Championships for dummies

[Conor Ryan]

Tournament structure:
Lets try to make this simple, if you want an analogy, use NCAA March Madness, 4 Divisions (Archimedes, Curie, Galileo, Newton) then the winners of each Division square off on Einstein. Vex and FLL play on the DaVinci field.

Get Orientated:
The first thing anyone should do is get to know where you are, take a look at some maps (GWCC has a nice Virtual Tour that covers the entire site), look for the quick ways to get from place to place. The Georgia Dome and World Congress Center is no small venue. The path to get your robot to the field is long, so if you have time make your cart a little easier to handle.

Foodage:
Breakfast- If you don't eat at your hotel (I'd advise you do this or make other arrangements) I believe, there is a Dunkin' Doughnuts in the CNN center food court.

Lunch- Don't like arena prices/food? Go to the CNN center, its a short walk, it'll be nice weather, the food court is massive. CNN center will cater to just about any taste you feel like.

Dinner- No CNN center? Talk to the concierge at your hotel, theres a good amount of places to go out to. Just remember there are some bad sections of Atlanta (that doesn't mean theres bad food though)

Transportation:
If TIMS says your hotel is within walking distance, walk it. It's a really neat thing watching a ton of teams pour into the streets of Atlanta. Take the MARTA out of the airport, and thats probably the only time you may need it, a team can be well supported within walking distance of the main hotels. Sneakers are recommended, you do a ton of walking in Atlanta.

Other:
Go in with the mentality that you'll have the time of your life, and you will. Nothing is like Atlanta, its a great experince.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

...
Transportation:
... Sneakers are recommended, you do a ton of walking in Atlanta...

Conor brings up an excellent point. Sneakers are required in the pits. Wear them. You can wear flip flops when you get home.

[JudyVandy]

Sneakers are required in the pits. Wear them. You can wear flip flops when you get home.
__________________
Closed toe shoes are required, not necessarily sneakers. Open toe shoes are prohibited in the pits.

[Simon Strauss]

Its that time of year again,

First i would like to say congratulations to all of the other teams who have qualified this year and those who have not.

My question this year is concerning the chairmens presentations at nationals, how they work etc. I remember that judges do not travel through the pits at nats as they do at regionals and i want to know how similar the presentation is and what to expect.

thanks
Simon

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Get Orientated:[/b]
The first thing anyone should do is get to know where you are, take a look at some maps (GWCC has a nice Virtual Tour that covers the entire site), look for the quick ways to get from place to place. The Georgia Dome and World Congress Center is no small venue. The path to get your robot to the field is long, so if you have time make your cart a little easier to handle.

Looking at your VR link, where would the pits be? Build C, Level 1?


And in relation to the VR maps, where would the CNN food court be?

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

I believe, there is a Dunkin' Doughnuts in the CNN center food court.

That's umm.. Donuts.. spelled the right way.

Originally Posted by chakorules

Looking at your VR link, where would the pits be? Build C, Level 1?


And in relation to the VR maps, where would the CNN food court be?

I have a much better map than the VR one that I have saved as a link at home. I'll link that here unless I can find it in the next half hour.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

Allow me to go in depth about scouting -

1. Creating a system for pit-scouting
If you already have a good system, you can adapt it to a large environment. It's basically like scouting 2 regionals. If you don't...this applies to you. Decide what is most important to know about each potential alliance partner or opponent. Make a list of those qualities in a simple-to-use format and print a template for each team #. You can fill in the team # by hand or on a computer before printing, whichever you prefer. Since there is so much more ground to cover, and you may have minimal resources, you may want to truncate this list a bit, really focus on the priorities. It's very useful to have photos of the robots as well - you may or may not want to have someone solely taking photos so that when you match scout, you have a reference.

A note on pit-scouting - sometimes teams drop out last-minute from the roster and are replaced by other teams, not exactly in the order you thought they'd be. Relying on order by team # is very unreliable this year, so having a sheet printed for each team ahead of time is increasingly important.

