View Full Version : What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
The title says it all, but recently there have been some discussions on CD about whether or not FIRST is doing enough to help existing 1-3 year old teams survive into coming seasons. They are putting a lot of effort into starting new teams but the amount of aid (not just financial aid, but also knowledge and support aid) those rookie teams get after their rookie season can make them unstable and drop out of FIRST after only one year.
So, let's garner up some ideas for how FIRST can help existing teams survive and be sustainable for years to come. Please don't just say "give them more money", as we all know that FIRST does work very hard to supply rookies with extra tools and resources to get them off their feet.
marshall
20-05-2016, 08:29
Eliminate bag day.
And with that I'm pretty sure some of you will have finished a bingo card. ;)
Asking what FIRST can do is probably the wrong approach if you are asking what help can from the group in New Hampshire. Right away you would run into a problem of scalability. The things I do see them as being able to do is:
1. Drive down the cost of participating in FIRST. Reduce the cost of competitions. Increase the number of matches played. Work with vendors to improve supplies of COTS parts.
2. Provide resources that can be used by schools to increase the value of the FIRST program to the schools. Curriculum schools can use would help a lot.
There's probably more, but mainly I see FIRST providing strategic big picture changes that improve the value of the program, making teams more valuable to the organizations that support them, like schools and sponsors.
The FIRST community itself can help the most when it comes to team sustainability. The Gracious Profesionalism, Coopertition, and focus of the Chairman's Award already drive many teams to help other teams to survive. Workshops, training, mentoring all help the young teams survive.
Years 1-3 are particularly tough for FRC teams. This is the period when the entrepreneurs that had the dream and vision to get the team started are replaced by the team members who can organize and build a sustainable team (generalizing of course). The type of people needed to startup a team are not always the type of people that can build a strong, sustainable team. It's during this transition that teams are most vulnerable to failure and need the most support from nearby mentoring teams.
Tim Sharp
20-05-2016, 08:57
Eliminate bag day.
And with that I'm pretty sure some of you will have finished a bingo card. ;)
Doesn't make it untrue though.
It hits on the most obvious way to improve sustainability immediately, reduce the logistical and financial barriers to entry. Bag and tag creates artificially high barriers that are too much to overcome for many teams who operate near the margins.
Without it, we could achieve, IMO, the exact same level of inspiration and probably more technical knowledge due to the fact that the students spend more time in goal oriented activities with a high level of motivation as opposed to learning generalities that may or may not be useful in a given year.
logank013
20-05-2016, 09:04
I think team density is the only real way to drive down price. I feel like most of the price issues come from hotels and travel costs rather than registration fees. When looking at Michigan, most teams easily have 2 events (usually more) within driving distance (now registering for those 2 events is a completely different story). This would lower the cost of running a team by a big amount I feel.
Sperkowsky
20-05-2016, 09:23
I think team density is the only real way to drive down price. I feel like most of the price issues come from hotels and travel costs rather than registration fees. When looking at Michigan, most teams easily have 2 events (usually more) within driving distance (now registering for those 2 events is a completely different story). This would lower the cost of running a team by a big amount I feel.
Although that is a factor I don't think that's the issue. In lower NY we have two easily accessible regionals. Yet we still see tons of Long Island and NYC teams die.
The biggest reason I see teams die has nothing to do with funding. It's loss of their primary mentor. I don't think that's really something that can be easily fixed which is a shame.
Many teams do not even put travel towards team expenses. They are the individual expense of the students.
dk5sm5luigi
20-05-2016, 11:05
The biggest reason I see teams die has nothing to do with funding. It's loss of their primary mentor. I don't think that's really something that can be easily fixed which is a shame.
If you solve this then you will solve most of the problems. I have seen many teams with little funding survive because their primary mentor went out of their way to do what ever they needed to keep the team running. You lose that mentor and the team disappears.
This is also a major reason why it is hard to start new teams. You need to find that mentor who is crazy enough to start a team.
Bkeeneykid
20-05-2016, 11:11
Although that is a factor I don't think that's the issue. In lower NY we have two easily accessible regionals. Yet we still see tons of Long Island and NYC teams die.
The biggest reason I see teams die has nothing to do with funding. It's loss of their primary mentor. I don't think that's really something that can be easily fixed which is a shame.
Many teams do not even put travel towards team expenses. They are the individual expense of the students.
Here in KC, KC STEM does a great jobs of offering their own build space (team 1775, world division finalist builds there), and trying to give great resources to keep teams running. While I do think that FIRST might be able to help in this way, having regional mentors and build spaces, that are given by the local FIRST chapter can go a long way. I don't know of any other FIRST area, and having them support it would go a long way.
Bkeeneykid
20-05-2016, 11:16
1. Drive down the cost of participating in FIRST. Reduce the cost of competitions. Increase the number of matches played. Work with vendors to improve supplies of COTS parts.
We have to keep in mind the place of the local FIRST chapter. I know KC FIRST already spends much more than they'll ever get back from FIRST on the KC regional. I'm not entirely sure where that $4,000 to the regional goes, but I'm sure not all of it goes to the regional. FIRST has dozens of employees dedicated just to FRC, and they have to get paid somehow. Even with all of their generous sponsors, they still need more money. While I think increasing the matches played is a good option, there's no real way of doing that on a regional model without adding more time, which is just more cost. If switching to a district model, then things get even more expensive, and I've heard from KC STEM that they are not in great support of this idea just because of cost.
The strongest fortress will crumble in short order if it is built on sand.
Putting strong foundations in place *before* building FRC teams will probably increase the FRC teams' survivability.
Advising potential rookies to walk before running, or even making forming an FRC team the *second* step in a formal multi-season process might be an improvement.
Ian Curtis
20-05-2016, 11:30
Years 1-3 are particularly tough for FRC teams.
What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?
Citrus Dad
20-05-2016, 11:32
2. Provide resources that can be used by schools to increase the value of the FIRST program to the schools. Curriculum schools can use would help a lot.
This might be the most important step. VEX offers a curriculum that allows school districts to justify assigning a teacher to the program. If FIRST could offer a dual track then that allows the districts to start supporting the program. That's been a big help for us in the last couple of years.
As a friend who works in international development said, non profits can come up with innovations and pilots, but to scale up to widespread adoption requires embedding the program in an institution such as a school or a government. In the U.S. sports are in the schools with salaries for coaches paid by schools. In Europe, sports clubs are subsidized by governments. This is an educational program that benefits many more than just students participating.
It's time for FIRST to take the next step and offer a model that schools find useful for accomplishing their mission.
hectorcastillo
20-05-2016, 11:33
This past season our team started an initiative called Project Alamo Robotics Rising to address this exact problem. Basically, every year we've seen many new teams get started in the Alamo/San Antonio area, but only a few of them stay around after 1-2 years. So we've started inviting the local teams and any teams willing to make the drive to our shop where we help them out with any problems they're having, let them use our tools and machine shop, and give them programming help, and let them use our practice field in our gym.
Basically every team that came to our shop showed up with something on their robot that would not pass inspection, mostly bumpers. We helped them correct things like this so that they didn't have to waste time at the competition doing this when they might have less access to tools and resources. This means that teams will pass inspection faster, get more practice time, and most importantly, make it to all of their matches which makes every happy, especially the teams that don't want to play 2v3s (all of them except 148 who will win the match anyways lol).
What this all comes down to, is just helping these teams get the most out of their regional as possible, because most, if not all of these teams only register for one regional. If you spend half of your regional rebuilding your robot instead of playing matches, then maybe you're not going to see FRC as a worthwhile investment of your time.
And we are doing all of this without help from FIRST, who we were surprised didn't already have a system for veteran teams helping out younger teams like this already in place.
jgerstein
20-05-2016, 11:43
What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?
I was curious about this too, so I pulled some data from TBA. A few teams show up a year or two before their rookie year because of off-seasons, but not enough to have a major effect on the numbers.
The last two tabs are the raw data I pulled from TBA and an expanded table showing which years each team was active in.
Team Survival (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hk161dKyluaitI57toJpqSEov0vOWOdbxhLjCt59HDQ/edit?usp=sharing)
Sheet 1 (% of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the percent of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 45% of the teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.
Sheet 2 (# of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the number of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 75 of the 403 teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.
The other sheets are not particularly useful for looking at directly.
GreyingJay
20-05-2016, 11:47
What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?
Without any hard numbers to back it up I would agree with your guess. I would also think that year 3 could be difficult. We just came off a pretty amazing first year and next year I feel we will be under pressure to "do it again". We managed to be alliance captains at both our regionals after seeding in the top 10-12 in quals. We worked hard to find all the sponsors we needed and they were impressed with the outcome (not that winning is THE outcome, but it's certainly a useful metric to show sponsors).
With next year will come the first loss of students who graduate out of the team, and an influx of fresh recruits who saw us last year. There will be more work to train these students up and make up for the knowledge transfer that will need to occur.
Then we will either "do it again", establishing our reputation as a team who can "perform", and put increasing pressure in year 3 to do it a third time, ...or not, and put increasing pressure in year 3 to "recover". I also suspect the push to fundraise, to find and renew sponsors will start to wear on people.
How can FIRST increase team sustainability? Honestly it may come down to "they can't do much without changing the culture". It's very competitive and we see that as a good thing. Every team wants to win. But how do you ensure more rookies succeed? Either you find ways for them to "win" more (more, cheaper, closer regionals/districts?) or ensure that they know that "a winning team" does not necessarily mean "blue banner".
Remove bag day? Sure, that increases the rookie team's chances of fielding something, but that also gives powerhouse teams more time to build something that will wipe the floor with everyone else. It will increase the perceived divide.
rwodonnell
20-05-2016, 12:11
I was curious about this too, so I pulled some data from TBA. A few teams show up a year or two before their rookie year because of off-seasons, but not enough to have a major effect on the numbers.
The last two tabs are the raw data I pulled from TBA and an expanded table showing which years each team was active in.
