Championship 2011 - St Louis - Your Thoughts Please?

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

As usual, the speeches/presentations during the finals were too many and too long. I had three family members who were completely unfamiliar with FIRST come for the entire day Saturday. One of them actually fell asleep DURING THE FINALS because of the speeches, only to wake somewhat disoriented for the next game.

If the speeches had been more spread out, I would have enjoyed them more. Alternating between speech and award would have been far better than doing all of the awards at the end. There were three or four long speeches in a row at one point, and I was on the verge of falling asleep. I do appreciate what the speakers had to say, but I was tired after four long days and didn't have the attention span for what was probably 20 minutes of speeches aside from Dean's, and I would have appreciated it if they were broken up by matches or awards.

Originally Posted by Chexposito

i do however find it funny that so many of the students were watching the teleprompter that they had a staff member hold a sign in front of it. also there seemed to be a lack of energy in the finals crowd (late night...). i remember the massive waves on all the decks last year, the crowd beach balls, all of which were fun. especially when we got into doing more than one wave per level and people used their physics knowlege to go really high up when they met and both sides of this continued the respective waves. oh well i guess this is where i miss the georgia dome.

I think that the reason for the sign on the teleprompter was to let the performers/speakers know when to speak and when to not. My one peeve about the teleprompter was that it let those on the floor see who had won the awards before the speaker got to it (I personally turned away from it and looked at the speaker for Chairman's), even though we all had it figured out halfway through. If something like this were to happen again in the future, I think that it would be more appropriate to have the whole award speech be read from a piece of paper to keep the element of surprise there.

-Pit fields: Executed way better than I had anticipated, though still some things that could be fixed. Overall noise level was not a problem. However, there were times when the pit announcer drowned out the field announcer/MC, and vice versa. Traffic flow seemed very good, but the staging area for the red alliance made it hard for volunteers to get back to the drink table and to the area where we stored extra and popped tubes. I think that the issues with the stands have been vocalized enough, so I won't add any further comments.

-St. Louis: Holy cow, this city did a lot. There were signs everywhere. The team I traveled down with stopped at Union Station for dinner and putt-putt golf, and we were surprised to find signs in the station museum and FIRST bookmarks in the golf place. There were a lot of close hotels; I saw a lot of teams walking. Great job, St. Louis.

-Venue: It would have been GREAT to have "you are here" stickers on the maps, or a significantly higher amount of FIRST greeters (the venue greeters were good, but only if you knew exactly where you wanted to go). I spent at least half an hour wandering around because I didn't know how to get into the dome. The entrance by the volunteer check-in was not open until the end of that half an hour, and it wasn't clear that there was an entrance from the pits. I asked a greeter, who directed me to do xyz and then talk to another greeter down there. A few times, I was unable to find another blue-vested individual, or the one that was there was already swamped with people waiting.
Also, I never attended a CMP in Atlanta, but I've heard that getting to the pits from the fields was a trek. Here, I was able to do a complete circuit of the venue (from the dome through the pits and back through the hallways to the dome) in 10 minutes, with traffic.

-Concert: I thought that it was great. I had a floor ticket because of a connection with another team who was able to give me one, and I found it enjoyable. Some of my friends in the nosebleeds didn't enjoy it as much. The stands in the lower levels on that curtained-off part of the dome were not used end-to-end, if I remember correctly. There was still no way to avoid seating some in the nosebleeds, though. I'm excited to see the program on TV

--Crowd surfers: Yes, that was bad. Really bad. I saw a mentor standing next to me get a foot to the back of his head, and had to drag my friend out of the way to avoid her getting crushed by people who were trying to support the body overhead. They also all seemed to be in the same area, and I saw one or two traffic jams between surfers. This isn't FIRST's fault at all, and I don't know how it could have been avoided (it's a personal discipline issue).

-Volunteer food: I'm a vegetarian. I was starving. 2 out of the 3 entrees always had meat in them, and that third one was usually something very small or not even enough to constitute as an entree. I was wary about taking more than my share of cornbread, or biscuits, or dessert, because I knew that those ran out frequently, so I took extra half the time and sucked it up for the rest. I also feel bad for any volunteer that was a vegan, because they probably couldn't eat much of anything (I felt that too, since I don't like eggs at all and couldn't eat those for breakfast).

