2013-2014 VEX World Championships

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC
1

The location of the next VEX World Championships was announced at the last event, but the date was not. Someone here then went to the Anaheim Convention Center web site, searched by event, and found that next season’s World Championships are scheduled to be held on April 24-25, 2014 which is the same dates for the FRC World Championships. Is this correct?

I understand that the usual date (the third week of April) would have conflicted with Good Friday and Easter next year. Is this the reason for the change? I personally prefer that we do not have the VEX World Championships the week before Easter because this would be a heavy burden on families and may even EXCLUDE Christian teams. If the VEX World Championships are to be held on the same days as the FRC World Championships, many teams will have to make some hard decisions or create some continingency plans.

Please let us know the **official date **of the VEX World Championships as soon as possible so that we may begin plans.

Thank you for your assistance!

2

Thanks for the post, if you’ve got that question, I’m sure others do also, so we’ll definitely clarify for you.

We did announce the official dates at the end of the World Championship in Anaheim a couple weeks ago. The 2014 World Championship is set for April 23-26, 2014 in Anaheim again. The dates for 2012, 2013 and 2014 were all contracted three years ago.

I’ve learned more about the convention industry over the last 5 years than I ever wanted to know, and since many are interested in the process and details, I’m happy to share some general information for anyone curious. Here are some of the primary hurdles/obstacles we face when finding a home and date for the World Championship:

  • The number of cities that have the facilities to host a VEX or FIRST Championship are certainly limited (many have the incredible amount of square footage space needed for the “pit area”, many have have an arena with the needed field/seating capacity - but very few have both, at least “connected” or within suitable walking distance)
  • Because of the need for local, regional, state and national tournaments to play out during the season and the need for schools to want 30 days notice (or more) to get approval for travel (plus budget planning and booking airfare and hotel), our event partners and teams (and I’m sure those in FIRST also) have been very vocal with us that they do not want the World Championship to be earlier in the season
  • Many schools/teams have also been vocal with us that many would not be able to attend if the World Championship was held any later than April because holding it in May or June would conflict with various tests (state testing, SAT testing, etc…), finals, proms and/or graduations and so on.
  • Then on top of those three constraints, we have a holiday weekend (Easter) important to many which actually floats and lands on different weekends each year (most frequently in April). Even for those that don’t have an issue with playing that weekend, because it is a big holiday travel weekend, the airfare and hotel costs for all teams attending the event would be much higher
  • Then, on top of those 4 constraints, we have one more big one - most or all of the facilities that can host an event the size and magnitude of the VEX World Championship are booked every week in April up to 3, 4 or even 5+ years in advance.

In this specific case, when we booked our dates for 2012, 2013, and 2014, FIRST only had dates held for their Championship in 2012 and 2013, which we made sure to schedule around as we are aware many teams and volunteers are great supporters of both programs. We inquired to see if FIRST dates had been held for 2014 and 2015, but they were not, and April 23-26 was the only week available (not already booked by another group) in Anaheim in 2014 (and this was three years ago). We did not learn the 2014 FIRST dates in St. Louis until they were announced in October, well after our dates were set. FIRST was aware of the dates of the 2014 VEX World Championship, but we’re sure they found the same constraints (listed above) and most likely could not avoid the same week even if they wanted to, as it may have been the only week available in St. Louis in 2014. We have offered to switch dates with one of the other events on a different week in Anaheim in 2014 (as we did when we switched our location/dates back in 2011), but they were unable to for various reasons.

So basically, you’ve got two programs that both hold their events in the same two to three week window, both trying to avoid Easter Weekend and both with a limited number of cities/dates even available. It’s actually kind of amazing we’ve been able to avoid conflicting dates for 6 consecutive years. In spite of our best efforts, and we assume FIRST’s, avoiding the same week doesn’t appear to have been possible in 2014. We will always be willing, open and eager to discuss World Championship dates with FIRST in advance to avoid these types of conflicts, for the benefit of all participants in the various great programs we both run.

We have been working hard over the past few months to finalize our 2015 and possibly 2016 dates that are currently held. We will announced those dates as soon as the the ink has been put to the contracts to help avoid future conflicts.

The 2013 VEX World Championship was the biggest, best and most successful yet. We know the 2014 VEX World Championship will be even bigger/better and are looking forward to another amazing season!

PS - Team Registration is now up, open and running on Robotevents.com for the 2013-2014 season for ALL THREE programs: VEX IQ Challenge, VEX Robotics Competition and VEX U

3

Since we’re talking about dates and locations, is the date and/or location of the 2014 US Nationals tournament set?