Team Survival (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hk161dKyluaitI57toJpqSEov0vOWOdbxhLjCt59HDQ/edit?usp=sharing)
This is great, thank you! (How do I read it?)
By the way, if I understood how to give the little green dots, I would give you some for this... :)
mastachyra
20-05-2016, 12:18
NASA has been supporting new teams for awhile with their grants. This is the type of large scale project that is not a waste of time for FIRST.
Maybe FIRST can garner similar support for 2nd, 3rd, 4th year teams. Like, let the a corporation grab that year and stick with supporting.
Imagine 3M or 3DSystems giving $3000 to 300 3rd year teams!
Eliminate bag day.
I'm just Not seeing this helping at all. Bag day is when we stop spending money. During build, we have a burn-rate of hundreds-of-dollars a week. The day we bag is the day that stops. Bag day saves money.
Bag day is when I go home at night and see my family again. I can sustain not eating dinner at home for only so long before they forget my name. Bag day keeps mentors sustainable.
If we built a second-robot after bag day (we normally don't) we would keep designing, building parts and spending money--and building two copies of everything--that would actually cost more than not bagging. But I don't really want that.
If you don't have bag day, can you point to any team that would use that as a reason to Not build a second (or third or fourth) robot? No, those teams will still be doing that.
Also with no bag day, our drivers would practice, practice, practice and get much better than they are. But every hour the robot is moving, something is breaking and though that's going to allow us to improve the robot, it also will cost money.
The biggest reason I see teams die has nothing to do with funding. It's loss of their primary mentor. I don't think that's really something that can be easily fixed which is a shame.
I think Sperkowsky's comment here breaks into two catagories:
1. Many teams fold after just one or two years. I think money is a big factor for these--when they lose the rookie-team grants, finding money is a big shock. Usually mentors have to find that money.
2. Mentoring is usually fun, but every year there are huge headaches and conflicts between people (other mentors and students). If you have single mentors carrying too many headaches, it's very negative. The rewards of being a mentor have to exceed the negatives. I don't know how you can increase the reward. I think you have to decrease the negatives. Spread them between more people?
Sadly, a team has a life, just like a person and every team is on an arc to someday fold. Just like a company. Just like any organization. If you want to keep a team alive and vital, you just have to plan for the inevitabilities...losing funding, losing build space, losing people. And this planning is hard, sometimes insurmountable.
One solution to a mentor quitting killing a team is that mentors can recruit their replacement before they quit/retire. When I was recruited, it was made clear to me who I was replacing. Every mentor is on an arc to someday leave or retire too. Just like cells in a body, there has to be a plan to replace them.
jgerstein
20-05-2016, 12:27
This is great, thank you! (How do I read it?)
I'm glad I can help!
Sheet 1 (% of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the percent of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 45% of the teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.
Sheet 2 (# of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the number of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 75 of the 403 teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.
The other sheets are not particularly useful for looking at directly.
By the way, if I understood how to give the little green dots, I would give you some for this... :)
Thank you! If you do want to, there is a scale icon next to the post number where you can do that. :]
marshall
20-05-2016, 12:32
If you don't have bag day, can you point to any team that would use that as a reason to Not build a second (or third or fourth) robot? No, those teams will still be doing that.
I will commit right now that 900 would stop building a copy of a robot and would instead use the resources to help create a second team if we no longer had bag day.
I'll also commit that without bag day we can help more existing teams to program their robots and make bumpers prior to the start of a competition.
nlknauss
20-05-2016, 12:33
It takes a few years for a team to form reliable, on-going partnerships with corporate sponsors. It also takes about the same amount of time for teams to create their own structure for spending through the course of a competition year. Having a regional structure in place to work with teams as they develop their programs can be helpful with this whether it is a regional director, FIRST senior mentor, or team of volunteers.
The other side of this is team management and support. There are many ways to do this, but many teams do spend a lot of time in their second and third years thinking about how this should look. A similar support group can be a great deal of help for mentors, teachers, and students on young teams.
Basically, the rookie year isn't the only year a team needs assistance with its formation.
rwodonnell
20-05-2016, 12:47
I'm glad I can help!
Thanks for the explanation on the google sheet. I hope you don't mind, but I created a copy of the sheet and added a column in the "raw data" tab with this formula:
=if(D2 <> 2016, E2, "")
What I wanted to see was, for teams that were not active in 2016, how many years were they active.
Here's the histogram of that:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/img/20e/20e5e0fffe135ce61f5c616f0ad83074_l.jpg
marshall
20-05-2016, 12:55
Thanks for the explanation on the google sheet. I hope you don't mind, but I created a copy of the sheet and added a column in the "raw data" tab with this formula:
=if(D2 <> 2016, E2, "")
What I wanted to see was, for teams that were not active in 2016, how many years were they active.
Here's the histogram of that:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/img/20e/20e5e0fffe135ce61f5c616f0ad83074_l.jpg
Srsly? 600 teams have dropped out after 2 years? :eek:
Ryan Dognaux
20-05-2016, 12:56
If you don't have bag day, can you point to any team that would use that as a reason to Not build a second (or third or fourth) robot? No, those teams will still be doing that.
We would build 1 and only 1 robot in a heartbeat if they eliminated bag & tag. The only reason we do it today is to be competitive and give our drivers and operators additional practice time.
Eliminating bag & tag would save us a lot of money & time - no more buying 2 to 3 of everything. It would also reduce the overall number of parts we make during build season. The time we spend trying to get our competition robot to match the performance of our practice robot wouldn't be needed either. We could also spread our schedule a little bit and not have to meet every single day, reducing mentor and student burnout.
There are SO many benefits to eliminating bag & tag. It's just a remnant of the old ship date when we used to have to crate up the robot and I think it needs to go.
rwodonnell
20-05-2016, 13:01
Srsly? 600 teams have dropped out after 2 years? :eek:
The number was 599, but when you add in the 169 that dropped after 1 year, then you have 768 teams that lasted 2 years or less. When you add in years three (459) and four (304) dropouts, you have 1531 teams that have lasted only through one cycle of high school kids. That's roughly a quarter of all teams ever created.
Dan Petrovic
20-05-2016, 13:02
Eliminate bag day.
While I fully support eliminating bag day, I don't think that's why teams don't survive.
Eliminating Bag Day levels the playing field a bit more. Teams that have the resources to build a practice robot won't have a leg up on the teams without those resources through extra driver practice, software integration, and a platform to test new features.
I doubt there are teams out there that say "well, we can't build a second robot, so let's just give up on FRC"
I will commit right now that 900 would stop building a copy of a robot and would instead use the resources to help create a second team if we no longer had bag day.
And yes, that's definitely very noble of you, but how many other teams are thinking like that?
Chris is me
20-05-2016, 13:10
While I fully support eliminating bag day, I don't think that's why teams don't survive.
Eliminating Bag Day levels the playing field a bit more. Teams that have the resources to build a practice robot won't have a leg up on the teams without those resources through extra driver practice, software integration, and a platform to test new features.
I doubt there are teams out there that say "well, we can't build a second robot, so let's just give up on FRC"
It's not really about the practice robots. It's about burnout.
If you have to build the whole robot in 6 weeks, no more no less, you feel compelled to meet very often. Lots of work is done in very little time. This makes it very hard to retain mentors year to year.
If you spread that out a few more weeks, yes work will expand to fill the time allotted, but you can meet with a more relaxed schedule if you want and still be reasonably competitive. The burden is spread out over a longer period.
marshall
20-05-2016, 13:13
Eliminating Bag Day levels the playing field a bit more. Teams that have the resources to build a practice robot won't have a leg up on the teams without those resources through extra driver practice, software integration, and a platform to test new features.
My thought process is thus:
Eliminate bag day and the teams with less resources can get more help with their robots. This makes them more competitive. Being more competitive helps them to win awards and boosts inspiration and confidence. Boosting those in turn enables them to survive for longer.
Roboshant
20-05-2016, 13:22
We actually talked about this on the first episode of F4. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/41J-ZPWeQjE.
jman4747
20-05-2016, 13:24
If you solve this then you will solve most of the problems. I have seen many teams with little funding survive because their primary mentor went out of their way to do what ever they needed to keep the team running. You lose that mentor and the team disappears.
This is also a major reason why it is hard to start new teams. You need to find that mentor who is crazy enough to start a team.
This and...
Eliminate bag day.
And with that I'm pretty sure some of you will have finished a bingo card. ;)
(I can list several ways this can save money and mentor burnout but we've already been over it before... Just think about it seriously please) And of course registration costs in general need to come down.
And
This might be the most important step. VEX offers a curriculum that allows school districts to justify assigning a teacher to the program.
One other thing that absolutely needs to happen is just getting a higher percentage of the engineering population involved in the first place. For as much as we talk about getting new people interested in STEM I still run in to countless engineers who don't know about what we do. I think we would be well served by getting more of these people involved.
Kevin Kolodziej
20-05-2016, 13:25
I doubt there are teams out there that say "well, we can't build a second robot, so let's just give up on FRC"
No, they say "Well, we built something that looks like a robot, then watched it do nothing in a bag for 4 weeks, and couldn't get it to work in 10 stressful hours on Thursday at the event away from our shop in a cramped 10x10 space, so let's just give up on FRC"
FIRST can say it's not about the robot all they want, but when you are rookies, it is exactly all about the robot. If you have a robot that never moves in your first year, it is hard to justify the time and money you spent on the program. A few teams experience that but become inspired by the rest of the teams and continue on, but that is by far the exception. It doesn't have to do well...it just has to do SOMETHING.
The first team I started while in college only lasted two years. Our first year had a robot that moved in 1 match at our first event and didn't do much better in our second event (we got a NASA grant and were able to go to 2 events). The second year, new kids were not interested in joining the team that seeded last (or nearly) at both events the previous year and we took 3 students to Midwest and once again had a robot that barely moved in any of our matches. The team died out due to a lack of interest. I am happy to say that several years later a new team formed at that school and the program is running very well these days, and the team I moved on to will be starting its 13th year next year.