-BrendanB, I ended up being the recipient of the paper plane that you threw during the finals matches. I texted the number, but never got a response. I probably didn't type it into my phone right. Just thought you'd like to know in case you didn't get the text or can't

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Karibou

-Volunteer food: I'm a vegetarian. I was starving. 2 out of the 3 entrees always had meat in them, and that third one was usually something very small or not even enough to constitute as an entree. I was wary about taking more than my share of cornbread, or biscuits, or dessert, because I knew that those ran out frequently, so I took extra half the time and sucked it up for the rest. I also feel bad for any volunteer that was a vegan, because they probably couldn't eat much of anything (I felt that too, since I don't like eggs at all and couldn't eat those for breakfast).

While I thought the food was pretty good, I have to agree with you; the choices weren't broad enough. I eat meat, but I've got to watch my fat intake, among other things. So even without the meat, there was the cheese; even harder to remove. There were nowhere near enough vegetables & salads, although the fruit at breakfast was OK. We actually got somewhat more healthy food at the St. Louis regional; a LOT fewer volunteers to feed there, of course.

At least we were somewhat compatible; I almost never eat desserts.

[Tristan Lall]

One additional observation: unless I wasn't paying enough attention, they basically ignored the plight of 781 during the Einstein finals. I hypothesize that this was a personal decision on the announcer's part to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation: one robot wasn't moving during the two most critical matches of the world championship, and perhaps he felt the less said of it the better.

(Incidentally, has anyone got the backstory about 781's robot? What was wrong with it, and what prompted them not to call for the backup?)

[cpeister]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

One additional observation: unless I wasn't paying enough attention, they basically ignored the plight of 781 during the Einstein finals. I hypothesize that this was a personal decision on the announcer's part to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation: one robot wasn't moving during the two most critical matches of the world championship, and perhaps he felt the less said of it the better.

(Incidentally, has anyone got the backstory about 781's robot? What was wrong with it, and what prompted them not to call for the backup?)

After the first failure of our bot, the drive team tethered it up and tested it, and everything seemed to be working fine. From what I understand, they fully expected the robot to be functioning in the next match, and therefore did not call in a backup bot.

Evidently, our problems were not solved and we experienced a near identical failure in the next match.

On the way home last night we believed that the digital sidecar had failed. This could have been the result of 4 events worth of wear and tear, as well as playing our first defense of the season, with some heavy hits.

Then, biancs15 from Team 610 brought this to our attention today, regarding the banebots motor on our arm.

At this point we don't know the cause of our problems, but we will be looking into it in the coming days.

Although what happened was disappointing, we are still very excited to have gone as far as we did. 2016 and 177, sorry we couldn't perform for you guys in the end.

[Boydean]

The Good
- The venue. The walk from the pits to the dome was obviously a lot closer. I got to see the pits this year because of this! Not much more to say.

- 2 fields in dome, 2 fields in pits. Some said this was awful, some people really liked it. I really liked it. I think it mixes it up, and gives the pits a warner feel with the game announcer in the background. Not to mention that the pit fields clearly had a queuing advantage over the dome pits.

- The concert was a fantastic addition to the event. It made up for the lack of fireworks during the finale, not to mention giving out the Chairmans award during it was amazing. Could have lived with not having the Willow Smith performance though ("Where's my 21th century girls!!", sorry I had to say it).

- FIRSTies during the finale was amazing. Enjoyed every minute of it. Thanks AndyMark!

- Volunteers were spoiled, like they should be. The food was amazing (aside from the lack of vegetarian friendly food as Kara pointed out earlier, and the finale food), they were giving volunteers free massages, and a room full of bean bags for resting.

- The number of good hotels that were seconds from the dome by foot. I stayed in the Missouri Athletic Club which was 2 blocks (5 minute walk) from the dome. It was a nice hotel, great price, and they gave me free parking for the entire weekend (versus $10 a night like their site says). Not to mention they have a basketball court on the 5th floor.

The Bad
- The very clear lack of knowledge of the facility staff. Multiple times I had to ask facility staff how to get to things and they would look at me with a blank face. One staff member didn't know what I meant when I said "FIRST Robotics Competition pit area". This could be solved with a simple, short staff meeting before the event.

- The lack of directional signs throughout the venue. Several times I got absolutely lost when I thought I was following the signs.

- The lack of food around the venue was awful. I know there were places to eat, but the problem was...they were all out of food Friday. I walked into Subway, Quiznos, and Atlanta Bread; all of them some way or another were out of food. After that I called a chick-fil-a that was a bit down the road from where I was - they were just closing up because they ran out of food.

Notes
Some people complained about the safety of crowd surfing. Crowd surfing is extremely dangerous, but it is unavoidable. I've worked in events about the size as the BEP one, you can discourage it, stop it, and even throw people out for doing it, but people are still going to do it. I do wish, though, that people in FIRST would understand the dangers of it and not do it.

