Large Competitions & Next Year

[Primate]

New York just had their state competition this weekend, and ran the event rather surprisingly. At impound, we were required to set up our device in the typical thirty minutes. Of course, they failed to announce this until impound, so we showed up with only two of our three team members. We then got five additional minutes to plug in batteries the day of competition. While I don't doubt it's a more efficient way to run the event, it certainly throws you off.

Now that states is done with and over, I was thinking about what the event'll be like next year. It seemed to run smoothly, so I don't doubt that they'll be running Mission next year. When they did have the event last year, did the transfer requirements change from year-to-year? I know the rules are more specific now, so how do you think they'll change it up for next year? I'm sure there'll be plenty of teams at nationals hitting exactly the target time, so I think they'll definitely institute a better tiebreaker. I'm more worried in terms of tasks, and how much gutting my device will need.

Thoughts?

[penclspinner]

New York just had their state competition this weekend, and ran the event rather surprisingly. At impound, we were required to set up our device in the typical thirty minutes. Of course, they failed to announce this until impound, so we showed up with only two of our three team members. We then got five additional minutes to plug in batteries the day of competition. While I don't doubt it's a more efficient way to run the event, it certainly throws you off.

Now that states is done with and over, I was thinking about what the event'll be like next year. It seemed to run smoothly, so I don't doubt that they'll be running Mission next year. When they did have the event last year, did the transfer requirements change from year-to-year? I know the rules are more specific now, so how do you think they'll change it up for next year? I'm sure there'll be plenty of teams at nationals hitting exactly the target time, so I think they'll definitely institute a better tiebreaker. I'm more worried in terms of tasks, and how much gutting my device will need.

Thoughts?

I don't like to use the word "impound" to describe Mission Possible unless you really do have to impound your device at 8 AM and cannot touch it until your time slot comes up, which I have only seen occur at the National level. When SO people hear the phrase "impound" they tend to assume that they are dropping off a device and do not need to have the actual device testers drop it off, which is usually true. I like to use "set-up" or "check in" to avoid any confusion with regard to MP. In my experience whenever MP was run (excluding Nats), you would sign up for a time slot, arrive with your device at the stated time and then do your 0.5 hour set up time. Was this how yours was done?

They did not have MPC last year so there is no real precedence to reference this year's rules against, seeing as the 2010 rules are practically a new event from the previous MPC in 2005. IMHO, I believe that the tasks are most likely going to change and maybe some minor tweaks in the rules.

[htmlfreak]

I just came back from NYS states for mission possible. I was surprised at the fact that we had the 30 minute set up time the night before instead of right before the event. For most teams it shouldn't matter for the mission to sit through the night almost completely set up (theres only five minutes the next day), but hey, it's mission possible and there's a lot of crazy contraptions out there. They did allow us to disconnect batteries when the set up time is over, and you can attach them when the judges come over since some electrical devices are extremely time-sensitive.

We ended up getting a no-touch run with 9 seconds over the ideal time: we got 4th place. Maybe that's a good baseline for other state competitions?

As for the rules changing, first off I think there's a chance that they're gonna axe mission possible. As much as i love this event, this is the most crazy, random tech event. There are so many rules and complications that it becomes a nightmare for judges. I mean, there were at least 9 judges/assistant judges watching each mission. If they do decide to keep it (I hope they do =D) then it won't change that much, just use different tasks. The same was for mission possible division B 2005-2007.

[Xenarian]

My IL regionals just went very well. Got a perfect score of 550, with around .2 seconds above the ideal time. YES! State is coming up soon.

[Primate]

I don't like to use the word "impound" to describe Mission Possible unless you really do have to impound your device at 8 AM and cannot touch it until your time slot comes up, which I have only seen occur at the National level. When SO people hear the phrase "impound" they tend to assume that they are dropping off a device and do not need to have the actual device testers drop it off, which is usually true. I like to use "set-up" or "check in" to avoid any confusion with regard to MP. In my experience whenever MP was run (excluding Nats), you would sign up for a time slot, arrive with your device at the stated time and then do your 0.5 hour set up time. Was this how yours was done?

Just the opposite, actually. At the New York state competition, impound has traditionally been the Friday night before the competition. Mission was no different. However, when we went to "impound" on Friday, we got 30 minutes from the time we dropped it off. Then, we signed up for a time on Saturday to come run it, during which we got five minutes to prepare before running it.

I just came back from NYS states for mission possible. I was surprised at the fact that we had the 30 minute set up time the night before instead of right before the event. For most teams it shouldn't matter for the mission to sit through the night almost completely set up (theres only five minutes the next day), but hey, it's mission possible and there's a lot of crazy contraptions out there. They did allow us to disconnect batteries when the set up time is over, and you can attach them when the judges come over since some electrical devices are extremely time-sensitive.

We ended up getting a no-touch run with 9 seconds over the ideal time: we got 4th place. Maybe that's a good baseline for other state competitions?

As for the rules changing, first off I think there's a chance that they're gonna axe mission possible. As much as i love this event, this is the most crazy, random tech event. There are so many rules and complications that it becomes a nightmare for judges. I mean, there were at least 9 judges/assistant judges watching each mission. If they do decide to keep it (I hope they do =D) then it won't change that much, just use different tasks. The same was for mission possible division B 2005-2007.

Nice! We could probably have gotten top ten if the judge had let me declare a touch before I dropped the golfball. Even with about 100 points off of a perfect score, we still placed 13. Oh, well.

I really hope that they don't axe it, though. They usually run events on a three-year cycle, right? I'm crossing my fingers that they knew what they were getting into, since it wasn't trialed. I don't know why they had so many timers--my coach was easily able to handle 15 teams at invitationals by himself. Do the tasks all change, or just a few of them? I really don't want to completely gut the thing.

[Dark Sabre]

Lots of good devices at the Indiana State comp. Was pretty impressed.

Make sure you brush up on your Clarifications and FAQs before you go to your competitions. We had a couple of teams using disallowed electronics.
Happily, the deciding factor in ranking tended to be whether everything worked as expected, rather than stopwatches.

[StampingKid]

Dark Sabre, Where are the pics? People must have been really shielding their MP if you were not able to get a pic.

[Dark Sabre]

It was pretty ridiculously busy, I didn't get a chance to even take out my camera

[Primate]

It was pretty ridiculously busy, I didn't get a chance to even take out my camera

Just out of curiosity, how did you guys run things over in Indiana?

[Dark Sabre]

Impound-wise, pretty similar to what people have been describing here. You could bring your device into the event area and work on it/fix things (if you had goggles and free time) up until impound ended. Then you had to walk away. Then people got the normal set-up time when they came to compete. For both JYC and MPC we had three judges (JeRRy, me, and another mission veteran) who each inspected and judged a team. Then we had a group of timers who traveled between the 3 groups when they were ready to run.