I just recieved this message and thought I’d share a snipit of it with CD.
We just wrapped up a great Championship 2013; but there is still room for improvement.
Other than some early FTC communications issues and a common Team Finale problem, the 2013 Championship went well for the Jr.FLL, FLL, and FTC participants.
However, the vast majority of participants in St. Louis are FRC participants and there were some disappointments for them. They felt they did not get to play enough and some also felt that limited seeding matches led to ambiguous seeding results. Some others were disappointed with imprecise real-time scoring. And all four programs were let down by a too-long Closing Ceremony and a too-crowded and delayed Team Finale. (The rain shut down a major venue and resulted in under-estimated interior crowding.)
To address the concerns of our FIRST Community:
· FIRST will work hard to increase FRC seeding rounds by at least 25%;
· FIRST will reconfigure the Closing Ceremony to be more efficient and end sooner; and
· FIRST will change the Team Finale, targeting a much better result.
FRC had a wonderful game this year. Kudos to the FRC Game Design Committee!
Still great. A few years ago they vowed to give a minimum of 10 matches, which prompted the move to starting qualification matches on Thursday. I’m glad to see an effort to get this back.
The other points are also good. Shorter closing ceremonies are long overdue
We just completed another strong season for all four of the programs at FIRST: Junior FIRST LEGO® League® (Jr.FLL®), FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL®), FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC®), and FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC®). All programs experienced strong growth, with FTC and FLL leading the way.
We just wrapped up a great Championship 2013; but there is still room for improvement.
Other than some early FTC communications issues and a common Team Finale problem, the 2013 Championship went well for the Jr.FLL, FLL, and FTC participants. However, the vast majority of participants in St. Louis are FRC participants and there were some disappointments for them. They felt they did not get to play enough and some also felt that limited seeding matches led to ambiguous seeding results. Some others were disappointed with imprecise real-time scoring. And all four programs were let down by a too-long Closing Ceremony and a too-crowded and delayed Team Finale. (The rain shut down a major venue and resulted in under-estimated interior crowding.)
To address the concerns of our FIRST Community:
· FIRST will work hard to increase FRC seeding rounds by at least 25%;
· FIRST will reconfigure the Closing Ceremony to be more efficient and end sooner; and
· FIRST will change the Team Finale, targeting a much better result.
FRC had a wonderful game this year. Kudos to the FRC Game Design Committee!
All programs had strong seasons with good team satisfaction and team growth. However, the season ending could have been better. As the Closing Ceremony dragged on too long, I was inspired by the sustained enthusiasm generated by all the participants. FIRST owes you better solutions to the issues I mentioned and FIRST will respond.
Thanks to all the team members, Mentors, Volunteers, and Sponsors; YOU WERE GREAT!
Also, I love how amazingly blunt this email is. There is no beating around the bush with anything, no excuses (other than the rain obviously). This is really cool to see. He states the issues like they are, and then states what needs to change. Just plain cool.
I’m curious – what “major venue” was shut down due to the rain? Was there another activity in town that was cancelled and all those patrons came to the FRC Finale instead?
10 matches would be fantastic. We had 3+ hours in between matches on Friday which is excessive. I understand field reset takes so long and there are a lot of teams to play through, but for the amount of cost and effort to come to Championship, give us some reasonable playing time!
By “Team Finale” does this refer to the Einstein Field? I thought the flow of Closing Ceremonies was fine given the field reset times which drove the timeline. Could this have actually been reduced? Also, wasn’t sure if Closing Ceremonies progressed following the final Einstein match – most of us left at that point.
While I think it is good that FIRST is trying to address people’s concerns, I think we also need teams to be more understanding of the situation. Championships is always the big leagues and they are trying to have more of the best teams. There were tons of good teams this year so unfortunately not everyone will make it as far as elims or Einstein. I think teams generally are handling it well, but I have seen times where it’s been a big display of just being downright not GP.
To get more matches without being really frantic next years game needs to have an easy reset. This year that seemed to be the biggest issue with the number of matches that we had.
Big Time consuming things this year:
Counting the frisbees
Getting climbing robots down
Reset time was the big factor in determining the number of matches at regional events and CMP this year. I’m confident that they will consider this for next years game.
TEam Finale is the event after the closing ceremonies, aka the science center event. I think they were expecting people to be both in and outside at the center. The rain drove everyone inside and made the event super crowded
I thought I heard somewhere about it being at the Science Center and City Museum, the rain driving away the City Museum because of the amount of stuff to do outside there.
I wish that FIRST / Steele Meetings wouldn’t force team to buy tickets for the FIRST Finale. When our team has gone through Steele Meetings we have never went to the finale because we want to stay till the end of Einstein (which is better then the Science Center).
Possible ways to increase matches at the Championship
Less teams make it to the championship
More Divisions
No Practice Matches, Straight to Qualifications
Faster Field Reset Times
Stay Later on Thursday and/or Friday to play more matches
There was nothing about that released by FIRST at all this year. It was going to be the St. Louis Science Center and the planetarium and lawn across the highway bridge.
However, even if the outside wasn’t ruined by the rain, the fact that the busses let us out at the front of the science center, when most people’s final destination was probably the lawn and planetarium to watch the fireworks/participate in all the games and activities (which is BEHIND the science center, but has its own road and bus turn around), the science center would have still been extremely crowded with people just trying to get THROUGH it.
They should have dropped us off at the planetarium. That way, people that wanted to stay outside could do so without jamming into the science center, and those that wanted to see the science center could do so without the crowding of people that just wanted to get through.
Science Center AND City Museum? They are not co-located and the Science Center requires transportation to get there from the Dome. I’m not sure how you could have a Finale event at both locations unless there was some transportation logistics setup in between, but that doesn’t really make sense.
We walked to the City Museum on Friday night from our hotel near the Dome (and I had a ton of fun there).