Re: Bag Day, sure a few teams would still build 2 or 3 robots, but not all would, which also means many of those parts shortages would (hopefully) go away too. And you wouldn't have to pay for overnight shipping anymore!
EricLeifermann
20-05-2016, 13:28
Throw 2826 into the pool of teams that would only build 1 robot if bag day were removed. Our practice bOt is always better thay our comp bot because we get so much more test and run time on it. If we didn't have to redo everything that we changed on the practice bot on the comp bot talk about a financial and time save.
However bag day is not a leading factor in teams folding.
Team support is #1 I would say. Both from mentors but from FIRST HQ as a whole.
#2 is money, no way around it. There is 0 reason that the registration fee still needs to be as high as it is.
Lil' Lavery
20-05-2016, 13:37
Teams with the resources and dedication to build practice bots don't tend to be the ones that fold. Chipping in your $0.02 about practice bots probably doesn't mean much in this thread. With regards to mentor burnout and bag day, there are two competing schools of thought on that issue, and it likely wouldn't impact all individuals the same way. Let's save the bag day talk for the threads about bag day.
Ryan Dognaux
20-05-2016, 13:42
#2 is money, no way around it. There is 0 reason that the registration fee still needs to be as high as it is.
This. Show us where our $5000 goes and why it needs to be that high still, especially since none of our registration fee goes to our local regional.
Dan Petrovic
20-05-2016, 13:47
No, they say "Well, we built something that looks like a robot, then watched it do nothing in a bag for 4 weeks, and couldn't get it to work in 10 stressful hours on Thursday at the event away from our shop in a cramped 10x10 space, so let's just give up on FRC"
You know what? I hadn't thought about it that way and what you (and others) are saying makes a lot of sense. I was purely thinking from a monetary point-of-view.
... Show us where our $5000 goes ...I think a little CD searching will answer this question well for everyone who is interested.
Posting a few links to any especially good explanations could be useful.
This post by Jim Zondag (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1273768#post1273768) summarizes the history of bag day and why it's obsolete.
Continue reading down that thread for more relevant posts by Jim.
EDIT:
Also the obligatory:
http://i.imgur.com/bADbW9v.png
David Brinza
20-05-2016, 14:12
It takes a few years for a team to form reliable, on-going partnerships with corporate sponsors. It also takes about the same amount of time for teams to create their own structure for spending through the course of a competition year. Having a regional structure in place to work with teams as they develop their programs can be helpful with this whether it is a regional director, FIRST senior mentor, or team of volunteers.
The other side of this is team management and support. There are many ways to do this, but many teams do spend a lot of time in their second and third years thinking about how this should look. A similar support group can be a great deal of help for mentors, teachers, and students on young teams.
Basically, the rookie year isn't the only year a team needs assistance with its formation.
Actually, there is an organization to help with team management and support: FIRST NEMO (http://www.firstnemo.org/), the Non-Engineering Mentor Organization for FIRST teams.
FRC teams certainly have business-like components: staffing (students and mentors), finance (fundraising and expenses), facilities (build site, tools, IT, etc.), marketing (PR), and other logistics (transportation, communications, etc.). NEMO's purpose is to provide team with resources to do these things without having to re-invent the wheel.
I strongly recommend teams intending to sustain (or grow) their operations check out NEMO!
AdamHeard
20-05-2016, 14:18
Allow regionals to run their own lights and sound, and find a way to pass that savings on to teams. This doesn't have to be in terms of reduced registration for all, but could in grants, etc...
Considering most of CA is running regionals in district venues, it's a bummer that they are forced to raise the additional funds required to pay Show Ready Productions to run the event.
The savings could also be used to build up the fund for the eventual switch to districts (which I would assume is years off due to the difficulty the houston champs date puts on a District champs).
Michael Corsetto
20-05-2016, 14:23
Allow regionals to run their own lights and sound, and find a way to pass that savings on to teams. This doesn't have to be in terms of reduced registration for all, but could in grants, etc...
Considering most of CA is running regionals in district venues, it's a bummer that they are forced to raise the additional funds required to pay Show Ready Productions to run the event.
But Adam, we want FRC to be like all the other local high school sports that pay $40k to bring in 30 union workers to run unnecessary lighting and sound for 2 day tournament! Wait...
marshall
20-05-2016, 14:27
Let's save the bag day talk for the threads about bag day.
While the point has most certainly been beaten to death, I think there are a lot of us that feel it is relevant to the sustainability of FRC teams and that is what this thread is about.
nuclearnerd
20-05-2016, 15:15
Remove bag day? Sure, that increases the rookie team's chances of fielding something, but that also gives powerhouse teams more time to build something that will wipe the floor with everyone else. It will increase the perceived divide.
Honestly, the powerhouse teams all build two robots anyway, so they're already spending the time building more. As it is, I don't think the 30lb withholding allowance is really much of a hindrance to them. I think giving rookie teams a better shot at fielding something (and the rest of us a break on our budget) is more than reason enough to drop bag day.
The other thing FRC needs more of is off-season competitions, and practice fields. Robotics will never be sustainable unless we can have the equivalent of "pick-up" games. Our team is hoping to host more of these next year.
You can't solve a problem you don't understand. Before you can address the issue of sustainability, we need to figure out (in more certain terms than just a logical debate) why teams are folding.
I know IndianaFIRST surveyed teams that have folded over the past few years. The results were presented at a statewide mentor meeting, and can be found below. I hope that other regions within FRC can implement a similar survey.
20793
Now two of the top three reasons have been discussed here. The one that hasn't, which seems to be the most prevalent among teams in Indiana, is lack of school support.
What can we do to make FRC more appealing for schools to integrate into their programs? There has been talk recently of forming an FRC curriculum; based on this data that would go a long way in improving sustainability.
Mark Sheridan
20-05-2016, 16:13
Allow regionals to run their own lights and sound, and find a way to pass that savings on to teams. This doesn't have to be in terms of reduced registration for all, but could in grants, etc...
Considering most of CA is running regionals in district venues, it's a bummer that they are forced to raise the additional funds required to pay Show Ready Productions to run the event.
The savings could also be used to build up the fund for the eventual switch to districts (which I would assume is years off due to the difficulty the houston champs date puts on a District champs).
Ditto, so much money wasted. Plus it would be much easier to add more regionals. There are so many venues that can't host regionals because the lighting exceeds the building safety standards in cali.
I know IndianaFIRST surveyed teams ...Do you have a more detailed breakdown of the numbers that would show if the teams were 10-year veterans that hit a major rough patch, or were 2-year hot-house orchids that wilted on the first sunny day because they didn't have a good root system?
There is a heck of a big difference in those two extremes of that spectrum (and I realize that the crudely defined spectrum I have in mind is only one method among the many ways to categorize teams).
Do you have a more detailed breakdown of the numbers that would show if the teams were 10-year veterans that hit a major rough patch, or were 2-year hot-house orchids that wilted on the first sunny day because they didn't have a good root system?
I pulled how long each of the listed teams were active off TBA, along with any rookie awards or championship attendances they might have had.
Interestingly enough, two of the listed teams returned for the 2016 season. One was a 6 year veteran team that only took the 2015 season off, another was a one-and-done 2013 rookie that resurrected.
I don't have the data to match which factors affected which teams.
20794
IronicDeadBird
20-05-2016, 17:07
FIRST needs to start showing data that actually mean something outside of the FIRST scene. Compiling hard data and showing that these programs actually mean something and have a positive impact would be far more beneficial then a team coming home with a blue banner when it comes to winning over school boards and sponsors.
I'd ask FIRST to leverage the connections they have to help teams contact sponsors at higher points instead of trying to get a message from the clerk at gas station up to the appropriate people.
Lil' Lavery
20-05-2016, 17:19
FIRST needs to start showing data that actually mean something outside of the FIRST scene. Compiling hard data and showing that these programs actually mean something and have a positive impact would be far more beneficial then a team coming home with a blue banner when it comes to winning over school boards and sponsors.
You mean like the Brandeis University studies?
http://www.firstinspires.org/about/impact
http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/resource_library/impact/first-longitudinal-study-summary-of-preliminary-findings-year-3.pdf
waialua359
20-05-2016, 17:53
Allow regionals to run their own lights and sound, and find a way to pass that savings on to teams. This doesn't have to be in terms of reduced registration for all, but could in grants, etc...
Considering most of CA is running regionals in district venues, it's a bummer that they are forced to raise the additional funds required to pay Show Ready Productions to run the event.
The savings could also be used to build up the fund for the eventual switch to districts (which I would assume is years off due to the difficulty the houston champs date puts on a District champs).
While I do understand this makes sense, why did we pay $5000 to do Inland Empire last year in a high school gym?:confused:
As much as I like many of the Show Ready event personnel and the job they do, if its the choice between that and substantial reduced registration fees (as demonstrated by district events), I'd take the latter.
IronicDeadBird
20-05-2016, 18:12
You mean like the Brandeis University studies?
http://www.firstinspires.org/about/impact
http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/resource_library/impact/first-longitudinal-study-summary-of-preliminary-findings-year-3.pdf
Yeah except as someone who is casually into FIRST and mentors I don't like the odds of expecting a sponsor or a school board to keep up with them.
Lil' Lavery
20-05-2016, 18:35
Yeah except as someone who is casually into FIRST and mentors I don't like the odds of expecting a sponsor or a school board to keep up with them.
I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that teams shouldn't have to reach out to sponsors and school boards to sell them on the merit of FIRST?
jman4747
20-05-2016, 19:17
While the point has most certainly been beaten to death, I think there are a lot of us that feel it is relevant to the sustainability of FRC teams and that is what this thread is about.
Yes.
Anything that helps teams get more competitive and advanced helps the sustainability of the team and the program.
One other point on curriculum...
