INPLA 2024 - The Journey of Hosting a District Event

Competition District Events
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Hi. My name is Mike; I am one of the coaches on 3487, Red Pride Robotics, out of Plainfield High School in Indiana. We were recently awarded the opportunity to host a district event this coming March, and inspired by the spirit of Open Alliance blogs, I’d like to invite you along for the ride.

The purpose of this thread is to walk through the planning of hosting an official district event. I hope to share our processes, our goals, our triumphs, and our disappointments, while taking advice and answering questions along the way. The intention is to be rather informal and collaborative - just like many top-performing teams. Please feel free to interject with any questions, comments, suggestions or concerns you may have.

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We should start at the beginning - how did we get this chance? We hosted a district event in 2018; highlights included ease of transition from pits to field; regrettables included a pretty intense weather event. We showed we could persevere through tough times, make the right decisions, and still deliver an exciting and compelling competition.

Around the start of July, I had heard that FIN was looking for a host site for weeks 4 or 5 for the upcoming season. I checked our facilities calendar, sought administrative approval, and contacted the Operations Manager for FIN. We did not put together an RFP, but they had the ones we submitted in 2018 and 2020. He came by in mid-July, we walked through the building, and we made tentative plans. I started assembling a planning team.

Event Coordinator (main point of contact and project manager)
Hospitality Coordinator (oversees volunteer food & drink)
Facility Coordinator (addresses facility needs the days of the event)
Volunteer Coordinator (oversees event volunteers)
Concessions Coordinator (oversees team & spectator food & drink)
Community Coordinator (engages with local businesses for sponsoring/partnering)
VIP Coordinator (meets with sponsors day of event)

We were told that the official events would be announced on FTC Kickoff Day, 9/9. There were still some things to verify on FIN’s end before they could fully commit.

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Very excited to follow along with this thread as things progress. Thanks for taking the time document your process!

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Any chance you’d be able to share what goes into an RFP for an event like this?

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Sure, here’s a version of our 2020 RFP, with some sensitive or individual-identifying information redacted.

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As things moved along, it became clear that we were going to be selected. Our focus turned on the facility itself - what did we do well, what could be improved, what features are expected now that were not emphasized in 2018. This is compounded by the fact that school renovations were about to begin, and continue through the 2025 school year.

Below is the event map we used in 2018. While most things will remain consistent, the VIP meeting room will need to be moved since that space is currently a pile of smashed concrete and dirt as part of the remodel. Furthermore, we did not provide a family room or a quiet room last time; we’d like to offer that this time around.

My main priority is to keep all attendees in the same general area of the building - everything is accessible off the one long main hallway. This keeps things easy to locate, and also helps mitigate folks wandering around, getting lost, or going places we don’t really want them to go. Another key is to minimize the impact on teacher classrooms. I don’t want to invade their space any more than absolutely necessary. Third on my list is to keep messy things separated from clean things. Unfortunately, the way the building is set up, the cafeteria is not adjacent to the concessions stand or where we will have food trucks. But, it’s a straight path connecting the two. Hopefully we can trust our guests to follow the posted signs and keep food and drink out of the gymnasium and the pits, and hopefully the weather will cooperate and allow us to open the courtyard (the black area between the Lunch Room and VIP Meeting Room) for outdoor seating and dining.

Two consistent complaints we received in 2018 were the distance from the pits to the field, and the way we routed spectators. We tried to have one set of doors for spectators and one set of doors for robots; as it turns out, directions are hard to follow. The vision was for spectators to enter the south (left) doors, then go around the field if they wanted to sit on the opposite side. It turned out that there was an unforeseen pinch point between the field and the bleachers, and traversing that became difficult. Our tentative solution will be to move the robot queueing to the north (right) side, opening up all sitting areas to the doors and keeping spectators and drive teams separated. We can push the bleachers back to create plenty of space for this. We’ll lose some seating capacity (going from 3,015 to 1,913), but we’re expecting a smaller event this time around. As for the pits being on the far end of the fieldhouse, we’re at the mercy of electricity there. The electrical room is right next to the fieldhouse wall, so it makes much more sense to keep the pits where they are. We might, however, move the inspection station and practice area closer to the pits. The reason we chose the layout we did is that most of the fieldhouse has a rubber floor, but the middle has three basketball courts. We were trying to keep the pits and carts off the hardwood as much as possible.

