Planning for Kickoff: What Teams Need to Know

As you are planning for your INTO THE DEEP℠ presented by RTX season kickoff next weekend, we want to outline some highlights and changes for the upcoming season.  

Live Kickoff Attendees – Help Keep it Special! 

If you are attending an in-person kickoff event, please help preserve the excitement and surprise for all regions by not sharing any game specifics until after 12:30 p.m. ET (Eastern Time). This means do not restream local broadcasts or share game specific photos or content on social media.  

Competition Manual Updated & Questions at Kickoff 

Most of your amazing local volunteers are just finding out about the full game details at the same time as you are, and local volunteers will not be rule experts on kickoff day. Although a few volunteers have early access to the Competition Manual and have high level understanding of the game, we encourage all teams and volunteers to direct their questions to the Official Q&A when it opens on September 16, 2024. It can be challenging for volunteers to definitively answer team questions in the moment when everyone has just learned about the game and are in brainstorming mode.  

All teams should have at least one responsible person read the complete Competition Manual. If reading one big document seems too overwhelming, work together as a team to tackle it section by section! 

As mentioned in the Important Season Update - Game Manual Changes blog back in July, new this year we will be publishing Team Updates every other week to keep the Competition Manual up to date with the latest revisions based on questions from teams and volunteers. In addition to the robot construction rules changes released in the Competition Manual Preview Release(V0) you will also find we have made adjustments to the advancement order and playoff structure. 

Team and Volunteer Calls 

Again, this year FIRST will host team calls which are an open forum for teams to come and ask questions and get real-time feedback from staff and volunteer experts. Teams are invited to attend any of the following sessions: 

• Team Game Play 

• Team Dean’s List 

• NEW – Rookie Team Resources  

These calls are good for high level questions where a live group discussion can aid in understanding. They are not appropriate places for very detailed game questions (for this please use the Q&A system) or technical questions (for this please use the ftc-community technical forum). Other listed calls are reserved for volunteers to call in and get the same kind of direct support. If you are a volunteer reading this blog, we look forward to seeing you on those calls! 

Judging Changes 

One of the best parts of FIRST Tech Challenge is how much our community celebrates “more than robots.”  One of the ways we do that is through awards and the judging process. We have significantly reformatted the judging section of the Competition Manual to try to provide more transparency to the judging process for all teams.  

Promote Award Retired 

Due to overall low submission rates, we are retiring the Promote Award and will work with our community and FIRST sponsors to understand what other new awards we should consider adopting in the future. 

Control Award included in the Portfolio 

When the Control Award was first added as a pilot award in 2013 “Block Party”, it was a novel concept for most of our teams and judges and we felt like it was necessary to offer a submission template/worksheet to guide teams on what information they should provide. Now as a well-established award, we are removing the specific submission form, and teams will instead include this information directly in their portfolio like all other awards. We are making this change to remove one more “special submission process” for teams, judges, and event organizers to manage and we hope it will be easier for more teams to be considered for this prestigious award. For this season, the length of the portfolio will remain the same as last season.  

Portfolio Encouraged, not a Hard Requirement  

New this year, the team portfolio is not a prerequisite requirement for most judged awards. We want our judges to focus on high quality interactions with FIRST Tech Challenge teams, and we trust them to help our community celebrate great programs through the awards they present.  

Every team has worked hard to get to the competition and has valuable and amazing experiences to share, but for various reasons not all teams find the portfolio approachable. Without a portfolio they have been excluded from all awards opportunities and in the FIRST Tech Challenge program we believe all teams deserve an opportunity to be celebrated for the work they did.  

We cannot wait for you to see the INTO THE DEEP game and commence our 2024-2025 season! 

Find a kickoff event near you!  

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