Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

[David Kelly]

I wish the fields would show the current rankings through out the day. Or at least have some monitors in the stadium dedicated to that. There was absolutely no way to see them unless you went into the pits. I didn't want to spend the time to walk back and forth after matches. I wish that they would show the scholarship award winners on the screens like in previous years. Have they even given out scholarships yet? Between matches they would just keep repeating those commercials. I appreciate the need to show them, but they were a little excessive.

[Lil' Lavery]

About teams leaving before Chairmans:
This has always been an issue, but it isn't really avoidable. Many teams had flights they had to catch, and were not able to say later, they had to leave when they did.


My biggest complaint is the lack of Chairman's honorable mentions. Bring 'em back!
Also, some of the reffing was questionable (at best).

[santosh]

I too agree about the honorable mention award.

I was dissapointed in the fact that there semed to just be less energy towards the end of the competition and in the lack of confetti.

I thought the wrap party was good, it coulda used some more lighting but I guess that would have changed the effect.

Also, ther were some calls that I thought should have ben called, such as when Wildstang was tipped over during elimination matches in the Newton division with no call made.

Other than that I though it was great.

[Kit Gerhart]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

About teams leaving before Chairmans:
This has always been an issue, but it isn't really avoidable. Many teams had flights they had to catch, and were not able to say later, they had to leave when they did.


My biggest complaint is the lack of Chairman's honorable mentions. Bring 'em back!
Also, some of the reffing was questionable (at best).

Maybe this shouldn't be necessary, but the way to make sure everyone stays for the Chairman's Award presentation is to have the presentation before the second, and potentially last match.

[silicon_ghoti]

Originally Posted by whytheheckme

Tube supply. Was really confused by this. Why were so many Keepers blown up ... Seemed to me that very few of these were popped/cut away, but it seemed like every time I was in queue, there was someone on one of the fields blowing Keepers up. Not really a complaint. Just confused.

Jacob

I think I can answer this if some one hasn't already, those tubes were distributed between all fields (I believe) and at Galileo in particular the head ref was rather slash happy, it seemed that every-other tube was ripped apart. Which in it's own quirky was is a real crowd pleaser.

[Otaku]

I heard that after FIRST said that people could take ringers that the Dome turned into a madhouse.


I'd say that they should organize that a little bit better. Have people make lines, ask for a certain amount of game pieces (with a limit of something like 10), and keep the "no running" rule in place (like in the pits... although I never got dinged for running in the pits, and there were segways and Ford Thinks there after all...), and tell people that if they're going to jump around, to do it AWAY from expensive stuff.

But that should be common sense.




All I can say is that FVC and FLL didn't get enough space or recognition. A lot of what I've seen about FIRST focuses on FRC, which is a shame, really, because FLL and Vex are pretty cool too.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by dsmoker

Let me start off by saying that this was our team's first trip to Atlanta (we never qualified before and barely raised the money once we did). On the whole it was an excellent experience, with a few minor drawbacks:

1. We were initially told there would be a shuttle from our hotel to the convention center. There was not. It was about a 20 min. walk, which seemed a lot longer at the end of a long day.

Where was your hotel? I'm sure if it was near one of the MARTA stations downtown that could have saved you a bunch of walking. (The train trip would probably still take about 20 minutes, but at least you'd be sitting on a train instead of walking after a long day.)

Originally Posted by dsmoker

3. There was no where in the pit area to sit down. At the UTC Regional, which we attend each year, there are tables and chairs to the side of the pit area so teams can sit and even eat during strategy sessions once alliances are formed. Our drive team never got to eat before the quarterfinals, and if we had won wouldn't have gotten to eat for quite some time, as no food could be brought into the pits. Knowing this, should we qualify again (and have enough money) I would plan to do what I saw some teams do, that is design toolboxes to double as seating areas for the pit crew.

In the pits (Building C of the GWCC), there were TONS of seats in the lobby outside the pit floor space. If you went up to the second level, there were even more couches, chairs, and even a [rather high priced] food court with pretty decent food, which is much better than the food in the GA Dome.

Originally Posted by vadyr

Thirdly, the divisions are too large. Having more divisions (i.e. six divisions) would lessen the amount of teams in each division and allow each team to participate in more matches. Scouting would be more manageable for less experienced teams. This year, there were six or seven regionals occurring simultaneously each week. Next year there will be 41 regionals in five weeks, averaging to over 8 fields a week. At least one week will require 9 fields. Thus, FIRST will have enough fields for each of the 6 divisions, two practice fields, and the Einstein field.

The number of teams in each division at the Championships has not changed in several years; they have always been about 85 teams. As this has been discussed before, there will most likely never be six divisions at the Championship Event. Logistically, it would be impossible to fit six FRC fields into the GA Dome, in addition to the daVinci and Einstein fields. There is no way you'd ever be able to "comfortably" fit eight fields on the floor space of the Dome.

