:ahh: Wow I’m amazed at how much attention we got!! I mean, it’s my first year on the team and i get bombarded with people asking for pictures and how we doing. It’s like we’re celeberties or someting. I personally would like to thank Team 1422 for cheering with us even when they didn’t have too! As well as team 1097 even when they didn’t have as many of their team members there as they did in San Jose. All I really have to say is I had a great time in Atlanta with all of the teams from all over the US and the world and I hope I have as much fun next year as I did this year. I would stongly like to have team members from teams 1097 and 1422 reply to this message as well as anyone else would k! 
Dear Bo,
Take my word for it, you are no ce·leb·ri·ty 
Jack
PS: Just kidding my friend 
You guys are stars in my book 
I liked most everything. The venue is nice and the food wasn’t too bad but not Disney. People flow needs the biggest improvement. The almost two mile walk from Archemides pits to seating area got a little tough to handle after 7 matches. Why should you have to go up 6 levels then come down two and walk to the opposite diagonal of the dome? I attended the electrical seminar which was well attended. I would guess that the others were the same and that means a lot of people were able to get some great info on robots. Keep the seminars but change the times so there are none that occur during match times. The pits didn’t seem too confining but the aisles nearest the field did fill up on occassion. I would leave the jib cameras out for next year. There was no interesting video coming from them and I know they are very expensive. Ceremonies on Einstein should be viewable on the other fields and on the big screens in the dome just like last year at Houston. You could at least keep tabs on other teams. The big screens in the pits should be dedicated to individual divisions and placed over the pit area so divisions could see their standings and not crowd into the center aisles. Teams should be able to transport pit gear directly to the pit floor and not need to share elevator space from the top level. The convention center has a full size truck dock and several drive up overhead doors for that purpose. Outside traffic flow should improve when construction is complete so that should be better next year. The food police should be a little more flexible in that food purchased at the convention center should be OK for the dome. I saw many people stopped for having pop or water purchased in the convention center as they entered the dome. Bathrooms should be checked more frequently to clean up and remove paper from containers.
I spoke with a rep from the GA Dome on Saturday afternoon. She told me to send all good/bad feedback to atlantafalcons.com and georgiadome.com. I went there to find an email address, but the only one I could find was [email protected]. If anyone else can find a feedback email address on either site, please post it so that we can let them know what we think needs to be improved.
They loved hosting it because of the nature of the event. Rarely does the dome host an event of that size which is educational and fun. Hopefully they’ll have all the kinks worked out by next year.
-Randy
The Good
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Venue was out-standing. It was clean, bright, and well organized.
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The Pits were very good. Good spacing, aisles generally clear, enough light to see.
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The robot transport from the pits to the playing field was very good. It was relatively short and direct. Combined with the generally open aisles (compared to Disney in 2001 especially), it was very easy to get from the pit to the field and back again.
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Good spacing for matches and good number of matches.
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Field announcers were excellent (as usual).
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Refs were very good.
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The food situation in the World Congress Center was pretty good. There was selection and the prices weren’t all that bad. OK, there were coffee and apples at reasonable prices. I don’t know about anything else.
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There were several things to do in WCC (such as the Hall of Fame, the Rover Mock Up, the FIRST store, the Conference). If you had a free moment and were tired of lurking in the pits, you weren’t likely to get bored.
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The practice field in the pits was wonderful. We only had an opportunity to use it for one practice, but that made up for the practice that we missed on the actual field.
The Bad
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Load in was horrible. What an unpleasant surprise. When we arrived at 7:00 on Thursday, it took forever to find out which entrance FIRST had arranged for us to enter (no signs to speak of or confusing signs). When we entered, there was a looooooong line for the freight elevator. We ended up bypassing the freight elevator (at considerable physical effort) to finally get into the pit. I think we trimmed it down to :30. Still, there is no reason that we shouldn’t have been into the venue and in our pit in :05.
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The Load Out was not much better. Announcments wanted us to leave the pit by 5:00. However, the event ran past 5:00. So, if you wanted to beat the rush or make their deadline, you had to unload and repark to watch the rest of the event (there goes another $8).
