Lessons Learned - The Positive

[Koko Ed]

What happened this year that you thought deserved special recognition?

[MrForbes]

I met Koko Ed!

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by squirrel

I met Koko Ed!

and you got cool swag from IFI at the Webhug!

[MrForbes]

thanks IFI! vex stuff for our summer camps...yeah!

Best part is I have nothing at all for the "negative" thread

[Alan Anderson]

The WPA key setup procedure was nicely streamlined.

The match preparation sequence seems to have been worked out perfectly, with the DS and cRIO boot times not really causing a noticeable delay.

The pit layout wasn't quite as cramped as it looked like it was going to be.

The corner pit entrance by the escalators was an official and always open path to and from the Dome. (I recall uniformed people standing there in prior years letting people exit the pit, but sometimes making everyone go all the way around to the "main" pit entrance to get in.)

The pit announcements were unexpectedly easy to hear and understand.

The recorded welcome playing at the Dome entrance finally stopped saying "FIRST national championship". It said "international" this time.

[artdutra04]

The fireworks at the end of the Wrap Party (smaller, yet synchronized to music) were much better than the larger ones used in previous years that were just fired off seemingly at random.

[BuddyB309]

This year Was the first year I actually had to go to the First Aid center. The dry air in the pits caused a nastiest bloody nose I ever had. The people were nice even though I was bleeding everywhere.

[Uberbots]

Originally Posted by BuddyB309

This year Was the first year I actually had to go to the First Aid center. The dry air in the pits caused a nastiest bloody nose I ever had. The people were nice even though I was bleeding everywhere.

funny how you cite that as a positive experience

[blaxbb]

Originally Posted by Uberbots

funny how you cite that as a positive experience

well i guess it could have been worse without a first aid stand

[rsisk]

The combination of Nasa feeds and Twitter made the Championships a blast for all of us #NoATL people ;>

I have lots of ways to add features to the Regional Twitter Accounts for next year

[johnr]

Since this was under general heading and asked about the year, i'm going to say that the Michigan districts were the most positive thing to me. Yes,they need some fine tuning but overall i feel it was successful. I hope we never have to go back to the old way and that in some form it could spread out across the country. Well ,atleast the money saving part of it.

[rspurlin]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The match preparation sequence seems to have been worked out perfectly, with the DS and cRIO boot times not really causing a noticeable delay.

Your Galileo field team (FTA, FTAA, Scorekeepers/Field Power, field reset, queuers and others) worked very hard to make it this way. I won't clam it was perfect, but we were very focussed on not letting delays cascade and get out of hand. The schedule calls for us to start a match every six minutes. Given 30 secs to announce teams, 2:15 to run the match, 60 secs to count the balls, 15 secs to announce the score results, 30 secs to electronically set the field for the next team plus whatever time it takes for DS and radio links to sync, it's very hard to turn matches in less than 5 minutes. You can compute the match turns yourself by viewing the match results at the FIRST website. Hopefully all of this can be improved for next year.

[AlexD744]

I'm not in Michigan, but I think that system is very nice, except althought the cost is more efficient for match's played, you would still like to go to state tourny and Atlanta, however, that is more expensive. Maybe with a less expensive more light weight feild could cut transportation costs. Maybe reducing kit costs, I don't know but, I know for some teams, 2 districts a state champ and Atlanta would be way to much (e.g. us). On the bright side there would be less transportation costs for districts. And it seems amazing for teams to gain invaluble experience driving and strategy wise. Please bring districts to Forida, even if there's only 4 districts.

[keehun]

Not to get off topic, but I would personally dislike the Michigan system.

[Herodotus]

I thought this was one of the best run years of FIRST I've seen so far. All of the volunteers were awesome, and very rarely were matches running late. Field reset was quick and efficient, and except for some communication errors here and there it didn't seem like there were nearly as many field faults. The district setup was simply fantastic. So many matches for less money, and the point system made the State Championship really intense. Though I understand the complaint of culture changing awards not being given as much importance since they did not qualify your robot for competition, I think that is fine as long as we find a new way to elevate those awards up. I'd like to see the high level of competition maintained at States while also giving a great deal more recognition to the teams that win the culture changing awards.