-May be close to 400 FRC teams at Championship (100 per division!)
-NO MORE FIELDS IN THE PIT!
-Goal is 9 qualification matches per team.
http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2012/04/biggest-and-best-championship-ever.html
Best news I’ve heard all day!
But Black Eyed Peas Championship is best championship!
/sarcasm, despite love of catchy, infectious beats.
But just the sound of “100 teams per division” is awesome.
Not if you’re a scouter… 
The sound of all the fields in the dome is even better!
I think FIRST® realized a mistake, glad things are going back to the way they were.
I know that feel bro. I can imagine the pain of any scout dealing with the Friday night pick list.
Hmmm… 9 matches means you see at most 45 other teams. Really at the mercy of the scheduling gods! Oh well, bring it on! 
At 100 teams per division, I hope we find out our division assignments earlier than in the recent past so that we can start pre-competition scouting!
9 rounds per team * 100 teams per division / 6 teams per round = 150 qualifying rounds in each division!
So they knocked it down to 9 matches. We had 10 last 2 years (up from 7 before that). I think 9 is enough, division seeding will always be highly dependent on the schedule.
We had 147 qual matches per division last year so 150 is easily possible. I think we could do 102 teams and 153 qual matches. Actually I think FIRST is prepping for at least 408 teams since if there is no overlap in qualifying teams in Weeks 6 & 7 there would be at least 411 teams. 345 (currently registered) + 36 (6 Week 6 Regionals) + 12 (MAR) + 18 (FiM) = 411
The automated scoring system this year speeds up cycle times tremendously. Every event has been running ahead of schedule from my observation (with scheduled dance breaks). Chestnut Hill field went down for like an hour early in the quals and we had no problem making it up.
What I really hope, is that they don’t have any surrogate matches at Worlds (it is pointless and they do it every year). Why would you have surrogate matches when you have a wait list full of teams to fill those slots? Fill till you have a nice even number of teams with no surrogates, 2 problems solved. With 9 matches/team they just have to make it an even number of teams/divison.
This sounds amazing. What I wonder though, is why can’t they make 8 divisions of 50 teams. They obviously have the space for all the pits. It is more space, but it seems like they could make enough space for those fields. And it would allow for more matches.
Very exciting.
Volunteers. Having twice as many fields would require twice as many volunteers to staff them. Now, I’m not educated about FRC’s volunteer situation, but I’d say it’s safe to say that it would be hard to get double the current amount to St. Louis.
Money. Having twice as many divisions would require twice as many field setups, twice as many sound/video/lights people and equipment. I’m sure it adds up.
It’s the two things that drive the real world: money and manpower. If we can get a good supply of both, I’m sure FIRST would quickly expand the number of divisions. But it’s rarely that easy…
You brought up a lot of good points. They have 18 fields, and I’m pretty sure they usually have at least 9 regionals a week(1 extra for Einstein), which each need 1 setup, so the field problem doesn’t seem like an issue. For the dome reservations, it is an extra 8 - 12 matches, so that would take more time, but not that much more. Especially if they reduced 18 matches per team(what it is now x 2 because of the extra divisions), to like 15, they would have even more time to do einstein matches.
In terms of manpower though, I can’t see a solution. Soon though, we will get to a point where there are too many teams coming, that there is no other option. Hopefully, FIRST will be making enough of a profit from the extra teams coming to CMP, that they will have enough money to bring those extra people.
Yes, but you have to remember that while the courts and FMSs themselves are already paid for, there’s still quite a bit that each field requires that isn’t on those trucks. All the surrounding equipment, the venue-based A/V and items not shipped with the fields, not to mention shipping what does need to be. Still very expensive, though the manpower issue is likely greater.
Why does FIRST need money to bring extra volunteers? Wait, have I been missing my per diem? Where’s my check? 
[Please excuse that, what I mean to say is that volunteers mostly pay their own way (sometimes quite a lot). Very few people in the first umbrella get any money, though of course they are important people.]
FIRST provides food for volunteers, as well as shirts and passes to the finale, so there is a monetary cost to FIRST for increasing the number of volunteers even though we aren’t paid.
I think Michael’s point may have been in terms of the cost of the extra AV equipment, loading personnel, etc that aren’t volunteers but are hired by FIRST to run things at Championships, however.
If you think it’s difficult to hear team introductions and play-by-play in the dome now, just imagine what a mess it would be for 8 announcers. Also imagine the increase in traffic - doubling the number of robots in motion at any one time.
I love the idea of more matches so less luck is involved in the picking. They’ve got some hurdles to overcome to do it.
Wow. 400 teams, 9 qualification matches, and (this is just what I heard from a mentor) they’re opening up at 3:00 on Wednesday, from which we CAN WORK ON the robot until 8:30 while simultaneously setting up pit structures, then qualifications start at 1:00 on Thursday. That sounds…odd, but I’m not sure quite how that works out. Either way, I’m excited. Can’t wait to go to my second World Champs (Definitely going to break out the 2010 Atlanta jacket when I go.) PM me if you want to t-shirt trade!
And I appreciate everything FIRST gives us. However, having both read their financial statements and struggled through the event volunteer shortage, I’m fairly confident saying a good part of the manpower issue is in volunteer bodies rather than complimentary supplies. I do agree about the A/V issue, as both myself and Phil mentioned. But you are correct, I had not meant to sell short FIRST’s volunteer support, only clarify that money is not the (only) limiting factor to “bringing those extra people”.
I believe they’re opening at 4:00, can anyone confirm?