With five of the teams that got invites on Pacific Time, how the heck are they going to swing airfare on that kind of timetable? (Not to mention in the middle of AP and final exam season.)
I don’t think the timetable is a problem here, aside from time of day of the event.
I would suggest holding the event in a more central location. It seemed like the amount of tools and spare parts that teams brought was inversely correlated to the distance they had to travel to New Hampshire.
Someone else (I think it was on Facebook) suggested this.
I don’t think it’s impossible or even a bad idea, but given everything that happened around FoC (the Dean’s List lunch, Supporters Summit, tours of DEKA/FIRST HQ, events at Dean’s house, the short trip for FIRST people and equipment to SNHU Arena) I think any other city would have to have a top-freakin’-notch pitch to move the event.
Most cities throw their financial support toward events based on how many hotels and meals the visitors will spend money on while there, and I don’t know how well FoC checks that box. (I’m sure FIRST has a hint of this now, though.)
Imagine if a team from Israel or Australia or China got in to the finals. That will never stop being a problem for those teams no matter what date FIRST chooses. FIRST really needs to step up and help these teams out. It’s not fair to say “Too bad, so sad” and replace them. They earned the right to be there. Do something for them!
This would be incredible, and I’d support making a 60-second tech tip video contest. The safety animations are cute, but this could be a great resource.
One of the VEX online challenges was a “STEM Educational Video” that could be adapted or just copied for this. It’s described as:
Create and post to YouTube a video focusing on teaching a new team some aspect of the science, construction, engineering, and/or math of designing and building robots, up to three minutes long.
Many teams already make and post great tutorials or recordings of live workshops they run, but making a contest out of it could formalize and ramp up some of the content creation. I’m imagining seeing clips about the prototyping process, robust wiring tips, and band saw safety up on screens instead of song pardodies.
So, as someone there in person who saw the pre-game stuff, if they’d played it all on stream everyone would be complaining about how they don’t care about politician and sponsor speeches, and to cut it out.
They do the exact same format in Manchester for Kickoff - a local ‘pre-show’ ceremony to open it up, and then the live broadcast that everyone sees. It’s an old standby from when the live broadcast was actually a ‘live studio audience’ type event. The local show is usually the Governor, a little award ceremony, maybe some video content.
This year it was:
-Chief of Police for Manchester (I think I got this right)
-Governor Chris Sununu of NH
-Air Force presenting Dean with the American Spirit Award
-Dean with a few minutes (yes, truly only a few) of remarks
-A video on global government support for FIRST which included all sitting US presidents since FIRST’s founding - which is what seemed to get people talking about it outside of the in-person attendees.
I don’t know if that would have resonated well with the Twitch audience, and I think the only reason it wasn’t broadcast is just that they’ve never broadcast the little pre-show in the past for Kickoff.
My thoughts:
Admittedly, I was incredibly skeptical of this event going in.
In the spirit of brutal honesty, I am not a fan of the model in which we found ourselves, and I wish this event didn’t have to happen, because we wouldn’t have two ‘champs’ in the first place. I was very ready, like a lot of people were, to criticize and snark. (And I did, at least a little bit.)
HOWEVER:
As an in-person spectator, I was actually pretty impressed with the event. Everyone’s brought up the audio issues and I won’t rehash that, but other than that, the event production overall seemed okay from the viewing seats. I’d love to hear more from the actual Festival participating teams on their reflections as well.
Twitch folks added an extra touch with the interviews, and from what I could hear of them, it was a nice picture of what teams are up to. I would have loved ‘more’ on the teams, their robots, the background of the culture change award teams. I think additional features on the game(s), the pits, the machines, etc, would have done a great job explaining to someone viewing on Twitch for the first time.
Something I noted was that before the first FRC match, they lined up the alliance across the field as they were introduced. I would have wanted that same ‘rockstar moment’ for our new HoF teams when they were talked about / their videos were played.
