Summer brings a lot of free time to think and I had an idea for a new project.
During the regionals time, I find it pretty hard to follow all different regionals as not everybody has the time to follow all webcasts and different websites. That’s why I thought that there should be a place where all the highlights will be updated: that’s FRC Live.
The target is to give everybody the opportunity to be updated with the latest news from the field - the special matches, results, alliances, awards and most important - the spirit. Everything will be done through a special facebook page, where people from each regional will join the page’s team and will report live to the world - all you need is a smartphone and an internet connection to write and upload something from time to time.
That way, the most important news will reach everyone and will make the regionals-following much easier and fun.
A pilot for this will take place on October 3rd during the Israel Off-Season, where we will see how the stuff works and be prepared for the real thing. After the dates and participating teams for each regional will be known, people will be able to assign themselves for reporting from their regional, so here’s your chance to become a news reporter for a couple of days
I really like the idea of this, however there’s one thing that concerns me. It seems like having 5 people uploading information constantly from events would make the facebook feed cluttered/confusing upon first look at seeing 5 different posts each from 5 different events one weekend. Any plans on how to make it clearer?
Yup, I already thought of it and the solution so far is to start each post with a tag, as every regional gets a two or three letter code from FIRST, for example:
[IS] Qualification matches are now over. Top 5: 1662, 1574, #3351, #1690, #1657.
[TX] Final rounds now! Red Alliance: 359, 1642, 118. Blue Alliance: 642, 2773, 1477.
The page will be also updated with dates and pariticpating teams so there will be less confusion.
I highly encourage everyone tweeting and posting about competitions to use the same hashtag standards FIRST has set: http://www.thebluealliance.com/hashtags
I’d also note that FIRST has used the “FRC Live” name on presentations at Championship. You may want to consider alternatives earlier rather than later.
Sounds like a great idea. I imagine there’s always that one guy on every team that seems to know everything that’s happening at every single regional, but for the rest of the team this could be just the thing. Besides, this lends itself very well to the idea of FRC becoming more of a spectator-friendly sport.
As much as I want, I have managed so far to follow only the local Israel Regional and this year also the Central Valley Regional (as our friends from team 1662 took part there), the rest of the information came only from other people and Robotics Memes (Triple balancing, rookie team in Einstein etc)
I think that this is also the way for pretty unknown teams to gain more recognition in the FIRST community.
And I agree, it can turn FIRST to be like the olympics - everybody follows it in one way or another, and you don’t have to be attached to the TV screen to get the hottest news (they appear online or in the news)
btw, the page’s name was changed to FRC Live Online. At the beginning my naming options were FRC Online or FRC Live, but the combination of the two is good as well
Hi guys, the Israel Off-Season will finally take place on Wednesday, and the first test of the project will be held there. So be sure to follow the page and get the latest news!