4

Thank you for your answer. With all of the excitement going on, most of us missed the announced dates and only heard the “where” part. Thank you for your detailed explaination and for all of your hard work on behalf of our VEX teams!

5

Nationals should be within the first two weeks of march, same venue. There is no other suitable venue in the city right now besides the Ralston Arena because of distance concerns and pricing, I’m 99% confident. The other 3 options in the Omaha metro area are the Qwest center (too large), Civic (Was used in elevation, too large, and is scheduled for demolition I believe next year), and Kroc center (used to be the venue, too small I believe)

6

Why does Nationals have to be in Nebraska? The ESPN Sports Center in Orlando would work. They had Worlds there at least once, and the All Star Challenge the next year.

There’s at least a dozen other places we could do it, too.

7

It’s held in Omaha because it’s roughly in the center of the country so teams close to the borders don’t have to travel as far. If it was in Orlando, a lot of Northwestern teams wouldn’t be able to attend. It is also sponsored by the CREATE foundation, and their world headquarters is in Omaha, (I believe).:smiley:

8

To be fair, VMAC and BCIT usually conflicts as well.
1412 answered your question though, its primarily because of CREATE.

9

Huh. I didn’t know that. I didn’t really think about flight time. We’re about four or five hours away from either location.

What do teams do in Omaha after the competition? I’m kind of curious.

10

Personally, I get back to my 70+ degree tropical island as soon as possible.:smiley:

11

After Nationals, CREATE usually host some kind of party for all the teams who wish to stick around and mix & mingle and get to know each other better, or just have fun with different types of activities planned. It unusually includes a group dinner for all the teams, coaches, volunteers, etc. as well as table games and the like. When the event was at the Kroc center, it included swimming. It has been a very good time in the past.

12

It seems that there is a CREATE U.S. ‘Open’ Championship scheduled for April 3-5, 2014. Still in Omaha but at the Kroc Center like in 2012. Kind of strange being that they expect to be able to hold 220 teams in that small place. It also says that the champions of this ‘open championship’ will qualify for the National Championship in Hawaii…? What confuses me is why there are two National Events at two very far apart places. Anyone have any clarifications? heres the like to the U.S. Open in Omaha this year:

http://www.robotevents.com/u-s-national-vex-robotics-championship-high-school-division-3.html

-Team 1028C

2012 Nebraska State Championship School Finalists
2012 Kansas City Youth Technology Fair Finalists
2013 Kansas City Youth Technology Fair Amaze Award
2013 Nebraska State Championship Qualifiers
2013 U.S. National Blue Division Finalists

13

According to description from tournament info

This is not a national event. It is open to anybody, hence the title US Open.

14

The official VEX US National Championship has moved to HI and has been moved to summer, after the World Championships. There is another thread in this forum which has a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of this move. Create Fdn is hosting this other event referred to as the US Open, which you should check out the details on. I know we are going to look at it pretty hard, as it will most likely be a very good event. I have yet to look at the details yet, but will be soon. I hope this helps clarify a little.

15

Sounds like a good idea to me, the calendar is too full, so summer would be great

Does anyone have the robotevent link to this event ?

16

I would like to leave feedback about the way the program schedule was set up. The alliance selection was right after qualifying matches with literally no time to talk to teams. We had lunch as soon as alliance selection was done, couldn’t they have waited till after lunch which would have given teams 45 minutes to talk to possible allies.

17

I prefer lunch for strategy with the allies. I would suggest delaying lunch or shortening qualifiers by putting more Friday night. Give people at least a half hour before selection and lunch after selection and you’ll make a lot of people happier.

18

Not to derail the main point of the thread, but what we do is scout teams Thursday and Friday nights and come up with a list of teams we would like to alliance with. Then Saturday before selection, we talk to those teams in between our matches. Adding time before selection would just prolong the event even longer and make it more difficult to round up all the teams for alliance selection since they would probably be all over the convention center talking to teams.

19

I was thinking about this as well.

With VEXiq and VRC Combined this year , I felt everything was a bit longer than usual.

A couple ideas to increase the speed of the event:
1: Present Design awards before the high school divisions are introduced for round robin.

2: Present the VEXiq design and STEM awards at the VEXiq elimination tournament.

3: Do the pictures in a separate area so more awards can be announced at a faster pace. Team can also take pictures on the main stage after the event.

  1. Try to ensure all divisions finish at a similar time.
    Somehow the time difference between divisions was very large. For example, the Math division was done almost an hour before the last division finished. Not sure why there was such a large delay between divisions.