Tell us what you liked or thought went very well at the 2007 Championship event.
Dave
Well, from watching the webcasts, it was pretty solid on Curie till around… 11 or so today. But that’s only from the webcast point of view.
3rd highest capping average in our division and we didnt get picked 
Although I was watching from the webcast it seems likes the refs were going about their job quickly and organized. They didn’t hold up any games, well at least not that I watched.
Also, I do have to say that the speeches were better this year. I liked the Autodesk one talking about the DARPA one myself.
hmm a lot of things happened to go wrong. for 3 of our 5 matches on friday, we had problems. the power distribution block loosened and one of the battery guaged wires fell out. then during another match we got stuck on a tube and were penalized? and then in the 3rd one, one of our black battery cables came loose… then we won the other two.
today… i just don’t know… it seems like a good experience for a first timer at Nats… right? I think we could have done better, we definitely had the potential, but things just didn’t work in our favor… but it was fun supporting beachbots in the curie/einstein finals!
I believe the point of this thread was for the whole experience…
Yeah… From what I remember from a couple years ago (last time my team was there was 05) there wasn’t any room to really dance when the dance songs came on.
Maybe, if more room is made for the dancers, more dance music could be played =D I find that playing the dance music definatly brings out the spirit in some teams.
DUDE THE CHAMPS ROXORED!!!
[/allcapsexcitement]
That was the most awesome thing I have ever experienced. Ever.
I got to meet a whole bunch of cool people, saw some all-out awesome matches, and ate crappy stadium food! It was sick.
You’ll see me, if not my whole team, next year!
Jacob
I watched as much as I could on NASA TV and the WebCasts and was really entertained this year. The Einstein matches were really exciting!! But…
Maybe it’s me, but I think if we played the Einstein matches again we’d likely have a different outcome and if played a 3rd time perhaps yet a different winner. Many of these alliances in the division finals and in Einstein were really, really good. None of them really stuck out like in year’s past.
Also, 102 QF Matches with ~80 teams in each division? You play 7 matches and if you drop 2 for some odd reason, as previously mentioned, your rank is low enough that you may get missed by an AC. Someone already mentioned how some really good teams didn’t get picked or weren’t picked by a top seed, well scouting at Nats is really tough. The logistics of scouting are more difficult and often teams lack enough students who could make the trip to provide adequate scouts for that many teams (many of which are really good).
Anyhow, it seems to be getting really big; and closing ceremonies didn’t conclude until 7 pm EST, that makes for a long day. Next year more regionals, more teams, could the Championships be bigger next year. I hope not. Don’t get me wrong it’s an experience all teams should get, but they may want to extend it to Sunday or start it earlier.
my $.02
I finally met The Infamouse CD Forums Creator and now the new edition to IFI’s family Brandon Martus. He happened to be administering the Archimedes Field. I also crossed JVN’s path a few times on Newton. I was to Team Queue the Red Side on Newton but got held up on Tube Inflation all Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday =( due to the lack of Field Repair / Reset personnel. However I managed to recruit 2 lost Team Queuers who didn’t meet up with our Supervisor and an Asst. Score Keeper who Didn’t like where they ended so I ended up having some help late Friday all the way into Saturday on top of switching back and forth with my Queuing Assistant =). I think Newton ran extremely well with no Field Resets / Scoring Difficulties. One of the many complaints I have is that you couldn’t hear the music on the field all that well which is the A/V crews fault. The next problem I have with Newton was that the Head Ref continiously hid the Blue Keepers from teams by putting them in an area where the alliance would not be able to immediatley find them after I continiously moved them to places where they would be out of the way. :mad:
Reading the initial post and the thread title, it looks to me like this thread is intended for the positive aspects of the Championship.
That cockroach robot was awesome. One of the coolest things that I’ve seen in awhile.
Overall, I think things went well, at least on Galileo. We kept on schedule +/- ~2 minutes all the way until the eliminations on Saturday afternoon. (Mostly it was everyone taking time-outs that threw us off schedule for the elims.) This means that generally everything was going well, from teams showing up on time, being ready to play, queuing working well, very few field problems, good calls by refs (which lead to very few team protests, which take time to resolve), etc.
At the end, I thought the way they “handed out” the game pieces went very poorly. After the final match, but before the end of the awards, they announced that anyone could take any of the inflated game pieces. The people who were on the dome floor already then immediately grabbed them, some people taking as many as 8. People in the stands rushed to the stairs, wanting to go grab some, but were prevented from doing so. Some people jumped over the railing onto the dome floor to get some. Some of the people on the floor picked up pieces and threw them into the stands. Many people were focused on trying to grab game pieces and were not paying attention to the remainder of the ceremony. I think if they were going to have a free-for-all “take any game pieces”, they should have waited until the end of the awards, and THEN announced that anyone could come onto the field and take ONE game piece. (On the other hand, I personally benefited from them doing it the way they did, picking up a keeper for myself.)
