2011 FRC and VRC Championships at the same time.

[Meredith Novak]

I realize this information was posted in another thread, but thought it deserved its own. The implications of having the FRC (and FTC, FLL) Championship Event exactly at the same time as the VEX World Championship seem really huge. If you have had the pleasure to attend the VRC Championship, one of the things that makes it so much fun is getting to spend more time with all the robot people who do both programs!

We (Novaks) all volunteered at the 2009 VRC Championship. We qualified 2 teams to attend the 2010 event. Because the event was the weekend after the FIRST Championship, most of our students were not able to attend the VRC event. (We brought the 7th graders and a couple of HS students who could miss 2 weeks of school in a row.)

I was a field manager, John was a referee and Harley did queing. Our 7th grade team was totally alone with 1 sophomore coach. (It was a great opportunity for them to be self-sufficient and I was very proud of them for the job they did.) But it was VERY tough just having the event back-to-back with FIRST.

So we are just one family of volunteers and one little team who won't be there next year...what about everyone else???

[gblake]

The overlap does stink - They both changed dates and managed to wind up on top of one another - Dunno what I'll do in April - Sigh

I'm very curious if the two schedules can be untangled after this one collision

Blake

[Joe G.]

Although I don't know all the factors behind this decision, and it may have been inevitable, I have to say it strikes me as a very, very poor one.

Volunteers will be missed from both events.

Teams will be missed from both events.

Publicity will be less for both events (less spread-out, anyways)


When there's competition between teams, everyone is encouraged to do better. When there's competition between competitions, the same happens, but at what cost? FIRST and VRC are out to inspire students. They shouldn't put doing it better than anyone else as a higher priority.

I'm afraid that this will make both events somewhat disappointing next year. I'm hoping I'm wrong...

[Foster]

I'm not happy either. Our FRC team is making an effort to secure funding now so we can go to Championships in St. Louis. I was looking forward to going to that.

But my first love is the VEX robots and I was planning to go to Dallas.

The plan was to blow serious vacation time in April (maybe back to back weeks of Wed-Thur-Fri).

Maybe there is another large venue in St. Louis and they could hold the VEX event there? FRC from 8-4 and VEX 4-10?

But I'll chime in with the others, this is a hard volunteer issue, lots of people help out at both events.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by rocketperson44

Although I don't know all the factors behind this decision, and it may have been inevitable, I have to say it strikes me as a very, very poor one.
...
When there's competition between competitions, the same happens, but at what cost?
...

RP44,

Don't assume that either group knew anything about the other group's decisions in time to renegotiate with the host venues, or that these colliding schedules had anything to do with a sense of competition between the two programs.

I believe that it is far more likely that bad luck, and a lack of attempting to coordinate schedules is what happened; not any purposeful, competitive action.

Let's figure out how make the best of it (got any ideas?); and when asked for feedback, let everyone involved know that we wish things had worked out differently for 2010.

Blake

[Pat Fairbank]

I really enjoyed volunteering at the VEX Championship in 2009, but had to miss this year because of exams.

I was looking forward to volunteering again in 2011, but I guess it's not going to happen. I imagine those FRC mentors who work (or contract) for IFI must feel pretty bad about this conflict.