Check out that trophy. Even shinier in person! Goat for scale.
All four teams on the Alliance winning the Festival of Champions will be getting trophies like this to bring home as mementos of their victory. They’ll also be getting blue banners. Note that the full, formal name of the event is **FIRST **Class 2017: Festival of Champions. But you can call it the Festival for short. And, yep, that emblem at the top of the trophy is the official logo of the event.
Also, we have adjusted our event times. For those folks visiting in person, doors to the SNHU Arena will still be opening at 9AM Eastern Time. However, the main event, and the broadcast, won’t be starting until 10:30AM. This will give a little more time for the many teams we have in the Pacific Time Zone to get changed out of their jammies and grab a breakfast burrito and coffee before tuning in. The event will bebroadcast on Twitch. If things go as planned, we’ll be broadcasting on two Twitch channels, one will include cuts between the various cameras and the other will show a static overhead shot. We’ll have more details on channel assignment later. Also, the event is currently scheduled to end at 12:45PM Eastern Time, though it may end sooner if we don’t need all five rounds for both *FIRST *Robotics Competition and *FIRST *Tech Challenge to determine their winners. These are going to be some great matches, I hope you tune in!
Four Stars Again
*FIRST *doesn’t like to blow our own horn but yeah we do sometimes. For the 12th year in a row, we’ve been given the highest possible rating, four stars, by Charity Navigator, an organization that evaluates thousands of charities with an eye toward helping donors make wise decisions about where their money goes. This 12th consecutive four star rating puts *FIRST *in the top 1% of all the charities Charity Navigator evaluates. This is good evidence that FIRST, as a nonprofit organization, manages our expenses carefully, is prudent with sponsor donations, and puts the great majority of what we make back into the mission. See the rating letter from Charity Navigator here.
Consider that the average mature goat should be somewhere between 22.5" and 32" inches tall depending on breed, that’s quite a massive trophy. Taller than most humans!
I think FIRST does a fine job with branding but they are really struggling with marketing these large events.
The split championships is hard enough to explain. Now there’s a long confusing name for this, and FIRST is using a “pun” that just guarantees that it’s going to be misspelled everywhere as “First Class 2017” because people never understand that FIRST is an acronym.
“Class of Champions” just sounds silly. From my perspective, it looks like they’re trying really hard to not call the winners “world champions.”
Also, if I showed someone that trophy it would elicit an “oh, that’s cool” response. Winning this event deserves a trophy that says “whoa, awesome!”
The FTC world champions have worked as hard as our FRC world champions to earn their titles. Both FRC and FTC games have been some of the most technically challenging games in recent memory and all 8+6 teams have definitely earned my respect. Totally not cool to say this.
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Glad they pushed the start time out a bit. Should be easier to organize a watching party for us on the west coast
Good luck and save travels to everyone.
The teams, sure. I’m excited that these teams get to strut their stuff at a major event. I was also excited that those teams got to showcase their stuff during the Einsteins.
As per usual when people get upset with me online it’s because of a stupid joke I didn’t think through. Saying that was idiotic of me. I’m sorry.
What hurts even more and makes me reconsider my actions is some of the top mentors in FRC who I very much look up to calling me on it. However, that’s totally deserved.
Nah, I was kinda agreeing with you. WATCHING FTC is painful because the scoring screens look like they came straight outta the 90s.
FTC has a lot of REALLY cool stuff going on, I think the games are, for the most part cool, and I love the iterative approach teams can do. I desperately want to like FTC but FIRST keeps doing stupid things like ruin games with penalties, make it hard for top teams to qualify, and have scoring screens that are completely disgusting.
I want to get hype for ftc, but that hype is hard when I am ugly crying over ugly scoring screens being ugly.
For FTC specifically, I was told (by a volunteer) the real-time scoring was an afterthought, and was created by a volunteer. I suppose it’s better than nothing, but even a basic points screen (think Cheesy-arena’s HUD) would be better than what they presently have.
I haven’t heard one way or another but you can get official merchandise (including the stuff that was available at both Half-Champ events) from the Marketplace for FIRST website.
It’s just indicative of the problem I’ve seen in FTC, in that I’ve always felt its participants deserve a better product (kit of parts, most game design, larger events, etc) than what they get. I’ve never had a chance to go to a Super Regional with the exception of peeping in to the 2014 South super Regional in the same building as the 2014 Alamo Regional, but I have heard great things from them. Sometimes I wonder if FTC and FLL can become better programs if given a chance to not be tied to the FRC postseason expos in Houston and Detroit.