Even before a full classroom ready curriculum is developed, the control system and programming documentation needs to be more robust and include more complete examples. Even something as simple as team 358's LabView example page which was maybe the single most useful document I've used for programming. What I would like to see is an example robot code for each language based on what a mid level team would actually field. Basically like when a team releases their code but with more polish. it's very frustrating as a new programmer to not know how all the examples you see for how to run a motor or how to initialize a sensor are supposed to work together. For a team that may not have access to an optimal programming mentor base you need more than a list of functions and a basic example often. Meanwhile looking at the software produced can be somewhat daunting. That I think would go a ways to improving morale and helping teams become more competitive early on.
cbale2000
20-05-2016, 21:29
I was curious about this too, so I pulled some data from TBA. A few teams show up a year or two before their rookie year because of off-seasons, but not enough to have a major effect on the numbers.
The last two tabs are the raw data I pulled from TBA and an expanded table showing which years each team was active in.
Team Survival (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hk161dKyluaitI57toJpqSEov0vOWOdbxhLjCt59HDQ/edit?usp=sharing)
...
Hope no one minds, but I took the liberty of making a copy of that spreadsheet and adding a few more tabs to compare rates of team loss, as well as some graphs for showing team retention by team age. Thought the results were interesting, so I figured I'd share it...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15ys5j6c2QXwaIhTeKTSLQ5TfnfIJy1ee-8FHf0RXUS4/edit?usp=sharing (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15ys5j6c2QXwaIhTeKTSLQ5TfnfIJy1ee-8FHf0RXUS4/edit?usp=sharing)
Sheet Tabs underlined in Green are either new or have new content in them. ;)
evoluti1
20-05-2016, 21:39
It's time for FIRST to take the next step and offer a model that schools find useful for accomplishing their mission.
This x1000. The fact that many FIRST teams don't get enough support from their schools to sustain for more than a few years, while these same schools give enough support to sustain other forms of sports and education for many years, all while FIRST markets itself as combining the best parts of sports and education, should tell us we're doing something wrong.
Jared Russell
20-05-2016, 22:56
Teams with the resources and dedication to build practice bots don't tend to be the ones that fold. Chipping in your $0.02 about practice bots probably doesn't mean much in this thread. With regards to mentor burnout and bag day, there are two competing schools of thought on that issue, and it likely wouldn't impact all individuals the same way. Let's save the bag day talk for the threads about bag day.
I still think that bag day is really relevant to team retention, but the reason why has little to do with practice bots. Many/most teams need the handicap of being able to change their robot after experiencing the game for the first time in order to have a rewarding season on the field. Rewarding experiences help "pay for" the difficulty of running and sustaining an FRC team.
Sustaining an FRC team is really hard! It requires raising money; gathering interest and support from students, parents, administrators, and sponsors; managing a project involving a large group of students of varying abilities, interest levels, motivations, and distractions; managing a group of volunteer mentors with different abilities, interest levels, motivations, and distractions; running a 6 week engineering design crash course; and orchestrating all of the logistics necessary to sustain a team through a build and competition season. I have never been on a team where any of these tasks were easy and without lots of frustration and many headaches. You'd have to be crazy to do this year after year without some sort of rewarding experience.
There are many types of rewarding experiences in FRC, but many of them are predicated on achieving some sort of basic engineering success. Not necessarily winning, but "the robot I toiled and built to accomplish some function has actually succeeded in doing so!", at least.
I can't say that all of the teams that fold would not have folded if only they had an open bag and could improve their robot...but I strongly suspect that some could have.
I do know that once you've experienced a handful of rewarding FRC moments, leaving the program becomes really difficult, even when life is calling.
If anything, simplifying the build goals, the build expenses, and the time spent attempting to carry them out is what a struggling team needs; not a double dose of each.
The first FRC seasons are big meals to eat in one gulp if you are a young/rookie team that didn't first cut your teeth on an simpler challenge.
Simplify and constrain, instead of pushing in the direction of increased complexity (veterans will use time to create complexity and consistency - rookies will have even more problems than they do now if they want to keep up - time won't solve those problems).
I know there is a strong community that wants to push FRC as far as possible in the Formula One direction (and use more build time to do it), but if rookies and veterans are on the same field, that's not the way to avoid overloading, overworking, and overwhelming the rookies.
(veterans will use time to create complexity and consistency - rookies will have even more problems than they do now if they want to keep up - time won't solve those problems).
...
...but if rookies and veterans are on the same field...
The argument isn't that removing bag time will level the playing field, or reduce the disparity between rookie and veteran teams.
The argument is that, with the current system, too many rookie teams build robots that simply don't function or accomplish any basic gameplay related task. These teams then get discouraged because they couldn't build a robot that positively contributed to the any of the alliances they were a part of, and decide that the time and effort they put into this program wasn't worth the disappointment at the end. Theoretically, moving to an open build schedule would give these rookie teams more time to reach this bar of performance, where they would have the rewarding experience that Jared's post talks about.
The argument isn't that removing bag tie will level the playing field, or reduce the disparity between rookie and veteran teams.
The argument is that, with the current system, too many rookie teams build robots that simply don't function or accomplish any basic gameplay related task. These teams then get discouraged because they couldn't build a robot that positively contributed to the any of the alliances they were a part of, and decide that the time and effort they put into this program wasn't worth the disappointment at the end. Theoretically, moving to an open build schedule would give these rookie teams more time to reach this bar of performance, where they would have the rewarding experience that Jared's post talks about.
I don't think lack of motivation or inspiration is why we see high 2nd/3rd year attrition rates.
I think we see them because running an FRC team takes an inordinate amount of resources, both human and financial, and most teams that start really don't have any plan for acquiring those resources in a sustainable fashion. You can get by for a year or two with a couple of people overworking themselves to keep things afloat, but eventually people burn out and you're left without any real way to run the team. That timescale coincides neatly with teams no longer being eligible for the 1st-year/2nd-year NASA grants, too, so for a team that wasn't sustainably built the funding dries up at about the same time that the people holding the team together tend to burn out.
I don't think lack of motivation or inspiration is why we see high 2nd/3rd year attrition rates.
I agree with you. I didn't mean to imply that lack of inspiration or motivation were directly responsible, but that the discouragement of building a non-functional robot is a contributing factor to those key people involved in running a team "burning out".
jman4747
21-05-2016, 01:05
The argument isn't that removing bag time will level the playing field, or reduce the disparity between rookie and veteran teams.
The argument is that, with the current system, too many rookie teams build robots that simply don't function or accomplish any basic gameplay related task. These teams then get discouraged because they couldn't build a robot that positively contributed to the any of the alliances they were a part of, and decide that the time and effort they put into this program wasn't worth the disappointment at the end. Theoretically, moving to an open build schedule would give these rookie teams more time to reach this bar of performance, where they would have the rewarding experience that Jared's post talks about.
Also those of us already overworked with our own teams can find more time to help rookie teams along during the build season.
It would also provide a longer period in which a potential sponsor or mentor may be able to visit and actually see the team working which can be as compelling as seeing a competition for the first time.
I agree with you. I didn't mean to imply that lack of inspiration or motivation were directly responsible, but that the discouragement of building a non-functional robot is a contributing factor to those key people involved in running a team "burning out".
Perhaps, but maybe not as much as you'd think.
A perhaps representative anecdote, from my own experience: Team 4464 very nearly folded in their third year (perhaps, in all truth, it should have). We attended championships in both of our first two years, but it was on the back of an overworked mentor base that shrunk each year. There was no plan for replacing human resources as they left. After the second year, our lead nontechnical mentor (the mother of the team captain) departed, as her son had graduated and quite honestly she had been handling a quantity of work that ought to have been done by at least three people. The resulting third season was, simply put, a mess. Had one or two more people decided to move on, it probably would not have happened at all. And this was a team that won RAS - a team that, from the outside, one would think was having a great deal of success. I think it's important to keep this in mind, when thinking about young teams: success can happen on the very brink of failure, often at the expense of abusing an insufficient pool of resources in ways that will eventually come back to bite you. On top of this, of course, were problems with funding (I loaned the team somewhere north of $2000 out-of-pocket to keep it afloat until we finally had funding come in, and I was not the only one) and issues with creating a sustainable base of student knowledge (which is a thing that's much easier to keep going once started than it is to get up and running). I think this is the type of situation one should have in mind when they consider the attrition rates.
I think it's hard to communicate to people who are considering starting an FRC team just how hard it is to run a team. Even 449, which is a fairly well-established team, scrambles to find year-to-year funding. FRC is difficult, expensive, and has a massive barrier to entry; and most of the difficulty is not in putting a robot together and getting it to competition for the first year - most of the difficulty is not even seen until the student base starts to churn and mentors start to leave. I honestly do not know how FRC can prepare teams for that.
The argument isn't that removing bag time will level the playing field, or reduce the disparity between rookie and veteran teams.
The argument is that, with the current system, too many rookie teams build robots that simply don't function or accomplish any basic gameplay related task. These teams then get discouraged because they couldn't build a robot that positively contributed to the any of the alliances they were a part of, and decide that the time and effort they put into this program wasn't worth the disappointment at the end. Theoretically, moving to an open build schedule would give these rookie teams more time to reach this bar of performance, where they would have the rewarding experience that Jared's post talks about.
I understand the argument. I simply disagree with it. Struggling teams have plenty of time to build a modest, but useable robot already. That tells me more time isn't what they need. YMMV.
How can time be their biggest problem? A ready-for-inspection kit bot, basic software, and driver controls can easily be built in a weekend, *if* you know what you are doing.
Building the FRC equivalent of a Formula One car, or anything close to it, is not a job for any struggling team. However, the more time healthy teams are given for building, the more their robots become like Formula One cars. As those robots get more sophisticated, the challenge becomes even more difficult for the struggling or new teams who try to keep up.
If you want more teams to survive, make all the robots simpler, cheaper, and less time-consuming.
