Gearing Up for World Championship!

     Happy New Year! We hope you are as excited for 2016 as we are here at FIRST Head Quarters. We have been working hard on the World Championship and we want to share some of the awesome things to come based on your feedback from last year's event. Last season, FIRST® tried something new. We modeled the FIRST Championship after the Olympics, with different events housed in different locations, all within one great city. FIRST Robotics Competition was housed at the Edward Jones Dome and at the America’s Center. FIRST Lego League was housed at the America’s Center, FIRST Tech Challenge was housed at the Midway and Grand Ballroom at Union Station, and FIRST Lego League Junior was housed at the Regency Ballroom at Union Station. The pairing of programs was done deliberately – we wanted to give the students from our younger programs a greater opportunity to spend time with, interact with, and learn from the students in our older programs.

Planning an event of this scale in a new venue isn’t without its challenges. Our staff, our amazing Key Volunteers, and our professional AV and Production companies designed the layout, assessed the risks and then implemented what we believed was our best plan for utilizing the space at the historic Union Station.

After the event, we asked the 128 teams, our sponsors, our vendors, and our Volunteers for their feedback, and we paid careful attention to what you all told us. Based on your responses, we’re eager to tell you what we’re working on for the World Championship in April of 2016:

•  An optional ‘early bird’ check in on Tuesday, to reduce lines at Team and Volunteer Check In counters.
•          An increased early emphasis on having teams complete the registration and badging process prior to the event.
•          We’ll deliver team packets to the team pit areas, to further improve the team check in process.
•          An earlier opening time on Wednesday, and a later start to Wednesday Judging and Inspection appointments.
•          A queuing path that puts the elevator on the return trip from the competition area, to reduce anxiety and wait times.
•          Improved queuing communication, to help teams spend as little time in queue, waiting for matches, as possible.
•          An improved match schedule, with an alliance selection on the same day as the final Qualification match.
•          A new bleacher layout in the Competition area that significantly increases seating capacity.
•          Improved positioning of the AV screens in the Competition area. People sitting in the bleachers can see all the action, no matter where they’re sitting.
•          “Under Floors” for the Competition playing fields, to mitigate the challenges that heavy robots faced on tiles on top of plush carpet padding.
•  Conferences geared towards FIRST Tech Challenge teams.
• A fabulous Awards Ceremony in the glamorous Peabody Opera House.

We’re thrilled about the changes, and about having another opportunity to spend time in the beautiful Union Station celebrating the amazing accomplishments of 
our FIRST Tech Challenge teams 
on and off the field, and we can’t wait to see you there!

Stay tuned – we’ll be releasing pit maps (un-numbered), master schedule and other details as they become finalized!

Go Teams!

JoAnn