Overall, I think if this is the ‘solution’ to the 2Champs issue, it wasn’t so bad. Definitely room to improve the event / broadcast quality in the future if they choose to host it again.
I’d like to put out a question to those who are saying “it shouldn’t have existed” without offering other feedback.
**I’m curious: without saying ‘just one championship’, what would you have wanted instead?
**
To clarify, I mean - in the system that we’re stuck with for the moment, how would you have done the Festival differently? It seems like a lot of people are both unhappy about 2Champs, and also unhappy that FIRST attempted to give teams a culminating event. What would you change about the event - or would you not have it at all? Why?
I had a really interesting conversation this weekend that gave me insight into a different perspective. The gist of it was - for the first time, winning Einstein* “got you something” from FIRST, other than a banner and a trophy and a big smile on the ride home. The teams got to visit FIRST/DEKA, have a party at Dean’s house, spend more time together as an alliance after the confetti dropped… if there’s a silver lining in this, maybe that’s it. (Note; I’m not saying I fully agree with this perspective, or that it’s the ‘right answer’ to this bandaid, but it was interesting to discuss so I’m sharing it here too).
Just throwing an avalanche of thoughts out there.
I think if they did it again next year, I’d go.
I also did like how they went the extra mile and had the same videos and animations for the FTC. Their robots were amazing and the matches fun to watch. However, the FTC really should invest in live scoring and upgrade their video interface. I think if that were done FTC matches would be much more engaging for everyone, not just FTC students and fans.
This statement is very true. As someone who won a world’s event when I was in high-school. I would have loved the opportunities that these World Champions got. So I’m pretty happy for those in the future that get the opportunity as well. Hopefully I’ll get another chance to bring some of my future students to that point.
We already have a system for advancing teams based on their event performance: the District system. I would love to see District-points based advancement of teams from each halfchamps. In addition to each winning alliance auto-qualifying, another 20+ teams could qualify, and the FoC could be run as a normal tournament, with qualifying matches, alliance selection, and elimination rounds. This event could be incredible, easily eclipsing and replacing IRI, and crown an absurdly good alliance as true world champs. This would also be closer to the Super Regional->Champs model used in other robotics leagues, including some of FIRST’s own.
I get that it would be tougher to coordinate more teams coming for a longer event. It would be more expensive, take more time, and involve more people. But, imagine if 118, 1678, 1986, and even more Einstein teams were there. Imagine the alliances that could form. Imagine the level of play.
With regard to what Ernst said, we could even take it a step further. Have each of the 12 divisions act like a separate district event, with the best teams from each meeting in the FoC.
I have to admit, while I was watching FoC I kept thinking what it would be like if it included the Newton and Darwin alliances.
This answer is suuuuuper interesting to me and exactly why I asked the question the way I did. 
That’s definitely different.
How would you balance the ‘prestige’ of winning Houston or Detroit vs. winning this Festival? Which one is your ‘true champion’?
(In other words, how do you reconcile the often-confusing concept of ‘we didn’t actually win anything to get here, but we won the big show’?)
While it would be awesome to see this broadcast on TV there have to some issues that are ironed out before that time. It would probably show up as not a live episode but rather something run similar to battlebots or robot wars (robot wars style may not be possible due to the amount of ads on Amreican TV). It is the perfect FIRST event to broadcast given its the best of the best teams so you’re guaranteed a high level of play and depending on what you show its either only 6-10 matches or 3-5 which both can easily fit in an hour time slot. As stated before there are a few issues that should be dealt with before current day FRC and FTC come to mainstream TV.
On the FOC field there were several issues with robot comms and it would definitely be nice if FRC could be exposed to the world without a robot loosing connection on the field since that would definitely not look good. First has a good history with dealing with comms issues on high levels of play (2012) so I have confidence that if foc were to be broadcasted First would figure out a way to prevent comms issues in the future.
I would like to see FTC get its well deserved FMS upgrade before it makes it debut on television.
