can check out FIRST’s portal to all the webcasts from FRC, FTC, FLL and the conferences at championship.usfirst.org/watch-live
in just a couple of days.

Q: But what if I wanted to watch just my team’s field all day? Or if I want to watch several fields at once on Blue Alliance GameDay?
A: All the fields will be broadcast individually just like always, but this year through Twitch.tv. We’re working with the folks over at The Blue Alliance to include #FIRSTChampLIVE as one of the streams you can add to your GameDay setup as well.

Q: Is anyone going to finally archive the matches!?
A: Yes! We anticipate that you will finally be able to see matches from the Championship on YouTube after the event. More details to come.

Q: Will you be archiving the #FIRSTChampLIVE stream?
A: We don’t have any plans on archiving the #FIRSTChampLIVE broadcast separate from the eight fields. That being said, you might see some videos on the GameSense YouTube channel after the event, but no guarantees.

Q: So what about next year with twice as many Championships?
A: Jeez, let us get through this year first!

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Wow, this is really, really cool. Thanks to Game Sense for all you do, you the real mvp.

[Lil' Lavery]

A little birdy told me about this a few weeks ago, and it's been really hard to keep quiet. Beyond psyched to see this in action. Hopefully it's recorded for those of us running around the dome as it happens.

[Francis-134]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

A little birdy told me about this a few weeks ago, and it's been really hard to keep quiet. Beyond psyched to see this in action. Hopefully it's recorded for those of us running around the dome as it happens.

If all goes to plan, it will be recorded. We're not quite sure what we would do with the footage yet, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it!

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Francis-134

If all goes to plan, it will be recorded. We're not quite sure what we would do with the footage yet, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it!

Why not just upload the whole thing to YouTube or some other video site?

[Ty Tremblay]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Why not just upload the whole thing to YouTube or some other video site?

Definitely in the realm of possibility. STEMtv is set up to record anything streamed through it. It's easy enough to upload the raw recording. We're just ironing out the details of which YouTube channel to upload it to, whether or not we'd split the video up, and how we'd split it if we did.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

This is probably the best addition to Champs since I can remember. Thank you GameSense, Twitch.tv, and FIRST!

[Chris_Ely]

This is amazing!

I hope my computer can handle 9 simultaneous streams .

[Bkeeneykid]

Originally Posted by Chris_Ely

This is amazing!

I hope my computer can handle 9 simultaneous streams .

Don't forget the 4 FLL Streams, and the FIRST Conferences stream!

14 Streams. My computer is ready. My internet bill is not.

[Eugene Fang]

Originally Posted by Bkeeneykid

Don't forget the 4 FLL Streams, and the FIRST Conferences stream!

14 Streams. My computer is ready. My internet bill is not.

+ Franklin & Edison

[Greg Needel]

Since you guys are on the inside when it comes to production of the FIRST videos can you please put in a strong recommendation for the layout used at the Texas Events? It is a 4 window split: top of it is a full field view, lower left is a fixed view of blue, lower right is fixed view of red, and the lower center is a floating view from a camera opperator. IMO this is far superior than most regional videos where you have a camera operator who likes to focus on a meandering robot instead of the action.