I, for one, am a little disappointed by this change. When I was in high school with 116, we always did kickoff at home with our team and only sent a mentor to pick up our kit. When I joined 1712 as a mentor, one of the changes in how we run is that we attended our local kickoff event as a team. One of the big draws of attending that event was that they had a wooden field mock-up for us to interact with. With virtual fields and no wooden field elements, are teams even going to bother attending their local kickoffs anymore? That was the big draw of a remote kickoff, in my mind. Anyone can fire up the webstream and watch the kickoff these days, and you don’t need a full team to pick up a kit of parts.
I’m going to miss that kickoff experience, and particularly the interactions with other teams. The moment where the curtain is dropped and everyone crowds from the auditorium seats to the field elements on the stage was one of the cooler moments for the FRC season for me. You not only got to see an approximation of the field elements for the first time, but you got to chat about it with numerous other teams from your area, many of which you probably won’t see or talk to again until competition season. You got to spitball ideas and pick each others’ brains about how the game and field would work. I’m not sure this is going to happen without field elements to congregate around. The teams who still even opt to show-up to kickoff events are likely going ot leave shortly after the broadcast ends.
For the purpose of transparency, 1712 is also gearing up to be a remote kickoff host for 2019. While we have never done so in the past, we had some vested interest in having field elements this year. We were pursuing everything above board, with our woodworking sponsor and team parents leading the field construction, rather than team mentors (so there’d be no chance of leaks or undo exposure to field drawings). I’m discouraged by this not just because we won’t have field elements on kickoff day, but also because our initial kickoff hosting experience simply might be disappointing to other teams who are used to having those field elements available (and in turn to our school administration and other guests, who we had the desire of impressing by showing off numerous other teams attending).
I wish FIRST had phased this change in slower, and still allowed for remote kickoffs to have physical fields for the upcoming season. I would have even accepted increased levels of vetting and file security for remote build teams to prevent leaks.
