[BB]: Regional Variations & Bagging It

[JB987]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

That definitely sounds like an awesome experience. Much like I've always heard Boston and the WPI offseason are. I look forward to seeing more about this

Best seen in person, right?

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

How many regionals have you been to that have all of the rookie and younger teams ready to start playing at 12:00 on Thursday?
I have NEVER been to a regional where that was the case...

Perhaps we need a shift in our mindset. Thursday is no longer the "last day of build" - it's the first day of competition. Build has to be done on bag/ship day. Any practice time is only for tweaking, not major builds. Michigan teams had to face that reality last year - many did not realize it and missed a significant portion of their 12 matches in their first district event.

And it's not just rookie or young teams that have to change their thinking. I know of very veteran teams who built or rebuilt major components of the robot on Thursday in the past.

[Josh Drake]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Perhaps we need a shift in our mindset. Thursday is no longer the "last day of build" - it's the first day of competition. Build has to be done on bag/ship day. Any practice time is only for tweaking, not major builds. Michigan teams had to face that reality last year - many did not realize it and missed a significant portion of their 12 matches in their first district event.

And it's not just rookie or young teams that have to change their thinking. I know of very veteran teams who built or rebuilt major components of the robot on Thursday in the past.

Agreed. Teams will have to shift their mindset a day or two durring build season. We have left last minute things for Thursday morning, and had a good practice day, but some teams look at Thursday as the last day of build as you said. Those things will have to be done before ship. It's part of the challenge!

[johnr]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Perhaps we need a shift in our mindset. Thursday is no longer the "last day of build" - it's the first day of competition. Build has to be done on bag/ship day. Any practice time is only for tweaking, not major builds. Michigan teams had to face that reality last year - many did not realize it and missed a significant portion of their 12 matches in their first district event.

And it's not just rookie or young teams that have to change their thinking. I know of very veteran teams who built or rebuilt major components of the robot on Thursday in the past.

Totally agree. You must be ready to play on friday. Your team mates must atleast move. Rookies ask for help and veterans seek them out. It is in your best interest. Stage a rookie event like Kettering did. The team we helped last year had their base moving before we did.

[Trying to Help]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

How many regionals have you been to that have all of the rookie and younger teams ready to start playing at 12:00 on Thursday?

Last year was our first year as a rookie team (lower team number because we had some experienced members but really started at square one last year) and I can tell you when we left on Thursday, our robot wasn't working. If it wasn't for the gracious help from Checkmate, Mayhem and Rhode Warriors (I think I've got that list right!), we would have been very, very sad rookies.

When do you think they'll list the schedule?

Trying to Help

[Collin Fultz]

I'm curious as to how a regional was deemed a "Bag & Tag" versus a "Shipped" regional. Anybody from a regional planning committee have any insight?

I ask mainly because when I saw Bill's post that more events would become B&T events, I assumed Boilermaker would be on the list. The average distance travelled to last year's BMR was 100 miles, with the max being something like 275.

So, anybody got any insight?

[Paul Copioli]

Since we were one of a very few teams that went to a non-bagging regional week 1, then to a bagging regional week 3 I will explain how it worked shipping from the event.

On Saturday of Midwest, we had to place our robot in the bag, lock it down, and place it in the crate. We shipped it using Fedex (or Sheppard, I can't remember) back home. We then took it with us to our Michigan district.

As far as a compressed practice day, etc. I hope they make it work like the districts worked. We had 8 hours starting the Sunday of the week of our next district to take our robot out of the bag and practice / work on the robot. The rules were a minimum unbagging of 30 minutes each session and a maximum of 8 hours. Practice day (Thursday) load in started at 6pm and was until 9pm. The main field was open for practice at this time. The better part of Friday morning was open practice and opening ceremonies was around 10:30am. Matches ran until 7pm and there were no Friday Awards. Teams got about 1/2 as much time to fix their robots as a regular regional, but also had the 8 hours during the week to make up for it.

I hope it works that way for these compressed regionals.

Paul

[Chris Fultz]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

As far as a compressed practice day, etc. I hope they make it work like the districts worked. We had 8 hours starting the Sunday of the week of our next district to take our robot out of the bag and practice / work on the robot. The rules were a minimum unbagging of 30 minutes each session and a maximum of 8 hours. Practice day (Thursday) load in started at 6pm and was until 9pm. The main field was open for practice at this time. The better part of Friday morning was open practice and opening ceremonies was around 10:30am. Matches ran until 7pm and there were no Friday Awards. Teams got about 1/2 as much time to fix their robots as a regular regional, but also had the 8 hours during the week to make up for it.

I hope it works that way for these compressed regionals.

Paul

But not all compressed regionals will be bag & tag. For example, DC had enough teams in 2009 that matches would need to start on Thursday afternoon to get in 10 qualifiers. Teams will not have access to their robots until Thursday morning when they arrive at the venue.

[Nate Smith]

Originally Posted by Fe_Will

Do we get a reduced fee or just less for what we are paying for?

This comes up just about every year, and while it's been said just about every year, I'll reiterate it again to save from having to search...

Very little of the registration cost actually goes to the costs of the actual regional event you are attending. The vast majority of it goes to things such as:

• Payroll @ FIRST HQ
• Travel Expenses for FIRST staff
• Kit of Parts items
• Facility costs(utilities, etc) for FIRST HQ
• etc, etc...

As others have alluded to here, essentially what FIRST does is guarantee that the various bills for the regional (venue, A/V, drayage, etc) get paid, but it is the responsibility of the regional committee to obtain funding to cover as much of this as possible. In the event that the committee comes up short, FIRST covers the difference.

[GeorgeTheEng]

Originally Posted by Nate Smith

This comes up just about every year, and while it's been said just about every year, I'll reiterate it again to save from having to search...

Very little of the registration cost actually goes to the costs of the actual regional event you are attending. The vast majority of it goes to things such as:

• Payroll @ FIRST HQ
• Travel Expenses for FIRST staff
• Kit of Parts items
• Facility costs(utilities, etc) for FIRST HQ
• etc, etc...

As others have alluded to here, essentially what FIRST does is guarantee that the various bills for the regional (venue, A/V, drayage, etc) get paid, but it is the responsibility of the regional committee to obtain funding to cover as much of this as possible. In the event that the committee comes up short, FIRST covers the difference.

In addition, if you look at FIRST's financials, the registration fees in total are far lower then the total operating expenses. It is more then likely that some major sponsors are feeling the economic hurt and have had to reduce thier generous donations this year.