New FIRST competition structure in Michigan

[Cory]

Perhaps my biggest concern, which I forgot to even mention, is how will FIRST find enough volunteers?

They're already hard pressed to find enough qualified people for the key jobs each regional requires. Now Michigan will have 2.5 times the number of events they held in 2008, plus they will not have the volunteers that potentially came to the event with their out of state teams. Nor can they feasibly expect the same volunteers to volunteer twice as many times as last year. Where will all the new volunteers come from, and will there be enough qualified volunteers to fill crucial positions, without the event suffering?

[Madison]

I've read comparisons to organized high school sports and things like Little League, but it seems to me that these things would not be nearly as popular were it not for their professional counterparts. FIRST agrees, even, going so far as to teach us that a culture cultivates what it celebrates.

This feels to me like FIRST is creating Little League before it creates Major League Baseball.

[Craig Roys]

For those asking about cost structure:

$5000 intial fee (KOP and 2 district competitions)
$4000 State Championship
$4000 Out of state competition
$5000 FIRST Championship

I'm definitely intrigued by this. It does seem to be the way FIRST needs to head if they wish to continue to grow. Of course I'm a little biased being a MI team knowing we will get two competitions for our initial fee.

[dtengineering]

Alright... I had a response written up that was far too wordy, so here's the point form version:

Good:

• More plays for the $$ for Michigan teams.
• Tiered events let low to mid level teams experience the playoffs sometimes.
• Reduces shipping/drayage costs.

Bad:

• Kinda tough if you're from Windsor (or other community bordering Michigan) and were planning to play in Detroit. Now you have to spend MORE and travel FURTHER.
  
• "State only" model might be practical (except for above point) but undermines the broad-based international competition that is part of the great appeal of FIRST. Philosophically I like the fact that FRC is currently "blind" to political borders and would like to see it stay that way!

But how....?

• Will they do a quality tech inspection without the practice day?
  
• Will tech inspectors really keep a team from playing in their first match of the day for a minor rule infraction... say... the wrong colour of wires or incorrect length of pneumatic cylinder? These are all things that get identified by tech inspectors and fixed by a team on a practice day that are not likely to be noticed during an 8 hour fix-it window.

And on that note... will teams really get a better experience if they show up ten pounds overweight and miss their first five matches as they try to meet tech? How will that effect the experience of their alliance partners?


It will be interesting to see how it all works out.

Jason

P.S. There are some interesting parallels between this structure and the one announced for the VEX robotics competition earlier this year.

[acdcfan259]

- I can't possibly see this working in some states. If you look, most (maybe not most, but a lot) states have less than the proposed 40 per district event. What are the teams in Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, Alaska, etc. supposed to do. I honestly can't see this as a feasible competition format for all of FIRST.

- As Cory said, we should strengthen the existing teams. There's enough struggling teams that could use help. Quality not quantity.

- The way it seems is that FIRST wants a team in every school, which won't happen. Sponsorships are already hard enough to come by without trying to compete with 10-15 other teams in your area.

[M. Gildner]

This was a good move. Travel costs were too expensive

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by dtk

The top 3 Chairman's and Woodie Flowers award submissions from the state championship will move on to the championship pool. So there will be the same number of Michigan submissions as last year.

I'm not sure if anyone else has brought up this point as I haven't read all 200 some posts but I didn't see much discussion of Chairman's...

In order for your community efforts to be rewarded you have to have a viable robot able to get you to the State Championship? Since when?

Does anyone else question the reasoning here?

I understand the need for the simplification, as a Chairman's submission at every district is not a possibility, but are only teams who have competitive robots able to get them to the championship allowed to make their chairman's presentation? There has been no correlation between the two in the past. Yes, teams that win the Chairman's award generally are experienced and a great force to be reckoned with on the field, but that is not necessarily the case, and every team has their off year for the robot...

To me the Woodie Flowers submission is even more of a necessity for district competitions. Mentors who win this award aren't necessarily from highly experienced or strongly competitive teams and deserving mentors' teams may not make it to the championship. Are we tossing them aside because there team wasn't good enough? Are all of the submissions statewide judged regardless of whether or not the team is attending?

I know the district system isn't perfect and our criticisms won't have the blessing of foresight until summer but I guess we'll see how this ends up. I simply hope no deserving team or mentor is passed up because they did not have an amazing robot.

[Paul Copioli]

The actual rule for the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award for Michigan (I do not know why it is not in the manual yet as several sections for the WFA are missing) has nothing to do with the robot performance.

Basically, you nominate your candidate at one of the Michigan districts you will be attending. At each district, all of the nominated candidates from that district will be called to the playing field to be recognized as nominees.

All of the nominees from all of the districts will be judged for the Michigan State Championship WFFA. There will be 1 WFFA winner from Michigan, not 3. I will not go into the reasons why on this forum. If you really want to know why, then you can discuss it with me during the 2009 season. However, all of the former WFA (it was unanimous) agreed that this was the best approach for Michigan and FIRST.

Agian, it has nothing to do with the robot for the WFFA, including Michigan.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by ICanCountTo19

In order for your community efforts to be rewarded you have to have a viable robot able to get you to the State Championship? Since when?

No. The current plan has a separate category of awards called "FIRST Culture Transforming Awards", which includes Chairman's, Rookie, EI, Woodie Flowers Finalists, Enterpreneurship and Autodesk Visualization. Winners of these awards at Districts will advance to State without their robot. (Unless the robot also qualifies by scores.) The teams will be judged separately at State for advancement to Atlanta: 3 State Chairman's, 1 State EI, 2 State Rookies, 3 WFFA's.

