Events 2017-2018

[chalker]

Hovercraft involves electricity; also those four are split into two committees that can make their own independent decisions

And Battery Buggy will involve electricity (although that is Division B). In the past Mission Possible Div C has allowed electricity. I'm not sure what the plans are for it next year. And Game On definitely involves Programming.

The crux of what I'm hearing is "we want a robot related event". For various reasons, the Tech Committee has decided to not include one in Div C next year. This is no different than what happened in 2014 - 2015 if you look at the historical event rotations.

That's not to say it's not important to voice your concerns, since many committee members do watch thread like this. My personal opinion though is that it's not a compelling argument to say things like 'teams invest so much money in robotic parts you need to include an event'. That's exactly the kind of thing we want to discourage - we don't want these events turning into races to invest a ton of money in the best parts. We want there to be very low startup costs involved. A much stronger argument I think is "certain groups of kids will be much less interested in participating in SO without a robot event". However, even that involved some behaviors we want to discourage. SO is all about being on a TEAM. Far too many participants don't get involved enough in the whole team aspect and focus just on 'their' individual event of interest. There are countless stories from alumni of how they weren't interested at all in a particular branch of science until they were 'forced' to participate in a particular SO event that exposed them to it, and now they love it or have even made it part of their career.

[maxxxxx]

A much stronger argument I think is "certain groups of kids will be much less interested in participating in SO without a robot event". However, even that involved some behaviors we want to discourage. SO is all about being on a TEAM. Far too many participants don't get involved enough in the whole team aspect and focus just on 'their' individual event of interest. There are countless stories from alumni of how they weren't interested at all in a particular branch of science until they were 'forced' to participate in a particular SO event that exposed them to it, and now they love it or have even made it part of their career.

I think people just need to try new events. I thought I would hate Wind Power so I didn't try it last year, but I picked it up this year and ended up loving it. The same thing happened when I went from B to C, I thought all of the events were boring but most of them are really fun.

[AlbatrossTree]

Does it seem strange that not all or even most of the trial events for nationals appear on the preliminary list of events for next year?

[Unome]

Does it seem strange that not all or even most of the trial events for nationals appear on the preliminary list of events for next year?

Usually there's no more than one or two that's rotating in next year, since the incoming trials tend to be tested out a few years in advance (for example, Invasives & Green Gen were trialed at the 2013 Nationals), but the distribution is rather unusual this year. Div B look pretty normal to me - Roller Coaster is coming in next year, and I guess Inquiry wants to do something with Rotor Egg Drop again (that rotation has historically not been very stable, and as far as I know they haven't yet decided on what the event will be next year) - but Div C is interesting; Indoor Bottle Rocket doesn't really viably fit in the rotation anytime in the future, and if I remember correctly Electric Wright Stuff was tried at some point in the past and basically scrapped in it's iteration at the time (and it's not like the flight rotation has been unstable, at least not since 2013 when they seem to have figured out a pattern). I suspect they're testing Indoor Bottle Rocket for use in Div B next year or in the future, but I have no idea what's planned for Electric Wright Stuff.

[BTABC123]

Will compound machines or circuit lab come back anytime soon? Not sure what the rotation is like for these physics events.

[chalker]

Will compound machines or circuit lab come back anytime soon? Not sure what the rotation is like for these physics events.

Physics events are generally in a 6 year cycle: 2 years in, 4 years out. The current projected schedule is that circuits will be back in 2 years and compound machines in 3.

[Skink]

To the comment concerning the biology events not rotating a page or two ago, for whatever it's worth, it is known that Disease Det as-is is stale, and rumor has it that the event may be reworked sometime in the near future. It is unclear what this would look like, but I am in favor of the possibility, as the topic rotation is not significant enough to matter when the core material stays.

[Xuax]

Will compound machines or circuit lab come back anytime soon? Not sure what the rotation is like for these physics events.

Physics events are generally in a 6 year cycle: 2 years in, 4 years out. The current projected schedule is that circuits will be back in 2 years and compound machines in 3.

What would circuit replace?

[Skink]

I believe Shock and Circuit replace KtH and Thermo.

[appleshake123]

I believe Shock and Circuit replace KtH and Thermo.

I think it is replaced by optics
Circuit -> Time -> Optics