Of course the show could go down several routes. They could include eihter just FTC or FRC in the show and interlace the matches with either explanations of what FIRST is, in depth explanation videos about each of the robots, interviews, or even just have that time be a commercial break. I personally wold like it best if they went with the hour long and structured it similar to how robot wars is done with tons of actual matches but also with a background for teams involved. Another option would be to have a 2 hour special but this would likely be more difficult to make so it seems unlikely except this would allow all the matches to be shown even if its drawn out to 10 total and would allow for the aforementioned between match things for both competitions going on. Of course this should not be broadcast live as there is much more potential if its recorded then edited. I guess you could decide whether it will be a 1 or 2 hour special depending on how many matches are played although tv scheduling is done quite far ahead so this may not be possible.
I think we already kind of have the issue now. Is the St. Louis alliance the true world champion or are they just the winner of FoC, a “Pro Bowl” type event (as FIRST put it)?
To answer your question, I think there are two options. First, we could treat the current world championship as Super Regionals or qualifying events. The other option would be to treat FoC like a true Pro Bowl, an unofficial event used to showcase and celebrate the best teams competing for bragging rights. I think the latter is more likely.
I like this idea, but I doubt it would come to fruition for the reasons already mentioned. Plus, IRI has been around for nearly twenty years and I don’t see it (or want to see it) going anywhere.
I am torn on FoC. For one, I get it, the winners of both Championships get lots of good recognition. It crowns a true “Champ”. On the other hand, it seems like lot of resources spent on only 8 teams.
I think that this year, it’s pretty clear that we’ll have to take the “Pro Bowl” view. It’s certainly unsatisfying; it’s like handing out AL and NL pennants, then making the World Series an exhibition series. But there’s too many variables to crown a formal champion - the several months’ spacing, the lineup change on Houston, the fact FIRST framed it this way itself. In future years, the expectations may shift going into the event. But in my view, we have two “World Champion” alliances this year, and the bragging rights of the FOC don’t change that.
It depends what FIRSTs goal is. If they want a superbowl, it needs to be directly after the two championships. While teams are still in “Competition mode”.
If it’s the probowl, Just invite the captains + #2’s from each Einstein alliance(24 teams) and run a bunch of Round Robin matches. The winner of the Pro Bowl doesn’t matter, and this could be the same way. Just an appreciation for top level robots trying to outdo each other for bragging rights.
This would be so fun to watch.
Other sports (mostly outside of the U.S.) feature competitions that are fairly equivalent to Festival of Champions.
In much of Latin America, soccer seasons are divided on the calendar into two separate halves, each with their own champion. In a few of these countries, the two half-season champions play each other to decide the overall champion that year. In other countries (like Mexico), the two half-season champions play each other in a standalone tournament, but both participants are still champions of their respective season.
Likewise, in European soccer there are several simultaneous orthogonal competitions in each country that each crown their respective champions and then begin the next year with a Super Cup. In general, winning a Super Cup means you get an official trophy and some bragging rights, but it generally carries less prestige than winning the competition that got you there. I think this is the right framework for thinking about Festival of Champions.
Lastly, even as an outspoken critic of Two Champs, I don’t have any difficulty recognizing all 8 STL/Houston teams as World Champions. There are ~3350 teams in FRC now and we crown 8 champions. That’s about the same rate of champions per registered team as in 2007 (3 champs for 1305 teams). Are we going to start saying that Championships in the alliance era before 2007 don’t count?
What if you invited all of the district champions to compete? That way you ensure that there is some international representation and diverse geographic representation. Last season there were ten regions we are probably moving to 12ish next season. You have a good group to run some fun and engaging matches that have built in rooting interests for fans.
Every idea that has been thrown out is very FRC-centric though. I wish they could incorporate something like FIRST Global into the event.
It was pretty enjoyable on the whole though audio issues really bugged me and lead to me muting it while it was happening. Maybe a little bit more breakdown in between matches on decisions and turning points in the match could have been fun (similar to the VEX Worlds broadcast) but I thought it worked pretty well for the first year.