I wish they would have explained more of what the Chairmans team did. Either at the concert or at the award ceremony.

Lack of music on Einstein made the entire thing kinda...well, boring. Although, if it was for the documentary I can deal with that.

The speeches on Einstein were longer then usually. But FIRST really only has two times in a year to make that kind of show - the kickoff, and the championships.

[rwood359]

Originally Posted by Boydean

I wish they would have explained more of what the Chairmans team did. Either at the concert or at the award ceremony.

Visit our web site http://waialuarobotics.com.
There will be a link to our Chairman's video shortly. All shot in HD, I think that it is excellent.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Karibou

-BrendanB, I ended up being the recipient of the paper plane that you threw during the finals matches. I texted the number, but never got a response. I probably didn't type it into my phone right. Just thought you'd like to know in case you didn't get the text or can't

If ANYONE got one of those it wasn't from me! Some of our students were suprised by how many people I knew so they started writing my name on paper planes and sending them out so I have no idea how many there are in the dome with my name on them! I do not know what phone number was sent out!

The good:
Short pit walk.
Pits fields weren't too bad.
It was nice being within walking distance
There were a several great places for food within walking distance but the lack at the dome wasn't so good.

The bad:
Load in. This seemed very poor and maybe next year they can allow some teams who arrive earlier have a coach pre check in with the bands. FTC leaving at the same time we were enetering was very bad and was a traffic nightmare. We didn't get into our pit until 6ish.

Pit stands were far from sufficient.

The pits I found were very unsafe especially in the rookie rows. We had teams minibot poles in the aisles, tables, robots getting tested in the aisles, large groups of people who didn't move when you asked them to move they just starred at you, some teams took up half the row to work on a part, and it was just a nightmare trying to get through because they just wouldn't listen and some safety people walked right by most if not all of the occurrences.

No music on Einstein was really sad, the energy was just gone from the dome and you'd never expect we were in the finals.

I personally thought the Einstein background was rather cheesy and FIRST could have done a lot better especially with some of the multi colors and funky designs put up. It also doesn't do their sponsors justice since you can't read most of the logos they put up.

I was told by several quers on Thursday morning that we only had two matches PERIOD no matter if we were fully inspected or not and one man made us get out of the fast lane.

I'm still iffy on the concert, it was fun but I felt it ruined the event by announcing chairmans and it was still that giant curtain throughout the entire weekend.

I did find it sad when more people cheered for Jack Black and Morgan Freeman than Dean Kamen, the Dean's list, or the Chairmans award.

I loved how to stay on time we had to carry live robots onto the field!

I wish they could outlaw wheeled vehicles in the pits. Segways are one thing but several kids were on scooters or long boards.

[pathew100]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

The bad:
...The pits I found were very unsafe especially in the rookie rows. We had teams minibot poles in the aisles, tables, robots getting tested in the aisles, large groups of people who didn't move when you asked them to move they just starred at you, some teams took up half the row to work on a part, and it was just a nightmare trying to get through because they just wouldn't listen and some safety people walked right by most if not all of the occurrences.

I was a volunteer (robot inspector) and I agree completely. FIRST really needs to have a comprehensive safety plan for the event, and someone whose job it is to ensure that plan is implemented (right now it seems this is on the shoulders of the volunteer coordinators who have other jobs to do)

The amount of students RUNNING through the pits was staggering.

Also, pushing the robot carts too fast shouting "ROBOT!" as if that's going to move the crowd.

Sandals/Flip Flops were more an issue with visitors/parents but if rules are rules, then they need a way to enforce this in the pits.

Simply having a handful of volunteers at the entrances handing out safety glasses and trying to stop the improper shoes is not an effective safety plan.

Also, many of the worst offenders of 'bad' safety weren't the teams but the Black Eyed Peas crew, the FIRST production company, building facilities, Suppliers, etc... They simply weren't informed of the rules of the pit or ignored them.

How many people saw the motorized carts driving through the pits without beeping their horns? I personally had forklift cut right in front of me across the hallway from America's Center to the Dome. He never beeped the horn, just cut across the pedestrian path... This was by far the worst event I've been to from a safety perspective.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by pathew100

I was a volunteer (robot inspector) and I agree completely. FIRST really needs to have a comprehensive safety plan for the event, and someone whose job it is to ensure that plan is implemented (right now it seems this is on the shoulders of the volunteer coordinators who have other jobs to do)

The amount of students RUNNING through the pits was staggering.