If you try to cram more fields into there, you start getting into issues like the audio/game announcements with one field being clearly audible from another causing confusion, etc. among spectators. You also have to get enough qualified volunteers to run two additional fields, which might prove very difficult, especially for "key" positions.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

Being one of those who is only able to watch matches from a dorm room, I'd really like to see an improvement in the webcasts. The quality doesn't bother me as much as the camara choice; it seems that whenever a robot is disabled and not moving the camara has an urge to zoom in on it while robot X on the other side of the field does a backflip and scores 5000 points. I'd really like to see some better choices in camara angles next year.

This is something I definitely noticed. Myself and a few members of my team gathered on Saturday to watch the webcast of the eliminations. The biggest thing we noticed was a LOT of excessive zooming. There would be extended periods (5+) seconds where all you saw was an electronics board or some pneumatic accumulators.

We want to see robots scoring! Not a random section of some teams bumpers.

[FIRST Rocks]

Originally Posted by pythagoras

the only thing that I had major problems with, was poor judging. For example, while in the semi-finals on curie their was a lot of commotion near the rack and 1114's arm was broken, we only got a 10-point penalty. Later on Einstein 71 got knocked over and the refs declared a red card. I have seen issues similar to this one and would just like some clarification on the topic.

Indeed there were some very poor calls by the referees. On Archimedes, in semifinal 1-2, team 254 was tipped over by the opposing alliance, and no penalties or DQs were called. Then, in the very next match, 254 was tipped again by the same robot, and still no penalties were called. Watching the same thing happen to 71 on Einstein, only the aggressor being disqualified, made it even worse.

Here are some other things I noticed this year. There were no "special effects" for the Chairman's Award; in the past they've had the aforementioned confetti balloons or fireworks. Why nothing this year?

Lastly, I wonder why Dave didn't wear a suit for the finals this time.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by FIRST Rocks

Indeed there were some very poor calls by the referees. On Archimedes, in semifinal 1-2, team 254 was tipped over by the opposing alliance, and no penalties or DQs were called. Then, in the very next match, 254 was tipped again by the same robot, and still no penalties were called. Watching the same thing happen to 71 on Einstein, only the aggressor being disqualified, made it even worse.

As for 1114, I heard they were also pinned for much longer than 10 seconds, and the referees didn't start a count, make the aggressor back off, or call a penalty.

Here are some other things I noticed this year. There were no "special effects" for the Chairman's Award; in the past they've had the aforementioned confetti balloons or fireworks. Why nothing this year?

Lastly, I wonder why Dave didn't wear a suit for the finals this time.

About the semifinals on Curie and 1114. First, since I was the human player I didn't get a good view of what happened, so I don't know if it was legal or not. I do know that 48 did get a 10 point penatly, but that was after it was challenged by 1114. The 10 points didn't matter since we still won and moved on.

[PizzmasterP27]

I was knida bummed when in chairmans award interview we did not get a 1 minute warning. From talking with other teams and also my own experience, all the regional chairmans interviews got 1 minute warning.
I mean it was no big deal but we got cutt off a little

[Gabe]

My biggest complaint was the sound system in the pits. Our team brought extra motors, BB transmissions, and other extra stuff to share with other teams, but I never could understand a single thing they ever said on the microphone. Most of the time I can only hear about half of the team number and can never make out exactly what they need. I want to help other teams!!!

I gave up on the announcement system and simply went from pit to pit (To the team with 3/8" steel rod in Curie, thank you!). I think there would be a lot more of teams helping other teams if something was done about this.

[TKM.368]

Originally Posted by Gabe

My biggest complaint was the sound system in the pits. Our team brought extra motors, BB transmissions, and other extra stuff to share with other teams, but I never could understand a single thing they ever said on the microphone. Most of the time I can only hear about half of the team number and can never make out exactly what they need. I want to help other teams!!!

Perhaps this could be incorporated into Sundial somehow where you can scroll through a listing to see who needs what.

[Jon Anderson]

A nuisance at the championships was the ridiculous lengths that people are extending to in order to win the safety award. A fine line between safety and annoyance exists and the line was crossed. The award should be done away with completely or modified to include words like professionally or "not in a way that bothers everyone while contributing next to nothing in terms of safety."

[BlondeNerd]

Originally Posted by Jon Anderson

A nuisance at the championships was the ridiculous lengths that people are extending to in order to win the safety award. A fine line between safety and annoyance exists and the line was crossed. The award should be done away with completely or modified to include words like professionally or "not in a way that bothers everyone while contributing next to nothing in terms of safety."

I think I received the same safety sheet from 5 different teams. Safety posters are fun, unique safety sheets are OK, but I agree, it was a bit excessive to the point that Safety Kate didn't even read it all. I was also a bit disappointed with the lack of Safety Judge involvement. I saw them congregating quite a bit, but only one ever came to my pit. I spent a lot of time preparing for their visits. Yes, we should be safe anyway, but after being visited twice a day at the regionals, I had prepared the things that I had been missing before and felt it was for nothing when our pit was never evaluated.

I also agree that the sound system in the pits was awful. I realize that there is a lot of noise involved with that amount of people, but I never once could make out an announcement.

Overall, though, this event was one of the best experiences I have ever had!