Mark Sheridan
21-05-2016, 01:42
To sort off peel of the longer build season discussion. I find it hard to help teams outside the build season but find hard to have time to help teams during the build season. There just so many learning opportunities during the build season, often too many. Outside of the build season, some team meet very little or have a tough time getting ready for the build season.
I did notice that in California, the formula for successful rookie teams appears to be starting teams with prior FRC experience. 3476 is an offshoot of 2493 and features mentors from 696, 980 and 3309. 5810 and 5805 have 3476 alumni and mentors leading those teams. Many successful teams in California are founded by mentors with more than 1 year of FRC experience. It seems to be a good formula for success and sustainability.
jman4747
21-05-2016, 02:54
*if* you know what you are doing..
Ahem...
Well that's where we come in right? Oh wait...
To sort off peel of the longer build season discussion. I find it hard to help teams outside the build season but find hard to have time to help teams during the build season. There just so many learning opportunities during the build season, often too many. Outside of the build season, some team meet very little or have a tough time getting ready for the build season.
This.
Also back to the point of curriculum, a longer build season would make it easier to apply the curriculum because you're not is as much of a rush to get things finished. You can put more energy in to training and teaching with the motivation that comes with the build season.
And if you aren't as concerned with those aspects you can put more energy in to raising funds and other resources during the season.
There are an infinite number of ways eliminating bag and tag could be used to help improve and sustain a team.
waialua359
21-05-2016, 06:07
I do know that once you've experienced a handful of rewarding FRC moments, leaving the program becomes really difficult, even when life is calling.
Great point!
All this talk about how hard it is to stay in FRC. Leaving it after experiencing personal and team successes is much harder!
adammiller3122
21-05-2016, 07:09
This is great, thank you! (How do I read it?)
By the way, if I understood how to give the little green dots, I would give you some for this... :)
Just click on the "balance" icon in the top right corner of the post.
staplemonx
21-05-2016, 07:09
here is some data that may be useful
Why teams are successful http://team1389.com/why-do-teams-succeed/
Why teams fold http://team1389.com/why-do-frc-teams-fold/
My view of high school student behavior is that many students are motivated by deadlines.
We meet year round and only a hand full of students show up.
We get a big turnout on kickoff weekend and the last week of the build season.
On a side note, we only have a 5 week build season, because we take off the 3rd week to allow students to study for finals.
Do other teams have this constraint?
Dave
Mentor in the Pacific North West
My view of high school student behavior is that many students are motivated by deadlines.
We meet year round and only a hand full of students show up.
We get a big turnout on kickoff weekend and the last week of the build season.
On a side note, we only have a 5 week build season, because we take off the 3rd week to allow students to study for finals.
Do other teams have this constraint?
Dave
Mentor in the Pacific North West
In my early years as a coach, I also did not schedule meetings during finals week. Later on, I was asked by the seniors to not dictate that. They said I should schedule the optional meetings and whoever wanted to come can come. Many seniors who applied early decisions or early actions already knew where they were going before build season starts. It was their last year on the team. This is another example that mentors/coaches should check with students before implementing rules thinking they were doing the right thing.
marshall
22-05-2016, 07:18
This is another example that mentors/coaches should check with students before implementing rules thinking they were doing the right thing.
While I agree with this and I think it will help most teams. Every team is different.
I want really badly to suggest that FIRST create a example "team handbook" to send out and help teams with but I honestly don't know if it will help or hurt the majority of rookie teams. I do feel that most teams would benefit from a handbook but that a lot of teams initially miss the point of them (writing down esoteric rules rather than trying to codify what their team is about). Not to mention that every team is different (Maybe a team is about esoteric rules?). I know plenty of teams that function without them but I am so VERY VERY happy that my team has one now and that my students want to continue to improve it. I think it aids in our long term sustainability.
In my early years as a coach, I also did not schedule meetings during finals week. Later on, I was asked by the seniors to not dictate that.
Exactly. I don't schedule meetings, I just list my availability.
If the students want to meet during finals week, it's fine with me.
Dave
2544HCRC
22-05-2016, 09:32
I would like to chime in as a mentor of an older weak team. We (2544) have been in the game since 2008 and on the edge of survival since then. Had there been an active FTC base in the area we would have moved to that I am sure.
1. I completely agree with the elimination of bag day for the reasons given above. We have never been rich enough to produce a 2nd robot. We MIGHT do it this year because we were trying to have enough money to go to a second event and failed.
2. There were a couple of years where I was it. I was THE mentor for the entire team along with trying to hold down a full time job. I was super lucky as my job duties at the time allowed me time during the work day to spend time on robotics. When I was put back in a classroom as a teacher I strongly considered folding the team. A couple of engineering mentors came along and that was enough to keep the team afloat. Not running well, just afloat. I don't know how some of the mentors do it but if you are on a team hug your mentors, really. I have read some stories on here about students and mentors clashing and as a stressed out mentor I can read the stress between the lines. Mentoring is a hard thankless job as there are SO many things that have nothing to do with building robots. Ask me about the time the superintendent called me because I forgot to forward the list of students to the attendance secretary... It's all those tiny tasks that need to be done. I think the six week build season is really hard on mentors. My point is that anything can be the last straw for a mentor. A couple of bad parents, students, an administration that becomes unsupportive. A purchasing system that moves at glacial speeds. I know a mentor from another team that ended up in trouble over lesson planning because he was mentoring and didn't have the time to plan for school. With the new teacher evaluation system the paperwork has increased substantially. Look for more teams folding in the future over this one. Solution- Promote mentor teams and provide training for teams of mentors.
3. Funding- Thank god for GE. I know they get a bad rap in the press for being the equivalent to the empire but for us they are an amazing sponsor. We have Mike Hayes (and yes I am calling him out by name because he is amazing) inside GE working tirelessly for us. Mike has been a Woodie Flowers award winner and deservedly so. He is the mentor that isn't for us. His work has meant that the base funding is a non issue for us. I look at other teams and have no idea how they do it. We would have folded long ago without Mike or GE. See number 2. Funding might be that straw as mentor time is chewed up chasing down dollars. Solution- divert the FIRST stream of funding to individual teams. Teams should GET $5,000 from FIRST to go to a competition not give $5,000 TO FIRST.
4. The curriculum issue is real people. Most of us are school based and schools want to see value. Explaining the reality of robotics is very difficult. Only half of students in the program learn about robotics. The other half are designing t-shirts, setting up hotel reservations, sending out sponsor letters and thank you letters, etc. On the robot side we are set up in a programming group, build group, etc. So the build group has only a passing knowledge of the programming and vice versa. We try to cross train and do training in the fall but it has varying levels of success. During build only so many students can fit around the robot. Rarely do we have students with the talent to machine parts so those go off site based on our drawings and specs. Students have to be self motivated to find a place. I see many students that don't have that drive to make themselves useful. They get frustrated and stop showing up. We try to find things for them to do but then these same students don't like being assigned to "menial" tasks. During build there is very little time to train students. It is go time and there is no time. Solution- Provide more off season opportunities as well as some sort of mini bot that can be programmed in the same way as the larger bots. I know FTC was supposed to fill this role but the timing is off. FTC should happen in December when FLL is happening, maybe at the same event as FLL or the next day. Make FTC use the same 4 x 8 field as FLL so event tables can be dual purposed. This might provide a way to train people and have students work in smaller teams on more inexpensive robots.
5. Sport maturity- This happens in motorsports all the time. Look at trans-am in the 1970's if you want to see an analogy to FRC or look to formula 1 now. A few teams dominate the season and seem to do so year over year. And every year it gets a little harder to compete with those teams. A couple of posters eluded to this in the posts. The advice was that rookie teams shouldn't build a sophisticated robot. I agree, but you aren't going to go up against a sophisticated team and win or get selected for an alliance. Personally, I had to make a decision that FRC was only going to take up x number of hours in my life. We are never going to be a powerhouse team with me as lead mentor. I just don't have the time or expertise. I am totally willing to step aside into a support role if someone wanted to step in and lead the team to greatness. So far that person hasn't shown up. Solution- Elimination of bag day, Divisions system like Formula 1,2,3 or SCCA car classes. Or any dirt track that has semi late and late model races. Teams have different focus. Maybe there is a "super stock" class that requires a kit frame, kit motors, etc. And an open class that allows more sophisticated builds. Waterjet frames, unobtanium bearings, etc. Maybe allow teams to field robots in EACH class if they want. It sets up a bit of a jv and varsity system. I know FTC is supposed to provide this jv system but it doesn't now. FTC should overlap on the field that is FLL or FRC. It shouldn't be it's own thing.
5. School support- I don't know about your team but my students want to be recognized for what they do but they aren't the type of students that seek out public recognition. As a matter of fact most turn a bit pale at the thought of speaking in front to their peers. We usually have one or two students that are really good at that PR piece to put out front but sometimes we don't. We also are in our robot hole for six weeks and then we go to 1 hard to explain competition. It is hard to explain ranking, alliance selection and eliminations to someone that asks "How did you do?" Solution- More events in a "season" Your $5,000 should buy you into 2 events at least if not more. Maybe 2 smaller events and then a regional. If there was no bag day, maybe more off season events could happen in the weeks leading up to a regional.
What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?
Not sure why I had the years 1-3 as the toughest for a team, I meant to say years 2-4.
I want really badly to suggest that FIRST create a example "team handbook" to send out and help teams with but I honestly don't know if it will help or hurt the majority of rookie teams.
Having just come off our rookie season, THIS. We get great documentation about the game and the rules, but not a lot about what happens (when and why) at a competition, how much scaffolding (money, mostly) we may get (and how) in our 2nd and later years, and example ideas / timelines on how to recruit sponsors and find funds.
Sadly, If it weren't for CD....
1. Some how prevent main one mentor teams from burning out.
2. Teams having trouble in there school system, a escape route to any kind
of building. With money or without money given to secure building. Like 4
months rent, if not free.
3. 10 or more central locations having a full size field set up on day one of
build season. Minus electronics.
