Petition to end things that confuse the public

FIRST General Forum
#39

As a game announcer, I’d dispute that some teams made their numbers all that prominent! :rolleyes: It’s actually in our training to pair the number with what will help the crowd keep up with the action…but part of that social contract is that teams have to give us something to work with! I’d love it if every team had a sick color scheme or was loud about their sponsors or just had a neat gimmick. Instead, (and I link to one of my past robots because I’ve been guilty too), we ship plain robots. (We did fancy that one up in the pits, to our credit.) It’s something to work on for a lot of teams.

With the dancing, I see why FIRST generally does it that way: it keeps the energy level high versus starting and stopping as awards tend to be. Championship is different–more speakers force the hand, plus awards in the past–but Championship also has 100% of HQ’s focus, planning, and manpower to pull it off. The rest of us are amateurs. :wink:

I do like using the scoring display for more timeout detail than the field timer can display. Alliance timeout vs. field timeout, perhaps a backup team countdown, things like that. I know most events I attend have kids dancing on screen during a timeout, so it’s not like it’s running over a sponsor roll every time–but if so, just block out a safe area and plan accordingly. Easy!

#40

I like that this thread has not taken a turn toward overly opinionated viewpoints, and has not focused only on the dancing. Really, we’re answering the question of “Who exactly is Joe Public and what does he think of our program?”

I like some of the suggestions brought forth so far.

I like Koko Ed’s suggestions. I could do without the Macarena and the Chicken Dance song. These are the two that really make me feel like “What is this and where is the robotics competition?” when I walk in the doors.

#41

Up front, let me admit that I read only OP, not all of the ones in between.

It’s simply in the nature of people that anything we do together, that we consider important, will quickly become full of tradition. The Navy’s full of it, the Army’s full of it, the Church is full of it, and the Moose Lodge is full of it. Most of these traditions are confusing to the outside community. When we identify a tradition that is detrimental to the community, it is certainly a mark of the community’s vibrancy that it can discard tradition in pursuit of its higher goals. Cutting the calls of “robot” to only those situations necessary to clear a crowded corridor was perfectly sensible.

Line dancing, on the other hand, is something we do together. As the song Dancing in the Moonlight so eloquently declares:

Everybody here is out of sight - they don’t bark and they don’t bite. … You can’t dance and stay uptight.
. I think it’s absolutely marvelous to see hundreds of kids wearing dozens of uniforms all moving together. I can’t wait until my first trip to championships where it will be thousands of kids wearing hundreds of uniforms. And OBTW - a good fraction of the people watching also know these same line dances, and are probably making the same moves in their hindbrains if not their feet. The real message that these traditions send is that yes, these kids are real kids, and many of them like to bust a move just as much as anyone else.

#42

I personally love the silly dance songs. After sitting there for most of the day scouting it’s nice to have a dance break. Also for the people who don’t understand the game and what is going on, most will just turn to the person next to them, who is wearing a team uniform most likely, and ask.

I was recently volunteering at the FiM Livonia district event and a UL safety advisor was sitting in the chair beside me next to the field. He politely leaned over and asked me what was going on. So I gave him a brief description of what was going on and why it was happening. Also he had his young daughter with him and when a dance song was being played the volunteers would dance on or near the field and we tried to get her engaged in the dancing too. Although she was shy she looked like she enjoyed watching us dance and have fun.

#43

There have been a great number of ideas thus far for the FRC events. I am a person that has had a long history of competing in and coaching sports such as Football, Soccer, and Wrestling. So when I attended my first regional in 2013 I was taken aback by what I experienced. Where was the seriousness in all of this celebration? These kids just worked their arses off for 6 weeks to prepare for competition - why the joy before the final outcome?

Then it hit me - Why the joy and celebration? Because these kids have worked their arses off for 6 straight weeks forgoing lazy Saturdays in exchange for aluminum shavings and JB Weld. They have struggled, been frustrated, fought, finagled, redesigned, failed, failed, and failed again before they found a sliver of success. They have been with each other for too long… they have been with their mentors too long.

And now they compete. Whether it means the robot moves, or climbs a rung, or blocks a shot, or throws an exercise ball that clears the FTA tables - these kids did what most kids never do. Fail - time and time again. They fail in front of their peers - their teammates, and then try again. So when their robot is ready to compete - a robot that represents the collective goal of 4, 10, 20, or 34 kids - yes there is a reason to celebrate like idiots!

My first season as a FRC coach I had a student that was the most introverted of kids I have ever taught. So when he was in our Darth Maul mascot dancing the Macarena - his mom reached over and asked: “Is that really my boy? Is Zach really out there dancing in front of everyone?” She had tears streaming down her cheeks.

Yes, we do allow this in FRC. It is not for the spectators. It is for the students.