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The travel time between the pits and the venue to watch matches was both excessive and fatiguing for pit crew members. We lost valuable pit time when the pit crew went to watch our matches. So, we stopped going to watch matches in order to be ready to work on the robot. Perhaps in future years they can install a “pit crew lane” between pits and competition venue and give the three pit crew people expedited access to the arena just like the robot operators.
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Pit announcments needed some work. With the “first call, second call, final call, final final call, no we really mean it this time call, GET YOUR ROBOT OUT HERE NOW call” there was a constant, annoying pit announcer buzz. If you actually responded to first call, you ended up standing at the playing field for a very long time. They need to get the timing between calling matches and playing matches refined.
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The pit announcers stopped announcing “Team XXX needs a YYY part” in order to keep up the incessant match calls.
The Ugly
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I had a vague, undefined, and undefinable feeling that this event was not “about the competitors” but about something else. For those of you who remember when FIRST pushed up the match times in 2000 in order to do “Good Morning America” you know what I mean.
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I realized at some point over the weekend that I was at a robot competition. The message to “compete, compete, compete” was louder than the message to “inspire, inspire, inspire.”
One thing I was disappointed about was the lack of free FIRST event shirts like we have had at nationals for at least the past 4 years. This years shirts didn’t even look like event shirts and you had to purchase them, and they weren’t cheap. The ammount of “reserved” seating in the stands for oppening ceremony and the finals/awards was bothersome. Attendants would say, you can’t sit there because its reserved seating, then no one would sit there and they’d open the section after the ceremony had started which caused masses of people to get up a move around during finals matches.
I think the problem was that they didn’t make it known to the volunteers that they had a section reserved for them; there were only a handful of us up there. Three rows were also being reserved for the hearing impaired, so they could have a good view of the signer.
I didn’t like how they had the Lego League on Einstein, mainly because you couldn’t hear what was going on on the other fields. The audio from Einstein dominated over the rest of the fields, and in my opinion, took away from what was going on on the four other fields. I think in the future, if they are going to put Lego League on Einstein, they need to adjust the sound levels. It was nice to see the Lego League there though. The food at the event wasnt too bad either.
I probably shouldn’t but here goes-
Basically atlanta was a really bad choice
Between the panhandlers and the drug deals to the charges for transportation to the crappy hotels to the less than good food, this was the worst experience I have ever had at a FIRST competition.
No parking or in and out parking - paid $48 to park 1 night -
Loooooooong walks
load in and out was a joke
not organization at all.
Atlanta sold FIRST a bill of goods
Can you tell I wasn’t happy.
KY
And i forgot about the parking police who almost gave us a ticket thursday morning trying to find where to go, thanks to an many more lost souls for helping us out of it. With a year to plan they didn’t. and the volunteer who wouldn’t let me in to the pits with only 50 feet between me and our crate.
I have to admit i was happier with Atlanta than I was with Houston, but yes, to every competition there are positives and negatives. The distance between the pits and the ramps etc, were not nearly as bad. The food was still overpriced (and if you noticed they changed the prices each day based on what sold and what didn’t), but far better than the stadium food last year. The arena and the pit area were nicer and more organized. I have only positive feedback this year, and I hope the negative things people find can be changed and improved for next years’ competition.
Between the panhandlers and the drug deals to the charges for transportation to the crappy hotels to the less than good food, this was the worst experience I have ever had at a FIRST competition.
Hehehe. The food was great. You had about 50 differnt choices. Some of those boothes actually surprised me. I never expected that I could buy Starbucks or even roasted nuts with my coupons. The hotel we were in was actually very luxurious. I guess it depended on where you stayed. Also, I think people’s experiences depend on whether you are from a city or not. People from the cities are more used to most if not all of the complaints since we deal with them everyday.
I was quite happy with this year’s nationals. My only problem with it is that teams didn’t seem as spirited as they were at regionals since there was such a seperation between the stands and the field. You didn’t feel as much apart of it, I least I didn’t, when we were sitting there watching our team play.
Food wasn’t too bad. I actually had an excess of tickets it felt like.
I really dont have any negative things to say about it.
I just liked the simple fact that hundreds of nerds and techgeeks took over a city that was 8 years ago taken over by the olympics.