4. 10 or less equipment hubs open to any an all teams. Good for that snowy
week to bring your robot into.
5. Allow some events to in whole or in part keep same 3 teams on same
alliance side. Put these 3 teams together in pit area. If this would be to
big a can of worms for all my friends here. You tell them, that they can
do it for one season only. Then they must get a divorce. At a later time
they could get remarried. We would not want to create any more power
house alliances around the neighbor hood.
6. FIRST website you can navigate in 2.5 seconds.
7. Allow that 12 year old motors to pass inspection. Oh that's right it happen
to us on a Friday night after passing inspection. Lead Inspector comes
around. What you got there boys. I won't mention any names.
I could think of more later. Thomas (just give me crabcake) McCubbin
marshall
22-05-2016, 18:04
Having just come off our rookie season, THIS. We get great documentation about the game and the rules, but not a lot about what happens (when and why) at a competition, how much scaffolding (money, mostly) we may get (and how) in our 2nd and later years, and example ideas / timelines on how to recruit sponsors and find funds.
Sadly, If it weren't for CD....
Can you elaborate more on what you'd like to see in such a manual? This might become a project for our team.
Can you elaborate more on what you'd like to see in such a manual? This might become a project for our team.
Sure.
Speaking from my team's experience, we got into it knowing the goal was "build a bot", and we received copious amounts of grant money to start up and compete - to the point we didn't need to worry about sponsors or funding (to a level). The game manuals gave us a good idea how the game and competition worked at a technical level, but...
At our first event:
* Food - We knew we could order from the venue (expensive) but we weren't prepared for how hard it would be to get food in (and have a place to eat).
* Judging - How to interact with the judges, our first pair of judges looked to us like just another team scouting (what can your robot do?). The second pair asked more questions, but both times were were under the gun coming off the field and due to queue up almost immediately. (Our student that was to be our PR face was in the stands to make room in the pit for an urgent repair.)
* Pit - We had a few folding tables, a tool box, a 3D printer, and some pare COTS stuff. No banners, "tent", and our robot cart was... well.. rookie. Some cheap and basic ideas on what *AND HOW* to bring stuff to the venue would have helped. (Taking a step further - the "basic rookie team pit kit")
* If we qualified for worlds we were terrified. We didn't know if we'd get the rookie award, or if we'd be able to go, what it meant, how many could go, how much it would cost, or when FIRST would need the money. (FIRST Team emails were going into SPAM folders, we found later) In short, if it happened, we were massively unprepared. (Thankfully it was a week 3 event, so there may have been hope.)
After the competition (we did well by our standards, but didn't get any Worlds-qualifying awards)....
* Now what? - Between April - January what do we need to do?
* Financials - Being so financially supported as a rookie team, we have little understanding of what level of support a 2nd year (or later) team could expect. Do we need to chase down local companies now? A lot? A little? What might a 2nd year team budget look like?
* Engagement - Keeping in mind end of year testing (AP / NYS Regents / Finals, etc) what should we do to keep our students engaged, and to what level? And starting in September?
* Goal Ideas - Some rookie teams are happy they got a bot on the field, others had higher starting goals, but what would some 2nd year goals be for a "typical" team?
* Off Season Events - I know about them because of CD, and some interaction with other local teams (not a lot of off-season discussion in week 3, but...)
Beyond the bot:
As a rookie, until we hit competition and started seeing the Chairman's Award presentations and really started interacting with other teams, everything beyond the bot was pretty well lost on us. (And to be honest, rightfully so for our team our first year). As we look to years 2+ even just a bulleted list of "inspiring" ideas that other teams have done, outreach, etc, to give teams something to look to and build off of.
Granted, this was just our experience, but if you decide to take this on and want more info or to discuss, let let me know. Thank you!
rick.oliver
25-05-2016, 21:21
After performing some analysis of the data shared earlier by a poster, I think that rather than asking what can FIRST do, we should be talking to the teams which have been able to sustain their participation for the past five years to discover what they are doing.
Looking at the data, it appears that sustainability is improving.
You can download the file and graphs from the media section.
ArtemusMaximus
26-05-2016, 11:09
What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?
I hope my post is not redundant, but there were few graphs posted recently (probably as a result of this thread):
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43846
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43845
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43844
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43843
Sure.
Speaking from my team's experience, we got into it knowing the goal was "build a bot", and we received copious amounts of grant money to start up and compete - to the point we didn't need to worry about sponsors or funding (to a level). The game manuals gave us a good idea how the game and competition worked at a technical level, but...
At our first event:
* Food - We knew we could order from the venue (expensive) but we weren't prepared for how hard it would be to get food in (and have a place to eat).
* Judging - How to interact with the judges, our first pair of judges looked to us like just another team scouting (what can your robot do?). The second pair asked more questions, but both times were were under the gun coming off the field and due to queue up almost immediately. (Our student that was to be our PR face was in the stands to make room in the pit for an urgent repair.)
* Pit - We had a few folding tables, a tool box, a 3D printer, and some pare COTS stuff. No banners, "tent", and our robot cart was... well.. rookie. Some cheap and basic ideas on what *AND HOW* to bring stuff to the venue would have helped. (Taking a step further - the "basic rookie team pit kit")
* If we qualified for worlds we were terrified. We didn't know if we'd get the rookie award, or if we'd be able to go, what it meant, how many could go, how much it would cost, or when FIRST would need the money. (FIRST Team emails were going into SPAM folders, we found later) In short, if it happened, we were massively unprepared. (Thankfully it was a week 3 event, so there may have been hope.)
After the competition (we did well by our standards, but didn't get any Worlds-qualifying awards)....
* Now what? - Between April - January what do we need to do?
* Financials - Being so financially supported as a rookie team, we have little understanding of what level of support a 2nd year (or later) team could expect. Do we need to chase down local companies now? A lot? A little? What might a 2nd year team budget look like?
* Engagement - Keeping in mind end of year testing (AP / NYS Regents / Finals, etc) what should we do to keep our students engaged, and to what level? And starting in September?
* Goal Ideas - Some rookie teams are happy they got a bot on the field, others had higher starting goals, but what would some 2nd year goals be for a "typical" team?
* Off Season Events - I know about them because of CD, and some interaction with other local teams (not a lot of off-season discussion in week 3, but...)
Beyond the bot:
As a rookie, until we hit competition and started seeing the Chairman's Award presentations and really started interacting with other teams, everything beyond the bot was pretty well lost on us. (And to be honest, rightfully so for our team our first year). As we look to years 2+ even just a bulleted list of "inspiring" ideas that other teams have done, outreach, etc, to give teams something to look to and build off of.
Granted, this was just our experience, but if you decide to take this on and want more info or to discuss, let let me know. Thank you!
A lot of this should be done and discussed by your mentor team. When we started the team back in 2000, our mentor team #60 offered support with students and mentors always willing to help. (they were about 50 miles away)
Can FIRST do more? Yes to what scope that is idk. I think it falls more on the support from surrounding teams, maybe a better local network of teams?
cbale2000
26-05-2016, 12:04
A lot of this should be done and discussed by your mentor team. When we started the team back in 2000, our mentor team #60 offered support with students and mentors always willing to help. (they were about 50 miles away)
Can FIRST do more? Yes to what scope that is idk. I think it falls more on the support from surrounding teams, maybe a better local network of teams?
This assumes they even have a mentor team though. I would suspect many rookies do not, and some that do may not comunicate with them much.
I think it's important to remember that many new teams may start out with an us vs them mentality common to high school sports. Before teams get an understanding of FIRST culture, many collaborative aspects of FRC may be ignored by new teams.
This assumes they even have a mentor team though. I would suspect many rookies do not, and some that do may not comunicate with them much.
I think it's important to remember that many new teams may start out with an us vs them mentality common to high school sports. Before teams get an understanding of FIRST culture, many collaborative aspects of FRC may be ignored by new teams.
Yes that is true. Maybe part of the role of the local FIRST level should be to assign a buddy team to rookies?
Team34Guy
26-05-2016, 12:51
As far as eliminating Bag day goes....I'm sure there are a few benefits that will allow some teams to perform better. Eliminating a hard deadline that the students/mentors have to adhere to would be extremely detrimental and would outweigh the aforementioned benefits. Part of the lessons we teach these students is that they will have to deal with deadlines and restrictions in the real world, eliminating bag and tag is counterproductive to that lesson. I've been with Team 34 for about six years now and we've had to re-vamp our team because one of our key mentors left to pursue other endeavors. So rookie teams (or teams with just 2-3 years) aren't the only ones vulnerable. Funding and mentor burnout has to be addressed by every team. I'm glad this thread was started, its good to know that others are thinking about the same issues that most of us are dealing with.
I don't know what FRC could do to alleviate some of these issues, but maybe trying to recruit more mentors nationwide... I know CD has helped me so much by being a sounding board for so many FRC issues, maybe if there were more networking possibilities between teams/mentors, help could be given to these struggling teams.
techhelpbb
26-05-2016, 13:33
The strongest fortress will crumble in short order if it is built on sand.
Putting strong foundations in place *before* building FRC teams will probably increase the FRC teams' survivability.
Advising potential rookies to walk before running, or even making forming an FRC team the *second* step in a formal multi-season process might be an improvement.
We have CSA.
We have Lead Mentors outside of teams.
We should have more training for team mentors.
Perhaps a pool of resources to help specifically support key mentors that are drowning.
It is far too easy to get into something far larger than you think it is.
Yes that is true. Maybe part of the role of the local FIRST level should be to assign a buddy team to rookies?
We hold a Rookie Kit Build after kickoff and I personally stay in touch with local rookie teams.
You'd be surprised how hard it is to get some of them to communicate. Maybe they are overwhelmed, often they don't even know they need help.
There is a large of amount of data/communication sent to new teams and often they don't know what to listen to.