#44

^This^

#45

I totally agree with you that students deserve the celebration. It’s great for them to do that, and I hope that the dancing tradition continues (although too often I find myself in the pits when the dancing is going on…). More songs would be nice though; I despise hearing the Cupid Shuffle over and over again.
But FIRST’s mission is for both spectators and students, not one or the other. To have more students inspired there must be more spectators inspired.

#46

Exactly. You deserve a cookie :slight_smile:

#47

It’s interesting to see what confuses people…my roommates stopped by the Northeastern District this weekend and I spent probably 20 minutes afterwards trying to explain alliance selection to them…(“Wait, so you’re picking to use another robot in the finals? Why wouldn’t you use your own robot?”) The game made perfect sense to them, aside from litter (“doesn’t having a human player defeat the purpose of it being a robotics competition?”)

Then there’s my grandma who thought last year’s game made the most sense out of every game she’s seen (2007 onwards)

Then there’s my dad who texted me after a match in Rhode Island, “Why did your ranking go down when you won the match?”

The public is just generally confusing themselves…

#48

No, Cheesecake!

#49

My favourite is “1310 going for the coopertition stack in autonomous!”

#50

This^ Of all the ‘confusing’ things to work on, the dances seem like the most comprehensible to the public, because it resembles other sporting events.

#51

The premise of this whole thread is silly in my opinion.

Main-stream professional sports have all sorts of traditions that seem weird to outsiders: the Red Wings’ lucky octopus, playoff beards, vuvuzelas, shouting “ole ole ole”, the Red Socks playing “sweet caroline”, dumping gatorade on the coach, endzone/goal dances, drinking milk after the Indy 500… the list goes on and on.

It’s all weird. It shows that no one is taking what they’re doing TOO seriously, and I think it is good that we do kinda weird things at robotics events. It helps everyone get into the spirit of the event and feel more like a unified group.

Having said that, I’d be okay if “cotton-eyed joe” was never played again.

#52

with the exception of some specific songs, there are certainly parts that I can personally do without, but buy and large it ain’t broke and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Explaining things to new folk will be a universal constant.

We could definetly say goodbye to Y M C A and I would not mourn it’s loss

#53

The one thing that hurts the spectator value in my opinion is match turn around. 2 minutes of action and 7 minutes of field reset can make it hard to get into it for spectators. The entire event is basically 3 hours of excitement that takes a day and a half. I have no idea how to change this (or if we should even try), but if by magic you could watch the whole thing in 3 hours strait it would make for a more spectator friendly environment.

#54

Kinda like baseball?
I don’t know if you have ever watched a video of only matches, one after the other, non-stop. It gets a little tiresome.
Sometimes, the space between the movements is as important as the song itself.

#55

Growing up with FIRST, the thing I always loved an looked forward to most was the dancing. It’s so quintessentially FIRST for me at this point, I can’t imagine a Regional without it. I think it adds to the excitement and energy of the competition and can also be a great display of sportsmanship with members of teams on both alliances dancing together and having fun.

I agree, to outsiders, it may be a bit confusing during the Playoffs to have random dance breaks, but there aren’t many alternatives. Most of the Regionals in Canada this year showed the “FRC Rhapsody” and “All about Them Totes” music videos, which filled a few timeouts.

I like the idea of some more audience interaction with facts, quizzes and playing the animation a few times.

However, I don’t think its a good idea to hold awards during those 6-minute timeouts. Logistically, it’s just too much. With the judges and MC having to be on the field while game elements are still in place, with robots on the field, and with entire teams having to come down to collect, it’s just way too much and would probably cause more delays than time it would save.

To address this:

Between both teams and announcers, it can get very confusing when people refer to the game pieces variously as totes, containers, RCs, litter, noodles, crates, bins, barrels, garbage cans, yellow totes, coop totes, “cooperation” totes, cans, et cetera. Can we get some consistency (especially from the announcers?

I was a rookie Game Announcer this year at the North Bay Regional, and I get it. I admit that I interchanged a lot of terms while I was calling matches, and the other veteran Game Announcer admitted that he did too.

Before this season, I always called Totes Orbis Bins, which unfortunately caused some confusion during Matches.

I can tell you that I definitely did not use the wrong terms on purpose. I know what terms the FRC Manual uses, but in the heat of the moment, I was less concerned with using the wrong term and more concerned with keeping up with the action on the field.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but that would be my answer to your question.

#56

After starting this thread, I’ve realized a few things:

  • The goofy songs are highly valued by many in our program
  • We don’t have a clear and consistent focus on anything that confuses the public
  • Rather than changing our program for the sake of the public’s understanding, we need to work harder to educate the public about what we do

Those points said, I think I’ve gained all I was looking to get from this discussion. I’m fine with letting this thread fall into oblivion. Now, let’s get back to our cleanup work on those handful of events where yelling “Robot!” is still a thing. :wink:

#57

The dancing at the PNCMP is epic.

#58