I personally liked Atlanta. This was my first national trip and i was pleased. Yes i did feel sorry for all those who had to go up 5 escalators, around the building, down another escalator and 1/2 way around the Georgia Dome two times an hour and the congestion on Thursday’s unloading. However, they did do a good job realizing the problem and finding a really quick, easy, and organized (from what I saw) way to load up our bus after the competition. The practice field was very nice too. I wish I would have seen the booth where the FIRST apperal was being sold at, but being in the pits all day, I didn’t get out much.
I know what you mean Bo when I was at the Hall of Fame booth people kept saying that they use our web site all the time. And when I was walking back and fourth people where saying that we were really doing a good job.
You must have stayed on the wrong side of the dome.
A couple tips if you’re going next year
- Be sure to reserve early and stay in a 4 or 5 diamond hotel … Hyatt, Omni, etc. In general, they are in better areas, and don’t cost any more under the FIRST package.
- If you pass by an agressive panhandler pick up your cell phone and call 911. Panhandling is illegal in Atlanta. If you’re still uncomfortable, walk in large groups, no one wants to mess with a large crazy looking group all wearing the same shirt.
- For food, drop a line at georgiadome.com or atlantafalcons.com to complain about the quality/price. Or, you could always hop over to the CNN center for lunch. There they have a lot of the major chains at regular prices.
- Parking -
- Park at the hotel and walk. The dome is only a few minute walk from the Omni, and was only a 15 minute or so walk from the Hyatt.
- Find close lots. We paid $8/day for parking @ the dome, and were only a 1 minute walk to the door
-Randy
Well hey you guys are like celebrities to us. It’s not like you get to meet people who run one of the largest message boards related to FIRST robotics. Hehe next year maybe we can get our SCHOOL to go to nationals. hehe largest cheering section ever. We had a great time cheering with you. We’ll get our skip-clap practice down and maybe an exercise routine for next year.
I agree with Al on all of his points with special emphsis on the pit walk and food situations. I think the 2004 Championship was much better than the 2003 Championship and I know the “issues” that still exist can be solved or improved upon.
That being said, I’d still love to see FIRST and Disney come to an agreement in the long run. Nowhere else can 20,000 people have fun of all different kinds and still be safe and in the “same place”. The only part about Disney that wasn’t as good was the lack of an actual stadium.
Here are some good and bad impressions-
good- diversity of foods were available at the stadium
bad- the price still was pretty poor- $8 got you a soda and fries…
solution- instead of FIRST requiring the purchase of meal ticket plans where the tix were essentially worh a buck why not just publicize the prices at the venue and let people pay cash? It was especially cheap for the vendors to refuse to give change for the vouchers, thus jacking up their prices even more
good- the view of the fields and such from the stands at the stadium
bad- the poor handling of the open ceremonies and parade from the view of the fields on the opposite side of the stadium
solution- make sure that the events on the main stage are aired on the big screen for all the fields. Why this wasn’t done is beyond me but it was surreal to hear a big commotion and see crowds of little kids in the distance marching towards some horizon. Kind of made the Newton field seem unimportant…
good- the Omni hotel- the place was beautiful and rooms were nice
bad- why do the hotels at all these FIRST events insist on breaking up teams to rooms all over the building?
solution- since the hotel gives THS blocks of rooms they should give clusters of rooms to the teams. Unless they prefer to have teens all over their building unsupervised?
good- the closing party. The hypnotist was great and the fireworks were a real spectacle amongst the big buildings and reflective surfaces. The BBQ was also pretty good and the food service was well planned
bad- I think the moon walk mardi gras was probably better suited to younger kids and it didn’t seem like many kids were using them
solution- How about a name act like Blue Man Group for next year?
good- the Georgia Dome Complex- it was huge and big enough to bring 600 teams to the nationals… hint hint
bad- signage and locations of things- while working in the info booth it seemed that the same questions were being asked over and over and this was simply because no coherent signage was visible.
good- MARTA- I was shocked to realize that my entire team got to the venue and back without a hitch
bad- the venue crowd control- when 5000 people are trying to exit and there are only three turnstyle doors you open the ten other doors right next to them so people can get out. Some folks need a bit more common sense…
Overall my team found the event the best Nationals since Disney.We had a great time and the team really grew from the experience. Of course we still want to go back to Epcot but Atlanta was the next best thing.
WC