Regarding load-in/load-out, we do have a back dock on the west (top) end of the building. However, it’s a decent distance from the pits and the field, through long, twisting hallways. Furthermore, the dock is kind of a dead end, not on a loop that would be easy to handle a line of trailers. Teams are used to loading to the ground at other events; AndyMark’s box trucks have lifts; it’s much easier to send everything through the main event entrance. The doors there are wide, and the posts between them can be removed.

One problem that still remains to be solved is the existence of the quiet and family rooms. I’m thinking we may create spaces in the guidance offices for this; there are a couple of small conference rooms in there.

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Here’s a more in-depth breakdown of our facilities and proposed room assignments.

FOOD
Spectator meals provided by food trucks parked near Event Entrance. Also concessions for drinks and snacky snacks (no hot food (unless some really plucky parents want to step up)).
Plenty of space in the cafeteria and, weather permitting, courtyard. The cafeteria also has outlets for teams wishing to bring in crock pots.
Volunteer lounge will be in the auditorium lobby; plenty of room for a buffet setup and seating for several dozen people.

FIELD
For the best spectator experience, moving the robot queue area north of the field makes the most sense. That way, nobody will be staring at the back of the Master of Ceremonies the whole time, and they won’t be able to see the scoring monitor. That does raise the issue of teams currently in queue being able to see the scoring monitor; we can probably just stack AV equipment and/or make a wall of field crew to block that visibility. However, with queueing directly behind the scoring table, assuming Crescendo has standard field gate placement, we can route the field load/unload directly in line with the gates, without teams having to traverse the area between the scoring table and the field, where there are traditionally scoring stands and all the cables.
The tradeoff for this configuration is we will have fewer seats - I’ll have to find out if we can safely extend a section of bleachers instead of the whole wall.

PITS
This area is going to create the biggest problem for us. The fieldhouse is essentially an indoor rubber track, with hardwood basketball courts inside. There is plenty of room for a full pit set on the west end, which is closest to the electrical room and where we set up in 2018. This does mean there will be an extra 150 foot walk from the pits to the door, and the practice area may not be directly adjacent to the pits, but still in the same room. However, this setup does allow for a promotional area in the same area as the pits. We could have an FLL or FTC expo here. Something I’d like to pilot at this event is a bit of a scholarship row/career fair vibe. I’d love to invite area post-secondary organizations to set up booths. I’d also like to have area businesses with displays showing what they do and what career opportunities they offer. Not like a product expo, but really geared towards careers, internships, co-op experiences. I’ve gotten FIN leadership to allow this for the event (they previously did not allow outside businesses to advertise at an official event). The President and CEO of the Plainfield Chamber of Commerce is on our school board and a 3487 fan, so I’m optimistic that he can help us engage with the greater community.

JUDGING
In the administration office area, we have two large conference rooms - one with wall-mounted, computer-accessible TVs and a kitchenette, the other with several dry erase boards. The idea is we can show the event on the TVs while the judges snack and visit, while keeping the deliberation room relatively quiet and clean.
We’ve also got some small multipurpose rooms that we can use for Impact and Dean’s List presentations and interviews.
In this area, we will also have Mission Control for the event management team.

HEALTH AND SAFETY
We will have a School Resource Officer throughout the event; we also have the good fortune that the school nurse is the mother of a 3487 alum. A family room and a quiet room are two things we’re still working through - we can open up some spaces in the guidance area, but that means we’ll need a volunteer to supervise that area. There are plenty of men’s, women’s, neutral, and family restrooms, as well as water fountains* with bottle fillers.
*bubblers for my Wisconsin friends

MACHINE SHOP
Our workshop has vertical and horizontal band saws, drill presses, hand tools - standard supplies. It’s a pretty straight shot from the pits to the shop, through some back hallways off-limits to students. Probably less than a two minute walk each way.