Ryan Dognaux
26-05-2016, 14:39
Eliminating a hard deadline that the students/mentors have to adhere to would be extremely detrimental and would outweigh the aforementioned benefits. Part of the lessons we teach these students is that they will have to deal with deadlines and restrictions in the real world, eliminating bag and tag is counterproductive to that lesson.
You'd still have a hard deadline - your first regional event. Many teams don't have a functioning robot by that truly important deadline.
You'd still have a hard deadline - your first regional event. Many teams don't have a functioning robot by that truly important deadline.Those teams had plenty of calendar time to create a functioning robot.
What do you think was the problem?
Time management?
Not having the full range of tech skills needed?
Not appreciating the number of hours required?
No adult or student able to focus a core set of students on getting the basics accomplished?
Being hesitant to get help (for one or more of several possible reasons)?
Simply needing to start in a less complex program (FTC, VRC, FLL) in order to build up some general-purpose expertise before diving headfirst into FRC (walk before run)?
Something else?
Does anyone have a long list of anecdotes about this subject that is dominated by examples of teams that were making 5-6 weeks of steady progress toward success, but who didn't get finished before the current build season deadline (They had a complete plan that included some margin for surprises; every week they were making consistent, substantial, progress executing that plan; and something out-of-their-control surprised them, and used up their margin and put them behind schedule)?
Blake
Richard Wallace
26-05-2016, 15:25
You'd still have a hard deadline - your first regional event. Many teams don't have a functioning robot by that truly important deadline.
Those teams had plenty of calendar time to create a functioning robot.
What do you think was the problem?
...
Something else?
After seeing the game played, it is easy to know how your team shoulda built their robot. It is much harder to figure that out beforehand. Many teams put insufficient time and thought into deciding what robot to build. This is not laziness -- it is failure to recognize soon enough that thinking is the hard part.
Jared said it well earlier in this thread:
Many/most teams need the handicap of being able to change their robot after experiencing the game for the first time in order to have a rewarding season on the field.
Ryan Dognaux
26-05-2016, 15:40
Those teams had plenty of calendar time to create a functioning robot.
We're trying to talk about how to keep FRC teams and make them sustainable, correct? How does bag & tag help in that goal? Blaming the teams 100% instead of thinking about maybe how we could make things a little easier on them isn't all that helpful.
After seeing hundreds of teams over the years field robot that struggle to move and don't play the game at all, I'd argue that they didn't have plenty of time.
Of course all of your points are a factor - time management being a huge one. We need to find a way to help teams to manage their time better.
If FIRST could do one thing that wouldn't impact them at all financially or logistically and would help a significant number of teams, it would be to end bag & tag.
From my team's standpoint, suddenly we don't have to meet every single night to field a competitive robot. Now we don't have to build two robots for practice and autonomous mode development. Mentors and students aren't getting burned out because we're able to manage our time better and still build the robot we know we're capable of building.
For teams that only meet a few times a week, now they get a few more meetings. They get more hands on time with their robots. How on Earth is that a bad thing? How would that detract from the mission of FIRST, the inspiration these students receive by working towards a common goal on a team?
I still haven't read one statement on how bag day enhances the FIRST experience. Bag Day is an archaic remnant of Ship Day and it doesn't make sense if we want to truly grow FIRST and make it sustainable for all teams.
EricLeifermann
26-05-2016, 15:53
We're trying to talk about how to keep FRC teams and make them sustainable, correct? How does bag & tag help in that goal? Blaming the teams 100% instead of thinking about maybe how we could make things a little easier on them isn't all that helpful.
After seeing hundreds of teams over the years field robot that struggle to move and don't play the game at all, I'd argue that they didn't have plenty of time.
Of course all of your points are a factor - time management being a huge one. We need to find a way to help teams to manage their time better.
If FIRST could do one thing that wouldn't impact them at all financially or logistically and would help a significant number of teams, it would be to end bag & tag.
From my team's standpoint, suddenly we don't have to meet every single night to field a competitive robot. Now we don't have to build two robots for practice and autonomous mode development. Mentors and students aren't getting burned out because we're able to manage our time better and still build the robot we know we're capable of building.
For teams that only meet a few times a week, now they get a few more meetings. They get more hands on time with their robots. How on Earth is that a bad thing? How would that detract from the mission of FIRST, the inspiration these students receive by working towards a common goal on a team?
I still haven't read one statement on how bag day enhances the FIRST experience. Bag Day is an archaic remnant of Ship Day and it doesn't make sense if we want to truly grow FIRST and make it sustainable for all teams.
QFT
AdamHeard
26-05-2016, 16:01
There are two parts to the bag and tag debate.
Access to the robot before competing, and access to the robot between events.
Give teams more time before their first event, and I bet they nominally show up just as unprepared (with some variance).
The real magic is giving teams time AFTER the compete so they can iterate and get ready for their 2nd show with all the inspiration and lessons from competing once (and webcasts, etc.).
Andrew Schreiber
26-05-2016, 16:19
Well, JJ already posted the sustainability model I've been tinkering with on and off for a year or so [1] I'll just talk a little about the thinking behind it.
A team needs 4 things to compete.
- A competition
- Money
- Mentors
- Manpower (students, but I wanted to be able to refer to these as the three Ms)
The competition is, for the most part, outside of the team's control but having competitions more local does seem to help. But, I kinda ignored this one tbh.
Remove any one of the 3 Ms and the team folds. Or reduce the sum total of them beyond a certain point and the team folds. This gives us a wonderful way to actually discuss what is going to have in impact on sustainability that's not just anecdotes about how much the upper half teams spend on practice bots [2] or some name calling about districts in certain states [3].
So, the question I want to ask is - How does removing bag day impact the 3 Ms of sustainability?
And then I have to add a follow on question to this thread:
Is team sustainability the metric we want to focus on? It's easy to say we want 100% retention [4] but the important question before setting any goal is Does this further the goals of the program? [5] Instead of focusing on how every single team started can continue can we focus on how do we start teams that will be inherently sustainable?
I think the answer is yes, but it requires really evaluating something more than retention numbers. It forces us to start asking really awkward questions about things. Team 1337 may a hundred students and loads of money, but no mentor involvement. Is that team REALLY furthering FIRST's goals? What if it was the other way around and was the proverbial mentor built team? What if it was a team with mentors and students but no money? Or if it only had 3 students?
My point is, if the team isn't furthering the mission of FIRST year in and year out, is that a bigger issue? Can we focus on quality of impact rather than simply existence?
[1] Available here if folks missed it https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18fq0akGjiqb3fnkLfN4nJHY-TK9XYdRwMTRrUnAqxeo/edit#gid=0
[2] We get it, it's a lot
[3] Everyone getting their bingo on?
[4] Or 98% or whatever metric you want to pick
[5] This is the part where folks start doing a double take considering how vocal I usually am about sustainability. I have a point, trust me.
techhelpbb
26-05-2016, 16:23
What if it was the other way around and was the proverbial mentor built team?
"It's not about the robot"
What if there are 5 mentors and 2 students by the bag&tag:
Still don't want the mentors to work on that robot?
As a CSA I've helped a few teams build a KOPbot at a competition (there are some rare cases you can get away with this).
They literally came with the crates still packed.
Is it mentor built or CSA built ;)?
What if your team had a lot of mentor built stuff to give it legs then switched to more student built?
What if your team has more mentor hands on in one part and less in another?
Andrew Schreiber
26-05-2016, 16:24
"It's not about the robot"
What if there are 5 mentors and 2 students by the bag&tag:
Still don't want the mentors to work on that robot?
As a CSA I've helped a few teams build a KOPbot at a competition.
They literally came with the crates still packed.
Is it mentor built or CSA built ;)?
Post
Your Head?
techhelpbb
26-05-2016, 16:28
Post
Your Head?
My head is bald :p and as my Father was also one of my mentors - yes my head is mentor built.
On topic: as long as some kid benefits, even a little, it's an exercise somewhat worth doing but will it make anyone sustainable?
It is a huge red flag to me when robots show up needing major CSA help to be nearly operational.
That means something went very wrong somewhere, but I have no place to alert anyone to give them help next season as CSA.
I might get a team on the field for that game but that's addressing the symptom.
(Sorry had to update this a lot due to a nasty migraine.)
Andrew Schreiber
26-05-2016, 16:44
My head is bald :p and as my Father was also one of my mentors - yes my head is mentor built.
On topic: as long as some kid benefits, even a little, it's an exercise somewhat worth doing but will it make anyone sustainable?
It is a huge red flag to me when robots show up needing major CSA help to be nearly operational.
That means something went very wrong somewhere, but I have no place to alert anyone to give them help next season as CSA.
I might get a team on the field for that game but that's addressing the symptom.
(Sorry had to update this a lot due to a nasty migraine.)
Nah, the mentor built/student built comment was just so I didn't come across as biased. I agree there's a fairly large goldilocks zone of mentor involvement, It was more a rhetorical question.
I also feel that coming to an event with a non functional (non driving) robot is a symptom of exactly the problem I'm pointing out. We have a bunch of teams, rookie or otherwise, that for some reason or another are failing at the core challenge of FRC.
In healthcare there's a growing focus on quality of life rather than quantity. I don't want to see us focus on quantity of teams and neglect if teams are achieving FIRST's goals.
...but I have no place to alert anyone to give them help next season as CSA.
Please refer them to a Senior Mentor in the area. This is very much where we can help
Citrus Dad
26-05-2016, 19:27
There are two parts to the bag and tag debate.
Access to the robot before competing, and access to the robot between events.
Give teams more time before their first event, and I bet they nominally show up just as unprepared (with some variance).
The real magic is giving teams time AFTER the compete so they can iterate and get ready for their 2nd show with all the inspiration and lessons from competing once (and webcasts, etc.).
Ditto
wireties
26-05-2016, 20:44
In this thread and others two enabling contributors to sustainability emerge. My team has beat this topic up this spring and it comes down to the same two goals - increasing the numbers of dedicated mentors and fundraising. You can't use tools you can't afford and without mentors to train. You can't retain all students without engaging teachers/mentors and the money to compete. And so on...
