Good Afternoon Teams,
There are just two days left until FRC registration opens to teams. As you’re considering your event location choices, here are three things you should know.
1) FIRST is striving to ensure all FRC Regional Events have a minimum of 10 qualification rounds. Traditional FRC Regional Events may only have a half-day of practice rounds on Thursday before qualification rounds begin. Sacramento and Pittsburgh (which are piloting a new, more time compressed competition format) will allow teams in as early as possible to maximize practice time. Practice matches will be run during load-in at Sacramento and Pittsburgh (probably on the practice field) and qualifying matches will begin sometime Friday morning. The schedule for Michigan District Events will be similar to last year. Our goal is to increase the number of qualification matches for each team while reducing the amount of time students miss school and volunteers must take off from work.
2) Also new this year is an expanded “Bag and Tag” pilot program for robots. Last year Michigan teams placed their robots in “isolation bags” on robot ship day and delivered them to the event themselves. This year teams outside of Michigan attending Kansas City, Sacramento, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, Waterloo and Toronto FRC Regionals will be included in the pilot “Bag and Tag” program while Michigan teams continue the “Bag and Tag” program at all Michigan Events. Isolation bags will be provided to teams and directions for utilizing the system will be released soon. Teams going to any of the “Bag and Tag” events will be required to bring their robot with them as outlined in the directions. Shipping will not be available to “Bag and Tag” events. Teams may not “Bag and Tag” robots for any other event. Teams going from one of the “Bag and Tag” events to another Regional Event or to the FIRST Championship will take their robots home to crate them for FEDEx pickup and shipment to the next event.
3) Several Regional Events will be piloting a variety of cost effective measures this year. Oregon, Bayou, Florida, Pittsburgh, WPI, Utah, Connecticut, Colorado, Las Vegas, Sacramento, North Carolina, Michigan State Championship and possibly a few others, will all explore methods of providing the same high-energy, high-quality experience of a Traditional FRC Regional Event without the same expense. Our hope is to find ways to continue to hold costs down in the future by using locally procured and implemented resources.
102 days until the 2010 Kickoff
See you there!
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5 comments:
If an event starts qualification rounds on Thursday ? Does the non-robot assessment (in-pit judges, Chairman's judging) start on Thursday or will it be just on Friday/Saturday as in the past.
Keeping those assessments only on Friday/Saturday will be extremely helpful regarding time off for students and judges.
Teams may not “Bag and Tag” robots for any other event. Teams going from one of the “Bag and Tag” events to another Regional Event or to the FIRST Championship will take their robots home to crate them for FEDEx pickup and shipment to the next event.
What if a team goes from a bag and tag event to a non-bat event the next week? There will no time for shipping.
What if you are across the country and go to one of the bag and tag events, can you still ship the robot to these events?
What if we're at a non-"Bag and Tag" event the week before a "Bag and Tag" event? I'm assuming we bag the robot at the first event and take it home and then take it with us to the next event. We'll have to rethink our mode of transport to and from events--that crate just isn't going to fit in the trunk. [There's no shipping home from a "Bag and Tag" event either?]
And how does scheduling Sacramento in the middle of the week reduce anyone's time away from school or work?
Hi Everyone,
Final Bag and Tag rules will be included in the Game Manual. I think Bill wanted to make sure you were aware that the Bag and Tag process will have an impact on teams and tried to give you a heads up so you can consider that impact while you’re choosing which events to attend. Bill stated in the 9/30/09 email blast to teams that “Teams competing at any of the Bag and Tag events will be required to transport their robot to and from the event as shipping will not be available.” So you will want to factor in time to get your robot from a Bag and Tag event to a FedEx shipping location if you want to ship it to an event that isn’t Bag and Tag.
I do know the venues at the Bag and Tag events are not staffed or equipped to receive robots, so personally I don’t think it’s a good idea to ship your robot directly to a bag and tag event even at your own expense. Picture your robot arriving on a loading dock where there isn’t anyone representing FRC. The staff at the facility might refuse delivery, open the crate to find out what just got delivered or carefully lock your robot away for safekeeping before leaving for the weekend. Either way, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Nancy
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