Good Afternoon Teams,
This week I’m focused on the 2011 Championship (CMP) in St Louis. With a new venue comes new opportunities. Everything about CMP is under discussion at the moment, the size of the pits, the location of playing fields, the schedule, the food, even the role of suppliers and exhibitors. What is the most important element of CMP for your team? Playing in the dome? Having a pit next to other teams in your division? Robo Prom? You tell me. Also, thinking outside the CMP box for a second, what don’t we have at CMP right now that you’d like to include in the future? I’ll be interested to see your comments below.
While I’m tied up with planning, the rest of FIRST has a few messages for you:
The Ops team wants you to know: Lost and found items from Regional Events and CMP are now piled in corners everywhere. As interesting as the eye glasses, cell phone cases, belts, backpacks, cameras, jewelry, clothing and tools are to look at, we’d love to get them back to their original owners. Send an email to FRCteams@usfirst.org with a description of your lost property, your team number and the event where you lost it. Items still cluttering up the place in October will be donated to local charities.
Wendy is excited to announce: The deadline for ordering additional FRC medallions and trophies has been extended to May 20th.
Anna Maenhout, Director, FIRST LEGO League and Jr.FLL Programs wrote a thank you letter to FRC teams and volunteers. You can find it here.
As of today, there are 514 responses to Kate’s Kit of Parts Survey and only 233 responses to my FRC survey. Please make sure your team is heard before the July 16 deadline (and let’s see if we can improve the number of responses to the FRC Survey.)
241 days to Kickoff
See you then!
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16 comments:
I'd like to see a drive team rest area where we have tickets to get food, drinks or something like that. I don't know the price of food at the St. Louis stadium, but Atlanta was very pricey, especially the food sold right outside the pits.
Repost for bad wording
A live feed for each division in the pits that you can see from anywhere in that division. Our pit manager (a student) is required to stay in the pits the entire day, and missing the robot compete would be a major let down after putting in hundreds of hours of work.
Many FRC drive teams have one drive coach and a strategist who is off of the drive team. While in the Finals, an allowance is made via the on field pit crew, during Qualifications the strategies have to be decided hours in advance in the pits. It would be nice if the drive team was allowed a "strategist" who would remain off the field during the match but could travel to the field with the team. A lot of teams use other access badges (media, special guest, etc) to accomplish this already, so this would help level the playing field somewhat.
Bill, I would like to see the video screens returned to the pit for the Championship and also added for the regionals. At NC there was a screen on the back of the black curtain that showed the video. Can we do that more?
I would also like to see the pits organized better. In Galileo we had ten or twenty teams on one side of pit admin and the rest on the other side by the practice field and inspection.
Its important to be able to play in the dome and I wouldn't like that changed.
I'd like to see a booth from MK Batteries where batteries can be purchased. My team had an issue in 2008 where a crate of batteries was removed from our tool pallet during transit and never recovered and had to find a MK distributor in the area.
Also, I'd like to have the ability to bring food and drink into the arena.
Please Keep:
-2nd shirt for 3-day Championship Event volunteers. (Thank You!!! way less smelly on Sat. evening)
-Field Roombas (Roomba watching seemed to be quite the spectator sport this year)
-Game Pins. They are really awesome, wish I was able to get one this year. [Will any leftovers be sold?]
Please Rethink/Change:
- Water Coolers (keep seeing to bring water bottle in volunteer paperwork, and no coolers at event.)
- Addition of recycling bins by drink stations for volunteers. (Especially if water coolers to refill bottles are not available.)
- T-shirt cannon at team party (While cool... led to some VERY UNSAFE things including students standing on folding chairs, sitting on peoples shoulders, and knocking bystanders [including at least one Sr. Citizen] to the ground as they continued to run between tables trying to get t-shirts.)
It would be nice to have an area, either in the stands or just off the fields (room permitting), for the teams that are on the field to watch. Our team had a really hard time finding seats at CMP because other teams were hoarding seats all over the place, even with only 10 people in the stands, we weren't always able to sit together to watch our matches.
One of my biggest complaints about the Georgia Dome is that there was no way to get from the stands to the field quickly. On a few occasions I needed to go into the stands to speak with people and had to spend almost 15 minutes walking to get to them when they were less than 300ft away. Maybe just a staircase or two would work, and of course these would be restricted to drive teams, volunteers, event personnel and media only.
As an active mentor and treasurer for the team non-profit foundation, I am keenly aware of the price of food and the restrictions for not bringing food into the auditorium.
Every team is on a tight budget. Charging auditorium prices for food and also not allowing food to be brought in, is a hardship for many teams.
While you are watching your budget, so are we!
Please, either make the price of food reasonable or allow teams to bring in their own food.
This comment should apply generally to all of the competitions, not just the championship.
I would like to see the President of the United States attend and speak, and I would like to see hot pizza at the after party. I would also like to see more team members allowed into the pits on Wednesday evening, and the wrist-band process replaced with a computer-printable bar-code pass, or just a name check-in. I also would like to see an established process for transferring pit areas from the pits to the fieldside, for teams competing in the finals, and more members allowed here as well.
i'd like to see teams allowed 2 mechanics during qulaification if they can't go back to the pits so that we don't have to replace the media person
I would like to see the time extended for the FIRST Finale. By the time we got there, we only had about an hour and a half to eat and play. When the fireworks came on, we were required to leave and did not have more time to talk to the other teams or play the games.
Also, providing a live feed for each division would be helpful.
Keeping the distance short between the fields and the pits would decrease the risk of someone falling if they are running back to the pits to get something.
Also, have a louder speaker for the pit admin. It was hard to hear the announcements over the loud noise that I had to ask repeatedly what match they were on.
Keep:
Robo prom
Roombas
Hey bill
I would like to see a sundial make a return to the pits. It's a very useful tool, especially at a event as hectic as the championship event.
I would like to see cheaper food in the event. Last year my team had to pay 5 bucks for 1 chicken sandwich for everyone on our team. Though it was good we would have gladly settled for something not as good for cheaper. Most FIRST teams are on tight budgets and FIRST supplying some cheap vendors would be awesome.
What we would love to see is more detailed information published sooner to allow teams to begin planning.
Our team is unfamiliar with attending national competitions. We have searched everywhere for information regarding schedules and lunch information. Usually, at the Cleveland Regional Competition we have been provided with a service with whom we can place orders. They then bring the food for lunch that day so that people do not have to go out and search for restaurants near the arena. Is this provided at this competition also? If not it would be a great addition! If that does not work then a map of the city with near subways, wendys, etc. would be helpful. We feel as though we are planning blindly and it would be really helpful to have more information out there.
Also, we have never attended robo prom! We think it is a great idea for students to get to branch out and meet each other. How do we sign up? Is dinner provided there? Where can we find information such as that?
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