Works well for those of us in Australia 
2 Likes
Not on topic at all but yall do all that in 1 night!? Sorry yall had to come all the way down here this year hopefully you wont have to do that again in the future.
2 Likes
It is interesting that the drive time from Houston to Alexandria MN (~19 hours excluding stops) will get your team home in just a little over the time my team will need to get back here by flying to Chicago, then driving the rest of the way. They are due in sometime after 2am.
Yes, I am looking forward to the return of Detroit CMP next year.
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Hereās to hoping it does, Iām not confident. And Iād be willing to bet it stays to one championship too.
1 Like
Or we stick to this one champs thing. Level of play was back to how it should be at a top level event. But they need to give us time to actually make the logistics work. I wouldnāt mind a return to STL if the facilities were in proper condition.
-Ronnie
22 Likes
I donāt care if there are 1 or 2 Champs, or where it is; just that it
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Actually accessible. Mobility and HOH/Deaf accommodations were worse than non-existent. My heart breaks for the students on 1023 & 5199 that were isolated from their teammates.
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They fire the crappy production company that didnāt follow best practices and warn people of frequent use of strobes. Strobes during score reveal? Really? I still am feeling the side effects.
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It is at least 2 weeks from the district champs.
14 Likes
The first round of alliance selection should happen on Friday night.
1/2 seeds typically have a huge advantage going into alliance selection because they have already worked on a list together the night before.
If first round of alliance selection was after awards on Friday, then Saturday morning would go much quicker and we wouldnāt have to start at 7. All alliances could meet the night before which I think would create a better, fairer experience for everyone.
Regional/District level events should also allow for a 15 minute break between rounds for the same reason.
Allow teams to sync up, and have real conversations instead of pressuring them under a gun.
And also these emcees seem to be getting more and more annoying about teams taking time for picks. Itās pretty un-gp in my opinion. The one in Irving was the absolute worst and if it were my call heād never be allowed to emcee again after his antics. But the one on Roebling was bad too telling teams 30 seconds into discussion āhey Iām gonna need you to make a pick right now you are out of timeā - as if there is ANY time limit. Poor kids.
34 Likes
Personally I am a huge fan of alliance selection first thing in the morning. Properly scouting your event and then analyzing that data is very time consuming and, in my opinion, one of the coolest parts of the playoffs. Scouting and strategy groups donāt get enough creditā¦ making the right picks, especially for the 3rd and 4th robots, is very hard and crucial to playoff success. Moving alliance selection up like this would make it very hard to make the right picks and especially penalize teams that donāt have the mentor and student resources to be running all that analysis while the quals are still playing.
As for your second point, I see the ability to lock in your first pick and work with them on the scouting as just another incentive to rank highly. We did not get the opportunity to scout with our eventual partners friday night because we ranked lower. I would have loved to do it, and it would have made the next day a lot less stressful, but it doesnāt mean I think 1st seed shouldnāt get to do it. Ranking high should be rewarded.
10 Likes
I donāt think itās the MCs making this decision. There is someone behind the scenes pushing them to keep the event on schedule, for the sake of The Show.
This is every bit as bad as the pressure those same folks used to put on FTAs to bypass teams when a robot was slow to connect or had some other issue that might have been corrected on the field, again for the sake of keeping The Show on schedule. That practice was corrected when Gail Alpert stood up to HQ and made it clear that FiM FTAs would not be following that guidance. That same kind of push-back is needed now.
I agree with John that a break between the first round of selection and subsequent rounds, to allow Captains and 1st Picks to confer and align their pick lists, would smooth things out considerably. Our sport has been based on alliances of teams for twenty five years now. It is high time we treated strategy and scouting with the respect those team functions deserve, and stop shaming students during alliance selection.
12 Likes
This made me SO upset. Iāve seen teams take 8+ minutes for a pick. If you donāt have a pick yet you donāt have one. Stop pressuring the dang kids and let them pick. Like honestly, out of all of the theatrics and other places to cut on time, this is where youāre going to pressure kids?
16 Likes
I am also frustrated about the behavior of the Roebling MC during alliance selection. I donāt know how much of it was their discretion versus direction from above but it left it a terrible taste in my mouth. I do not understand the need to pressure children to rush decisions that they might end up regretting for years down the road. I do not see how it improves the student experience, which is supposedly why weāre all doing this whole thing.
18 Likes
Iām all for being nice to people, but in the big picture, mentors and other leaders of team culture need to set expectations and model behaviours that minimize the possibility of a participant developing unhealthy long-term regret over a decision that is, by its nature, made with imperfect information.
13 Likes
We had 0 issues with this on Carver everyone got as much time as they wanted there was no pressure, no snarky comments, no Jeopardy music it felt nice and professional.
13 Likes
This generally already happens. Ideally you have contact info for the other top 12 or so seeds and figure out whoās picking who in the top 8 and how the scorching will go before 9pm-ish. Then spend the next 3-4 hours figuring out 3rd and 4th robots.
If that hasnāt been happening in your divisionā¦uuuuuh, you might want to get on that in the future.
4 Likes
As a follow up to this if you are an alliance captain and go around to collect contact info from the top teams, please contact them if you made the decision not to go with them. Nothing is worse then giving out your contact information then not even a curtesy text of āWe decided to go with someone elseā. You donāt have to tell who you are going with but at least let them know it isnāt them.
5 Likes
You eat breakfast?
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Is this normally a champs thing or lower level events as well? Iāve personally never been in this situation, but also never been to elims at worldās so Iām not sure what the cultural expectations are here.
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Mostly a champs thing, I imagine possibly at more competitive DCMPs?
Champs is tricky because you donāt know all of these deeper teams as well, and itās extremely helpful to have the other team working on those 3rd and 4th robots together.
3 Likes
Agreed.
Iād like to add that if they donāt have time to make drive team buttons, then how am I supposed to have enough time to get a team of 35 halfway across the country?
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Gonna second this as well. Turing was great. I was on the field for our team and we didnāt feel rushed to make our last pick at all. Even though Turing was behind the day before, the Mc and the volunteers didnāt rush us at all. Super happy with that. Seems it varies drastically from field to field which is quite frustrating.
2 Likes