Come on members, at least 7 out of 11 comments here are not positive. If you have a negative comment take it to thatthread.
As I posted to correct someone in the negative thread: apparently the confetti balloons weren’t there this year, obscuring vision in the upper levels. That’s good.
I liked the speeches this year. IIRC, last year there was a congressman and a senator who gave pretty rah-rah pro-america speeches to the international crowd that was kind of wierd and felt like a USA political rally (and given that it was a midterm election year, that’s probably how the politicians saw it too). The DARPA man (forget his name) and the YouTube founder (Chad Hurley) were really good this year. Sergei’s speech last year was kind of bizarre (robot carrying the golden ball).
Dean, Woody, Dave and others being so giving of their time, autographs, and picture opportunities made the week (year?) for at least 8 members of my team. Coming home with pictures and autographs is really meaningful to many students and very inspiring. My seniors already have plans for their pics with Dean and Woody to be on display at their graduation parties!
Team 48’s photographer taking team professional pictures (thanks) was a logistics nightmare, I’m sure, and is very appreciated!
The DARPA (???) video was VERY cool and inspiring - maybe next year we can have some of these cars/robots and the robotic arm on display too!
The entire weekend was outstanding.
We had a blast.
We were impressed with how well they were able to deal with the inclimate weather and the social - kudos! How many other venues in the country could have accomodated that huge change at the last minute?
Someone mentioned that no one alliance stood out - that is a credit to the game design committee - they designed a game that required everyone working to gether to pull off a win, as compared to last year where one dominant team could carry the alliance. Congrats!
My suggestion list (these are VERY minor nits when compared to the overall experience, which was nearly flawless from our perspective):
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Make the fonts bigger on the screens - the team numbers and scores are too small for us old farts to see. I took pictures of the screen at max zoom and still couldn’t read the numbers …
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Why were the aisles so narrow in the pits - ours was only 8 feet wide, yet the aisles between the divisions were HUGE. Seems like the space could have been better alloacted - things were very cramped…
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Hotel ordering system. We need to get receipts with the HOTELs confirmation number, not the vendors. We had an issue with the hotel and couldn’t resolve it because the Hotel couldn’t sync our confirmation numbers with theirs. The Hilton was VERY nice about it and got it fixed, but it took us 2 hours to register and get rooms for the kids.
Again - these are MINOR compared to the wonderful time we had - we can’t wait for next year!
- Rick
This is not because of the font size, but the low picture quality of the screens they used. At regionals they used projector screens, which looked good. At Championship, projectors would block the audience’s view of the screen, so they have to use LED screens. The ones they used had poor picture quality. They should get better quality screens. I’m sure they don’t because of cost. That being said, I really liked the widescreen on Einstein. The only nit pick I had with it was when they showed both driver station views on either side of the match, they were so distorted I couldn’t tell what they were showing.
overall, i feel this year went pretty well. the only thing i felt that was wrong was the random qualifying alliences. we were with many of the same teams throughout all of each competition and did not get to see all of the teams. i understand this at the championship with 86 teams in a division but i really feel that the teams that have the same alliance partners for 2 or 3 matches are a little distraught. this was not only our team but many others. i felt that the championships went pretty well. it was well organized except for what i have stated above and i do believe many teams would agree.
thanks for a great year.
Well, I posted the down side, here’s the plus side from me:
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THANK YOU for leaving the FVC/FLL path open on Saturday. This path is also quite convenient for crew and other folks who access the internals of the Dome, and I missed having it last year.
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I liked the change in procedure for volunteer parking on the Gold Deck. Using the sign-in list is a much cleaner setup than trying to scramble for passes on Wednesday night.
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Whoever came up with the wide-screen idea for Einstein was a genius.
3a) Whoever came up with the idea for having the alliance station cameras on the sides of the main feed was also a genius.
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The food seemed better than last year for the volunteers. Bravo to the catering folks.
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Thumbs-up for moving the FIRST Finale indoors. Having it in the GWCC hall might not have been as awesome visually as in Centennial Park, but at least we stayed mostly dry. (And those brownies with the marshmallows are addictive.)
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Awards were well-timed overall. Having something between Einstein F2 and F3 would’ve been nice, but it’s understandable that FRC tournaments are unpredictable.
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Of all of the years I’ve stayed for Einstein, this year seemed to have the clearest communication about who has reserved seating.
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Fully realizing that repeating the FLL and FVC awards during the finals is impractical, I do appreciate recognizing the FLL Champions Award and FVC Inspire Award recipients.
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The on-field highlight reels while teams came down for awards was great. (I’d love to see something similar for the division champions, if that could be edited down fast enough.)
If I can think of more later, I’ll add to my list.
Perhaps move (delete and repost) this here?:
Just a suggestion.
Jacob