MEDIA ROOM
There is a small computer lab pretty close to the gymnasium. It will work well for event picture and video editing.

PERIPHERAL CONCERNS
We’ll need to figure out directional signage from the roads. We intend to have bus and trailer parking on the opposite end of the building from the main event entrance. Last time, we borrowed signage from the musical department, from when they hosted band or show choir events.
We have wall-mounted TVs placed in the hallways and cafeteria; hopefully we can show the twitch feed through these. Not sure if there will be audio, but that may honestly be detrimental if they do.

This is an excellent place for you, the reader, to pop in with opportunities or ideas we may be missing. I’ve got fairly extensive experience hosting offseason events, so I’m not afraid to try new things.

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This is excellent Mike. I remember years when the thought of hosting an event felt so monumentally overwhelming it would “clearly never happen.” Then we did two in one year! But it was all about our volunteer leaders who stepped up and just ‘got stuff done.’ I’ll make sure our event coordination team know about this thread!

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As a mentor who asked been asked to look at the feasibility of hosting an event in 2025 and or 2026, I too will be following this string. Good luck and thanks for sharing this adventure.

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Can the person managing volunteer meals (aka Hospitality Coordinator) be the same person who is managing and coordinating Concessions?

^Edited to say I miss you too.

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I’ve been told no, but there might be other news forthcoming on that front.

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Just thinking out loud, with no experience in this, but because the two locations may be in different parts of the building, it would be tough to do. Two people can coordinate with each other doing the food, or one person with a manager in each area.

For quiet rooms, even a classroom down a non-traffic hallway would be good. For New England District there is one or two totes with quiet room activities supplied in the PODs that travel event to event. There are also signage (feather flags and a-frame directional signs) in the PODs.

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We have some experience structuring this for our offseason. We have an individual who is the overall manager for hospitality and shares volunteer coordination responsibility with me, but she also has support from three others to cover volunteer meals, concessions, and team meal orders.

This sort of structure has worked well to make it so all the food purchasing / food donation retrieval / efficiency optimization isn’t on one person while creating a committee to provide feedback on the plans for each of the individual areas.

One thing we’ve found a need for that we weren’t expecting is a bus driver lounge, as we have had issues in the past with bus drivers crashing the volunteer lounge and taking allocated volunteer food. We’re looking at adding a room for this for our event this year.

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  1. Excited to be attending this event. After only one one round of event preferencing, it’s already got a pretty formidable FIN lineup.

  2. Have you considered INPLA+, or maybe INPETG. They might turn out to be more durable events.

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We had our first planning committee meeting last night, over Google Meet. Present were me, the facilities manager, the volunteer coordinator, the FIN operations manager, and the FIN president. The call lasted 51 minutes (my target was 45, so not too bad there).

Most of the facilities concerns were either worked out, or will be worked out soon. We’re still unsure about the quiet room - the space we had considered will likely be too small. The idea was brought up about using the teacher lounge as a quiet room; I think I’d rather use that space as a bus driver lounge, as Ben Martin suggested.

Practice field will be an issue. A third of the fieldhouse now has turf on it; it’s super squishy and bouncy and not really compatible with robots and carts, and I’m not convinced underlayment is the answer. So the practice field area will have to go somewhere else. The wrestling room is adjacent to the pits, but it’s got a relatively low ceiling. Otherwise we have some hallways to choose from; we’ll have to get creative.

Important stuff: FOOD. We’ll plan to have 5 food trucks available 10-4 each day, and we’ll look for a coffee vendor as well. I’ll continue reaching out to trucks to try to get a good selection of properly priced offerings.

We also discussed teams bringing in crock pots; this is a philosophical discussion that I think will continue. On one hand, we want people to utilize our concessions and provided food, because those are financially beneficial to our team. Also, there are health, sanitation, and safety concerns with people preparing food, as well as the possibility of overloading circuits. On the other hand, we understand that it may be a hardship for some teams and students to pay for food at the event, that the making and sharing of food among teammates is a team building exercise, and this gives parents an opportunity to contribute to and feel ownership in the team. It’s a delicate balance, and one we’ll have to think on for a while.