Also, pushing the robot carts too fast shouting "ROBOT!" as if that's going to move the crowd.

Sandals/Flip Flops were more an issue with visitors/parents but if rules are rules, then they need a way to enforce this in the pits.

Simply having a handful of volunteers at the entrances handing out safety glasses and trying to stop the improper shoes is not an effective safety plan.

Also, many of the worst offenders of 'bad' safety weren't the teams but the Black Eyed Peas crew, the FIRST production company, building facilities, Suppliers, etc... They simply weren't informed of the rules of the pit or ignored them.

How many people saw the motorized carts driving through the pits without beeping their horns? I personally had forklift cut right in front of me across the hallway from America's Center to the Dome. He never beeped the horn, just cut across the pedestrian path... This was by far the worst event I've been to from a safety perspective.

Agreed, agreed, AGREED!

We had an issue this weekend where our team was late for a match due to a robot issue I had to grab a tetrix battery and didn't get out of our row before a large group from a team came to the pit next to us to give an award that shut down the row for a few minutes.

I wish that FIRST would come up with a role of 1-3 individuals for each field/regional that would roam the pits occasionally to check that everyones stuff is in their pits and break up the "lets have the entire team stand outside our pit" parties.

The pits are becoming more an more unsafe! The teams testing their robots in the rows really, really set me off but it wasn't impressed at all with many safety people this weekend with what I saw them walk by.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Karibou

This isn't FIRST's fault at all, and I don't know how it could have been avoided (it's a personal discipline issue).

Really? It's not FIRST's fault? When the door to opportunity is opened, those who open that door should have precautionary measures set in place to help protect their clients and their volunteers.

Jane

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Really? It's not FIRST's fault? When the door to opportunity is opened, those who open that door should have precautionary measures set in place to help protect their clients and their volunteers.

Jane

What I meant was that there was no real way to control it. I'm sure that FIRST could have explicitly said "no crowd surfing," but they did not, and even if they had, I'm sure that it still would have happened.

However, they did make several pit announcements saying that we would not be allowed to take pictures of the event, and that was not enforced in the slightest.

Originally Posted by BrendanB

If ANYONE got one of those it wasn't from me! Some of our students were suprised by how many people I knew so they started writing my name on paper planes and sending them out so I have no idea how many there are in the dome with my name on them! I do not know what phone number was sent out!

Awwww XD I still think that it's pretty funny that at least one made it to someone who was actually on CD, though...

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Karibou

What I meant was that there was no real way to control it. I'm sure that FIRST could have explicitly said "no crowd surfing," but they did not, and even if they had, I'm sure that it still would have happened.

However, they did make several pit announcements saying that we would not be allowed to take pictures of the event, and that was not enforced in the slightest.

I know, Kara. And - I was happy to look at photos that were being posted on FB. Some were beautiful. Most were blurry and you couldn't really tell what was what.

If it is true and FIRST hopes to have events like this in the future, then these are things that either they need to address or the teams and volunteers will have to suck up and get used to.

Jane

[FirstFan2011]

The t-shirt stand was a total failure. Way too many logo choices, way too many options on type and color of clothing, nothing preprinted, order taking process way too slow, numerous orders late and messed up. Need I go on?
People were p*ssed off!!!!!!!!!

[Blackphantom91]

My thoughts

The Good

• The pits- They where Pretty cool to walk around this year for some reason.
• Teams- This year It seemed like teams all over steeped their game up and made the compositions all over the event harder thus even better to enjoy.( would love to see it continue) Congrats to everyone and winners on Einstein.
• Concert- I went into this concerto thinking it was going to be a sham and overrated I was wrong it was extreme fun and I thought it was cool to make it a celebration about the teams. It also helped That some members of the thunderchickens were making me laugh every two seconds. I believe that he wants to help first now im generally convinced.
• Competition overall Fantastic Its a wonderful experience and I loved it this year.

Alright now its time for the bad.
The bad

• The setup- It would have been better if they explained way earlier than what they did by the time I saw it It wasn't bad until we played in the dome then I got lost and was confused on my way back to the pits. (not fun) I liked the pits close to the competition.
• the weather]- Flooding and rain bad combo.
• Lack of Music on Einstein Nuff said!

I really loved championships this year it was fun, Next year I hope is even better Great days of competition great robots and teams on Einstein and in the divisions. Left with a smile and met new people great time! Shout outs to everyone!

[DonRotolo]

See my comments in the "2011 lessons learned" threads.