2. Match Scouting
Ideally, you pit scout Thursday and match scout Friday and Saturday morning. Try to get decent seats for your scouts, so that they can see every match. It's very difficult to keep good track of all the amazing teams, so you may simply want to consider taking brief notes about each team, rather than getting tons of data from every match. Teams get less matches in Nationals than they do in Regional events (84 teams per division vs say, 40 teams per regional), so it's easier to simply take notes on each team as you observe. Try to get experienced people doing this, and make sure they're dedicated. But do give them lunch breaks!

3. Deciding a ranking
Scouting can be hard with only 40 or so teams competing, doubling that is crazy! I highly recommend ranking teams on Friday night at your hotel as though Finals selection is at 9 AM the next morning. Have a list of the teams you think you are most compatible with - not necessarily the highest ranked teams, but teams who will play strong defense while you score or will score well while you play strong defense, etc. On your ranking sheet, write down precisely why you chose to rank the team in that spot, so that when you are observing matches on Saturday morning, you can refer back to your list and change things as needed. Again, since there are so many more robots competing, it is very important to get an idea of who is a good match for you early on, and build on that, otherwise you will run out of resources.

Good luck!

[Tim Baird]

Originally Posted by InfernoX14

There are only 4 divisions. Archimedes, Newton, Curie, and Galileo. Einstein isn't actually a division, it's just a field that FLL is played on as well as the finals with the the division champions.

The Einstein finals are just like regular elimination matches. I don't know which divisions go up against which, though.

One of our mentors counted the steps between the pit and the field. 652 steps, not counting escalators or elevators. It's quite a journey between the two. For the drivers, there's a much shorter route.

Even if you're on the drive team, it's still a long walk. Make sure you have comfortable shoes on.
Another important thing that I learned last year is to make sure your cart has good wheels on it. The wheel bearings in our cart wore out last year at the beginning of Atlanta, and it was a long three days pushing that thing back and forth.

[paldrid]

Even if you are only there for the experience, scouting is part of the experience. 2 years ago I think we had 4 people actively walking around, and a few people in the stands. The people watching matches never wrote anything down, but they could generally give us an idea of how well the team was doing. The people pit scouting had a notebook with basic questions, but I'm not really sure how much they were used. We certainly didn't expect to go far (and didn't) but it gave people on the team something to do, which they seemed to enjoy. Even if you aren't expecting to go far, scouting is a really good way to look at other robots and pick up some ideas for next year.

[dangerousdave]

Elgin Clock said:

And then you have the official Tourist page for the 2006 FIRST Robotics Competition from the Atlanta Tourism Board where a lot of that above info came from: First Atlanta Tourism Page

Thanks very much for that info as I have not seen that page before and I live in the Atlanta area.

Dave

[EricH]

Actually, if you are in a time crunch, the main pit entrance had a temporary mini-food court, with a lot of the same places as you'd see at CNN. Or you can try the stadium food at the Dome.

MARTA--Definitely very good. If you are near the airport, you'll get a lot of mileage out of a pass. If you're walking distance from the venue, it's pretty much one way on arrival, the other way on departure.

Shoes: plan for walking; if you are going from venue to pit with scouting data for your drive team, make sure you can hustle in your shoes.

Final note: Da Vinci is VEX territory and has two fields; Einstein is FLL territory until Saturday afternoon, when it becomes the Championship field.

[Koko Ed]

Oh by the way.
If you are lookign for instant inspiration you should visit the FIRST Hall of Fame and see how all of those Chairman's Award winning teams runa first rate program adn see how you can also do more for the FIRST community.

[Chris_Elston]

Is the schedule still the same at the Championship?

Section 8.2
8.2 Practice Round

Do you still have Thursday as practice day, Friday and Saturday for quailifying rounds?

[KathieK]

Originally Posted by chakorules

Is the schedule still the same at the Championship?

The agenda for Championships can be found here. It was just updated this week.

[Alex Burman]

Is there Wifi in the arena, pits or surrounding area?