[FRC Blog] 2nd District Event Registration Thursday – Important New Information

FIRST General Forum
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2nd District Event Registration Thursday – Important New Information
Written by Frank Merrick.

District Teams, we have some important information for you! Not sure if you are a ‘District’ team? Check here.

Some of you may be aware that the Michigan and Pacific Northwest (PNW – Washington, Oregon, and Alaska) Districts use something called a ‘home event’ registration system. Under this system, all teams are assigned a specific ‘home event’ as the first event they sign up for. Teams may opt out of going to their home event, but then must wait until 2nd District Event registration to register for both District events they receive as part of their season registration fee. As these teams who opted out are actually going to be attempting to register for two events when 2nd District event registration opens, this increases the demand on the registration system.

Because of this:

MICHIGAN and PNW TEAMS: YOUR 2nd DISTRICT EVENT REGISTRATION WILL BE AT 11:00AM EASTERN TIME on THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13th.

This time is one hour before all other District teams, who will be registering for their 2nd District Events at Noon, Eastern Time, on the same day, as planned. We believe moving registration for these two Districts up by one hour will significantly reduce the overall burden on the system, and result in a smoother experience for all.

This is how the timing will work on Thursday, October 13th:

11:00 to 11:45 AM Eastern Time: 2nd District Event Registration will open for MI and PNW teams only. Events for non-MI and non-PNW District Teams will not be visible during this time. (Don’t Panic*)
11:45 AM to Noon Eastern Time: MI and PNW registration closes temporarily, but District events for all District teams become visible in the system once again.
Noon Eastern Time: All 2nd District Event Registration (including MI and PNW) opens, and remains open.

Regional teams, you should really just relax**, this has no effect on you. Your 2nd Event Registration is still scheduled for Noon Eastern Time, Thursday, October 20th.

We will be communicating this by email blast to all teams today, and likely tomorrow as well.

I’m sorry for the late change to this schedule, but as noted above, we do believe this will result in a better overall registration experience.

Frank

*Don’t Panic

**Just Relax

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Step aside, step aside, just a Michigan team going FIRST. :slight_smile:

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Here’s the signature with the links from the original blog post:

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Anyone else slightly concerned that FIRST is so worried about the demand on their site that they are going as far as to separate the 2nd district event registration of 415 FiM and PNW teams from the other 663 (+ Israel) district teams?

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[bad attempt at humor]Maybe it is Michigan with all the internet robots that bogs the system down?[/bad attempt at humor] :]

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Nah, we’re just doing science. After the split between district and regional teams, this was naturally the next step of the binary search pattern.

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As far as I know, PNW and FiM are the two systems that use the home event rule. Some teams will be intentionally registering for both their first and second event on Thursday.

As to why we went from ~3300 teams down to a near 60/40 split of that number, to an ADDITIONAL 60/40 split of that smaller number besides that nugget, dunno what to tell ya.

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I wonder if they’ll split Regional registration between North/South Championship teams too.

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Since any regional team can register for any regional, I would not expect them to do this.

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Since the biggest burden from regional teams has already happened, and because of competition between wanting to go across from north to south, I sincerely doubt it.

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No sucker watch the entire 3 hour beach video for a hint?

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Michigan is one of the two places with zero incentive to do that for first event registration. It’s probably California, I’ve heard it’s almost impossible to get into districts there :wink:

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too far

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Seven Rivers restricts registration to North Champs teams, by having all teams go to waitlist. That’s from Frank’s blog about a month ago.

Not sure what Mexico City is doing about that, being Week 9.

Oh, and Basel, it’s really easy to get into regionals in CA. You just need a faster Internet connection and registration clicker than the other 200+ teams in the state! (Now, getting into the regionals you want to get into might be another matter.)

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At least it’s not MN :stuck_out_tongue:

CA teams can get a second play in-state if we want one. Getting a third play is harder :slight_smile:

-Mike

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In FiM, 271 teams are currently registered.
Seems like somewhere around 430 teams in state now…

So come registration day, you may have 430 teams, which could be 860 users, (Main and Alternate contacts can register) registering for 589 events (860 total less 271 current) , for 329 open spots (20distictsx30 spots less 271 taken), before waitlists kick in.

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I think you missed something there, Eric :rolleyes:

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I think you missed posting this when it came out #RIPHallry

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I got a BSOD right as I was about to start the thread (one that I’d never seen before, too)

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There are now 21 Michigan Districts listed.