The whole thing will be similar to how the WFFA worked in the past. Regional WFFA's advanced to Atlanta, whether or not their team qualified.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

No. The current plan has a separate category of awards called "FIRST Culture Transforming Awards", which includes Chairman's, Rookie, EI, Woodie Flowers Finalists, Enterpreneurship and Autodesk Visualization. Winners of these awards at Districts will advance to State without their robot. (Unless the robot also qualifies by scores.) The teams will be judged separately at State for advancement to Atlanta: 3 State Chairman's, 1 State EI, 2 State Rookies, 3 WFFA's.

The whole thing will be similar to how the WFFA worked in the past. Regional WFFA's advanced to Atlanta, whether or not their team qualified.

Must teams that are judged, sans robot, for "culture transforming" awards pay registration for the state event? I hope not.

I guess the days where a Chairman's Award submission and presentation are made by members of my robotics team is coming to an end and, instead, I need to start treating that group as a separate organization. I can't, after all, bring 40 kids to an event wherein only 3 of them will present to judges for ten minutes and then have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of event.

My kids were thrilled to win RCA last season and the best part about that for any of our mentors was watching and being there with them as they went out onto the field. I think that moment might lose some of its impact when I have to leave 90% of my team at home because they weren't involved in our entry.

[Craig Roys]

Originally Posted by Madison

I guess the days where a Chairman's Award submission and presentation are made by members of my robotics team is coming to an end and, instead, I need to start treating that group as a separate organization. I can't, after all, bring 40 kids to an event wherein only 3 of them will present to judges for ten minutes and then have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of event.

My kids were thrilled to win RCA last season and the best part about that for any of our mentors was watching and being there with them as they went out onto the field. I think that moment might lose some of its impact when I have to leave 90% of my team at home because they weren't involved in our entry.

Three things:

First:
Why can't you take 40 kids when only three are presenting? I think it would be a wonderful show of team unity if the the entire team were to be present to support the CA presentation team. As a coach, I would be pretty upset if my team didn't want to go the the competition even though we weren't competing. Given that CA is the most prestigious award, my team would be going - robot or no robot.

Second:
As to the "nothing to do", why not have them volunteer for the competition or help out other teams or watch a fun competition w/out the stress (albeit fun stress ) of competing?

Third:
I believe that any team that is organized enough to win a District Level Chairman's Award would also manage to be one of the over 50% of MI teams who qualify for State's. If they're not, see first point above...

[Applepwns]

I like how the new structure makes it cheaper for teams with hotel fee's and traveling costs, but i really liked traveling out of state last year

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by Applepwns

I like how the new structure makes it cheaper for teams with hotel fee's and traveling costs, ...

That would depend on exactly where in MI you are located, correct? I would imagine some upper peninsula teams may incur quite a travel expense getting to their second event in-state.

This is one of the reasons why I hope and pray that my state, PA, does not go the district route any time in the near future. With a big gap in the middle of our state, we'd be straining our relatively young teams in Pittsburgh and really hamstringing many of our veterans in the Philadelphia region who have been great supporters of closer regionals (than Pittsburgh) in other states. We simply have no volunteer or team base in the middle third of the state.

If the district model works in MI, for MI, without stretching volunteers, schools, or resources too far, then great for MI. However, I will continue to wonder what other states this model could logically work in. Unless you have a somewhat even distribution of teams and volunteers throughout the entire state, it's hard to imagine that you'd be doing much good for all of the effort, but I've been wrong many times before.

[GaryVoshol]

In response to Rich's point, I think a big mistake in rolling this program out, if it is to be expanded to other areas, is calling the new event at Ypsi the Michigan State Championship. Michigan had the critical mass of teams available so that all the districts would be in one state, and so the championship happened to be the state level. If the district-qualifying-to-championship model gets spread to other areas, it likely will not be at the state level in most cases. For Rich's concern, perhaps there would several districts which make up a region in E-PA, NJ, DE, MD, and maybe VA. There certainly would be enough teams in that area to create a Mid-Atlantic Championship tournament. It could rotate around to various sites which currently have regionals in the area. The other regionals would be district sites, and an equal number of other district sites in smaller venues could be created.

The point about the UP (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the teams in the northern Lower) having increased travel costs to go to two district events is valid. It would also happen in states like ID, KY, NM, NE, MS, and at least a dozen others - states with only a few teams in them, adjacent to states with more teams and an existing structure that could be converted to districts. But the teams in those adjacent states would have to travel just as far to get to their first district as they do to a regional today, and then travel again to get a second district. Unless on the state level, such as been done in OK and MN, a big push is made to get new teams established and create a district in their own home state. We still have the problem of vast distances for some states, particularly AK and HI but also some other western states, plus the international teams.

Any new structure will not be ideal, no more than the existing structure is ideal. We won't know which is better unless we try. I've expressed some of my concerns in other posts. I'm hoping the concept will be given a fair trial, and that everyone will be open to suggestions for improvements if needed.

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

For Rich's concern, perhaps there would several districts which make up a region in E-PA, NJ, DE, MD, and maybe VA. There certainly would be enough teams in that area to create a Mid-Atlantic Championship tournament. It could rotate around to various sites which currently have regionals in the area. The other regionals would be district sites, and an equal number of other district sites in smaller venues could be created.

One of this program's biggest benefits was the reduced travel cost and assuming we have to travel to two district events in NY(Presumably one in Rochester) and the other in NYC? and then a Northeast Championship Event in NH? That's a lot more in travel then we do now going to FLR and Championship.

I think we all need to work on something that will work everywhere, not just MI. I think the MI Pilot will work there, I think if all the MI teams agree on the point structure then that's OK for them. I think we all can agree that there are changes that will need to be made to see if this system will be beneficial anywhere else.