We went through some key volunteer roles, and learned that HQ will assign those later this month. We also talked about some other volunteer things of a personal nature that won’t be shared here*.

The last thing we discussed was the idea of a team social. One idea that was floated out that I think has real promise is a breakfast social on Sunday, before pits open. I think this could be a great way for teams to mingle in a low-stress environment, without worrying about missing out on something. We’ll refine this idea and hopefully pilot it for use at future events.

We closed with an agreement that we’ll have another check-in early December, then every two weeks after kickoff.

Because I’m a little extra, here’s a map of teams that have registered so far. It looks like almost all of them are within driving distance of an hour and a half or less.

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*Nothing unsavory or unscrupulous; we just discussed specific individuals we might want in particular roles. No need to put them on blast here, or to make others feel unwelcome or forgotten.

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Let’s take this opportunity to open up the suggestion box. Since there are many offseason events going on for the next couple of weeks, what fun, exciting, or informational features are happening that you’d like to see incorporated into an official event? Perhaps an idea you have that hasn’t been tried, or inspired by previous experience? We’d love to read about what you want to see added or emphasized at official district events, and if your idea is compatible with our facility and our vision, we might give it a shot here.

Keep in mind we’re still bound by the official competition rules, so things like referee video replay or mentor-driven matches, while staples of offseasons, wouldn’t be relevant here.

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Human match
for real though they seem like great ways to do stuff during breaks while teams are repairing robots.
Also I’m not sure if that is against the official match rules, but I guess so? Sorry.

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We’ve had our last pre-build season planning call, so time for an update!

Let’s start this post with the Most Important Meal of the Day. We’ve been kicking around ideas for team social activities; this was a huge part of the event experience and a great community building exercise that hasn’t happened much since 2020. The idea that has seemed to stick the best is a big breakfast before the last day of competition. We think we’ll offer the usual continental breakfast offerings, and maybe some casseroles, pancakes, maybe bacon and sausage, it depends on how energetic our parents are. We thought about having decks of cards, or board games out, but we decided on making a scavenger hunt activity (find someone who …) that we can then tie back into sponsor giveaways. Pits open at 8a, we thought we’d open the doors to start breakfast around 7:20.

We’ll be sending out signups to the LM1s and LM2s for teams to register, so we’ll have a good idea of how much food to prepare. Depending on food costs in March, we are hoping to target $5 per person per meal. If there are leftovers, maybe we can offer them in the concession stand.

Our next agenda item was event dead time. To the uninitiated spectator, about 60% of an FRC event is nothing much happening. Teams are clearing the field, reset crew is working, other robots are coming on, lining up, connecting … on average, about 5 minutes elapse between the previous match score announcement and the MC introducing the teams in the next match. Especially early in the day, it’s completely conceivable for folks to pop in just as a match is ending, sit there for half an hour and see maybe five minutes of robot action. I’d like to fill that down time with engaging, informative entertainment.

We discussed pre-filmed videos from teams, like reveal videos. Since many of them have music, we may not be able to play the audio, especially over Twitch. What we will do is offer all competing teams to make a 30-second video that highlights whatever it is they want to highlight about themselves. Robot functions, strategy, outreach, whatever they think is cool and they want to share. But no music, and limited spoken audio, because FRC events are full of commotion and it’s hard to hear.

We briefly touched on showing Impact videos; this was declined because we don’t want to infer any bias. Things we can plug in fairly easily are Woodie’s Good Stuff videos and time capsule highlight videos from previous years. It’ll be fun to see how many students from years ago are now volunteering or mentoring teams. And don’t worry, we’ll edit out any parts that may feature the Digital Goats.

My personal crusade is to involve the high school as much as possible in this event. This year we’ve started offering some Broadcasting classes; we will have some PHS students serving as pit or fieldside reporters, and interject between matches with short interviews with competing teams. We also hope to have some fieldside commentary, with match replays and upcoming match previews.

We discussed some other minor facility-specific issues, and set our next call for mid-January. We’ll “meet” biweekly during build season.

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