biscuit
Veteran
He's actually asking about 2018...
CubingUSA Nationals 2017 - Fort Wayne, Indiana (July 7-9)
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One Wheel
Legend
I'm guessing it is too late for 2017, but that doesn't mean you've been wasting your time. I think the issue is that the organizers don't believe there is enough interest to warrant the extra work. You showed in your previous post that there is interest, the question is proving there is sufficient interest. I'm not privy to the planning process, but I strongly suspect that by the time anything was made public it was too late to change any of that. Which is why the focus should be on a productive conversation about next year.
Torch
Veteran
I may be misunderstanding something here, but here's what I think he was saying: "I know Feet is already guaranteed to not be an event in 2017, so what can we do for next year?". To which I replied: "I sure hope it's not too late for Nationals 2017! Otherwise I've been wasting my time here."
Torch
Veteran
I'm somewhat worried that may be true, but my argument is that it is very important that Feet be held the first year that there are qualifying times, and that it would not require a massive reallocation of time, manpower or resources if we do it right.
biscuit
Veteran
One Wheel
Legend
I may be wrong, but I don't think qualifying times are quite as significant as you think they are. The fact of the matter is that, like it or not, feet is a second- class event, and needs rehabilitation, not maintenance.
How are you defining second-class?
One Wheel
Legend
Public perception and organizer priority. It's not exact, but it's very hard to argue that feet gets anywhere near the attention of, say, 4x4. Feet just doesn't matter as much to the people whose opinions actually matter.
cubeninjaIV
Regular
I think there's an important distinction to make with regards to Feet. At 2:30, which is what most people would call a reasonable cutoff, you are 7 times slower than the world record. In 8 years, only 60 people in the US have achieved a time which is roughly 7.5 times slower than the current world record. I agree that the logistics argument is pretty weak. There are other things that create problems with feet at local comps, but I still don't feel like they are significant enough to exclude it from Nat's.
The issue is that no one takes the event seriously. Of the top 60 people in the US, 23 of those times were set in 2014 or before. The US record hasn't been broken in 3 years and its 50% slower than the world record.
If people so desperately want feet to return at Nat's, they should practice and make it a competitive event. As it stands, looking at the 2016 results only you can see how (not) competitive it is and I don't find it at unreasonable to exclude it from Nat's on those grounds.
The issue is that no one takes the event seriously. Of the top 60 people in the US, 23 of those times were set in 2014 or before. The US record hasn't been broken in 3 years and its 50% slower than the world record.
If people so desperately want feet to return at Nat's, they should practice and make it a competitive event. As it stands, looking at the 2016 results only you can see how (not) competitive it is and I don't find it at unreasonable to exclude it from Nat's on those grounds.
One Wheel
Legend
The point has been made elsewhere that the barrier to offering feet might be lowered if it was changed to an Ao5 format and stricter cutoffs were employed. What we really need is a north American WR to make feet cool. Maybe a foot solver on AGT or something would help.
You could also make an ADA argument: think of all the poor kids without functional arms. If feet isn't offered, they can't really compete. Other than using feet in a regular 3x3 round, which you could really only legally do if you were as fast with feet as with hands.
You could also make an ADA argument: think of all the poor kids without functional arms. If feet isn't offered, they can't really compete. Other than using feet in a regular 3x3 round, which you could really only legally do if you were as fast with feet as with hands.
AlexMaass
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lmao rami did feet on AGT a while back
and there's only one case I know of an armless person doing feet, and that is Will Arnold who had the feet WR way back
As an organizer, if there was an armless kid who wanted to do feet but it wasn't offered around here, I would just give the option of dong regular 3x3 or doing feet,
brb making petition for unofficial pen to be held at US Nationals
biscuit
Veteran
You have enough interest for it to be held at local comps, and people start competing. Right now there's no reason to believe many people care about feet at all.
cubeninjaIV
Regular
Yeah, my bad. The point stands though.
This. You'll have a hard time convincing anyone that you take feet seriously if the only time you compete in it is at Nat's.
I'm not really sure what you mean. It's not like the people who want to do feet have nearby comps with it but decide to sign up for everything except feet. They don't compete in it because they have to travel a long way or organise a competition (which is a decent solution that I believe some people have used).
biscuit
Veteran
Organize your own comp or petition your local organizer. If enough people want to do it (the point of this conversation) then it will eventually happen.
Torch
Veteran
I do think qualifying times are very significant, and here's why: The organizers of Nationals are now coordinating with and encouraging local organizers to hold less popular events significantly more, for the express purpose of getting more people to achieve competitive times. Feet is already less popular than bigcubes and BigBLD, and this could be the golden opportunity to change that.
As James brought up (and I agree with this), what is considered "competitive" in the US is pretty slow compared to the rest of the world. This won't change overnight, but we have to start somewhere. Of course we can say "people should hold it more often in competitions", but without an overarching reason to do so, that might go nowhere. Having a qualifying goal to reach towards will motivate many people who never would have tried the event to give it a shot, and they may find that they like it and want to push further and faster. There could be hundreds of potential fast American Feetsolvers out there, they just need a catalyst and a goal to shoot for.
I would like to add one other thing re: the fact that American Feet times aren't on par with the rest of the world. Since Rami Sbahi set the current NR mean, he has done 9 official Feet solves. In that same period of time, Yuhei Takagi has done 60, Gabriel Pereira Campanha has done 90, and Jakub Kipa has done 142 official Feet solves. Feet is a high variance event, both because is it a mean of 3 event, and because movecount/skips can make or break your solve. Obviously the people who get the most chances to compete in it will have a better chance of getting an good official mean.
(Note that I am not denigrating the skills of those Feetsolvers at all or saying they don't deserve their official times.)
aybuck37
Veteran
I'm going to wait until they post the venue to say anything
shelley
chang
CubingUSA is basically the organizer team that has organized US Nationals every year (and maintained the website that many US competition sites have been hosted on). We've finally incorporated as a non-profit organization this year, so we actually exist as a legal entity now.
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