Sperkowsky
26-05-2016, 20:47
The real magic is giving teams time AFTER the compete so they can iterate and get ready for their 2nd show with all the inspiration and lessons from competing once (and webcasts, etc.).
Before I say anything let me preface this by saying I like some parts of this idea.
The issue I see with this is that many teams only do a single regional. Especially when we are talking about the teams that may drop out. This problem is alleviated with the district system however it already does something similar to what you proposed. If your proposition happens the gap at a week 4 or 5 regional between the single regional teams and multi regional teams is going to widen significantly simultaneously probably raising the drop off rate.
There is hope to this system however. What if teams got to keep their bags open after the first regional of the season. This would give everyone a week or two break and a time to watch other robots compete.
Although I still think the playing field would be more level without it at all.
Give teams more time before their first event, and I bet they nominally show up just as unprepared (with some variance).I understand this argument, but I think it ignores 4 major sustainability factors beyond just time itself:
1. No B&T means we have much more room as a community to run scrimmages. This lets struggling teams get playing/testing sooner, even if on low-cost team fields with a few other robots. Even this level of insight could help a lot of the teams we're talking about, even if they don't have a second official event for that magic.
2. Using our first event as the deadline gives us all more time to help teams that are struggling/want collaboration. This would be a culture shift and would not happen automatically, but many teams (including 1640) do some limited outreach like this within the B&T deadline. More time, particularly more weekends, can help with that simply on a logistical level.
3. While poor time management can erase any gains, there is something to be said for the difference between unexpectedly losing 1 of 6 weeks to snow versus 1 of 9 (insert any numbers), particularly when the snow days are likely to still be early.
4. I won't claim this because it needs data, but I personally believe that we tend to ignore teams that truly don't meet very often. I've inspected teams that literally meet a few hours per week, end of story, for no fault of the students. I try to introduce them to VEX. There's nothing wrong with that, but there is an argument that adopting VEX/FTC's lack of B&T would open up opportunities and audiences we don't even know we don't know.
We're trying to talk about how to keep FRC teams and make them sustainable, correct? How does bag & tag help in that goal? Blaming the teams 100% instead of thinking about maybe how we could make things a little easier on them isn't all that helpful.
After seeing hundreds of teams over the years field robot that struggle to move and don't play the game at all, I'd argue that they didn't have plenty of time.
Of course all of your points are a factor - time management being a huge one. We need to find a way to help teams to manage their time better.
If FIRST could do one thing that wouldn't impact them at all financially or logistically and would help a significant number of teams, it would be to end bag & tag.
...No one blamed a team. There is a difference between separating root causes from less important variables, and assigning blame. Let's not think in terms of blame.
About the other points, there are a zillion things that FIRST could do to help struggling teams field a useful robot without altering the current length (44 days) of the initial build period - things that would help the struggling teams without tempting the healthy teams to expend even more resources on their robots.
One example would be to annually publish a how-to manual for building, and programming a simple, useful robot (plus control station), if that would be consistent with the purpose of building robots in the first place. However, my natural next thought is that any healthy team could do this already.
Or a healthy team could simply build a kit bot for themselves in the first 48 hours after the game is announced, and could then spend the rest of the build season helping N struggling teams instead of trying to win a blue banner for themselves. Imagine how well that would be received by the Chairman's Award judges ... That would be extreme, but it's a thought experiment that shines a light on the "Healthy teams need more time to help struggling teams" argument.
I understand the no bag & tag arguments, but I remain unconvinced that struggling teams' root causes will be affected.
Blake
jman4747
26-05-2016, 22:47
One example would be to annually publish a how-to manual for building, and programming a simple, useful robot (plus control station), if that would be consistent with the purpose of building robots in the first place. However, my natural next thought is that any healthy team could do this already.
Or a healthy team could simply build a kit bot for themselves in the first 48 hours after the game is announced, and could then spend the rest of the build season helping N struggling teams instead of trying to win a blue banner for themselves. Imagine how well that would be received by the Chairman's Award judges ... That would be extreme, but it's a thought experiment that shines a light on the "Healthy teams need more time to help struggling teams" argument.
I understand the no bag & tag arguments, but I remain unconvinced that struggling teams' root causes will be affected.
Blake
I get and don't disagree with your first two points and I've made the point before that we need more comprehensive tutorials.
I'm not going to tell my students they have to stop at a kit bot when there are other ways to solve this problem. This isn't just about maintaining competitiveness, forcing a limit on a team hurts their own ability to inspire their students. "Sorry but we need to artificially take away you'r ability to try to do better so we can level the playing field." The team I spent the most time helping is another 35min - 50min (varies by traffic) away. Even if I took more time away from my team my net work load in hrs per week would go up! I imagine many of us would be helping teams who are farther away than our primary team.
Or you could give me more time to help that team by:
Driving the extra 45min to visit them once in awhile but not so often
sharing our manufacturing sponsors (long lead times make it hard to fit in our own parts during six weeks)
Spend more time during the season sharing ideas and what we learned with them while they can still work
Give them time to get up to speed on CAD so they can make use of our resources
Give me more time to convince their administration that no the KOP is not literally everything you need for a successful robot and yes you should let them buy that gearbox from VEX Pro.
...
I'm not going to tell my students they have to stop at a kit bot when there are other ways to solve this problem. This isn't just about maintaining competitiveness, forcing a limit on a team hurts their own ability to inspire their students. "Sorry but we need to artificially take away you'r ability to try to do better so we can level the playing field." The team I spent the most time helping is another 35min - 50min (varies by traffic) away. Even if I took more time away from my team my net work load in hrs per week would go up! I imagine many of us would be helping teams who are farther away than our primary team.
...
I'm glad we have some overlap in our ideas, but I think you misinterpreted something.
I didn't say that a dictator-mentor should hurt the students that that mentor advises. What you wrote opposing the notion that someone might do that is interesting, but off-target from the thought experiment I wanted to pose. That's not what I wanted to suggest.
My extreme example was supposed to be about illustrating that maximizing the help one team might give others is dominated by factors other than the length of the build season. It wasn't about forcing anyone to do anything.
Through more than one channel, FIRST tells us that it's not about the robot. Another way to say that is that it's not about *our* robot. If a team full of students, confident in their own abilities, decided to adopt an extreme, outward, service-before-self focus (to change a larger community than their own) for one or more seasons, they wouldn't be limiting their success, they would be a shining example of community-changers.
About the distances, Skype and similar tools shorten commutes dramatically in places where modest communication bandwidth exists.
About the other good ideas - We all should keep them coming.
Sure.
Speaking from my team's experience, we got into it knowing the goal was "build a bot", and we received copious amounts of grant money to start up and compete - to the point we didn't need to worry about sponsors or funding (to a level). The game manuals gave us a good idea how the game and competition worked at a technical level, but...
At our first event:
* Food - We knew we could order from the venue (expensive) but we weren't prepared for how hard it would be to get food in (and have a place to eat).
* Judging - How to interact with the judges, our first pair of judges looked to us like just another team scouting (what can your robot do?). The second pair asked more questions, but both times were were under the gun coming off the field and due to queue up almost immediately. (Our student that was to be our PR face was in the stands to make room in the pit for an urgent repair.)
* Pit - We had a few folding tables, a tool box, a 3D printer, and some pare COTS stuff. No banners, "tent", and our robot cart was... well.. rookie. Some cheap and basic ideas on what *AND HOW* to bring stuff to the venue would have helped. (Taking a step further - the "basic rookie team pit kit")
* If we qualified for worlds we were terrified. We didn't know if we'd get the rookie award, or if we'd be able to go, what it meant, how many could go, how much it would cost, or when FIRST would need the money. (FIRST Team emails were going into SPAM folders, we found later) In short, if it happened, we were massively unprepared. (Thankfully it was a week 3 event, so there may have been hope.)
After the competition (we did well by our standards, but didn't get any Worlds-qualifying awards)....
* Now what? - Between April - January what do we need to do?
* Financials - Being so financially supported as a rookie team, we have little understanding of what level of support a 2nd year (or later) team could expect. Do we need to chase down local companies now? A lot? A little? What might a 2nd year team budget look like?
* Engagement - Keeping in mind end of year testing (AP / NYS Regents / Finals, etc) what should we do to keep our students engaged, and to what level? And starting in September?
* Goal Ideas - Some rookie teams are happy they got a bot on the field, others had higher starting goals, but what would some 2nd year goals be for a "typical" team?
* Off Season Events - I know about them because of CD, and some interaction with other local teams (not a lot of off-season discussion in week 3, but...)
Beyond the bot:
As a rookie, until we hit competition and started seeing the Chairman's Award presentations and really started interacting with other teams, everything beyond the bot was pretty well lost on us. (And to be honest, rightfully so for our team our first year). As we look to years 2+ even just a bulleted list of "inspiring" ideas that other teams have done, outreach, etc, to give teams something to look to and build off of.
Granted, this was just our experience, but if you decide to take this on and want more info or to discuss, let let me know. Thank you!
I would be happy to talk to you in more detail about sustainability.
I can not type everything up right now, but if you would like to connect via email to start a dialogue, please PM me.
Team34Guy
27-05-2016, 13:26
If FIRST could do one thing that wouldn't impact them at all financially or logistically and would help a significant number of teams, it would be to end bag & tag.
It's been my experience that if you extend the deadline that it just gives you more time to not be productive. I remember being told that a goldfish will grow to a size that is comparable to size of the bowl it's kept in. Point being...if time management is the problem(which is usually the case), then you're giving them more time to mismanage. I don't know of a good solution... project management training might be an option.
AdamHeard
27-05-2016, 13:34
Totally agreed, and I would love to see B&T go away entirely.
Just making the point that the district style unbag between events is a much more likely compromise from FIRST, and provides likely a lot more value per unit of hassle/complaint/etc that would arise from eliminating B&T entirely.
I understand this argument, but I think it ignores 4 major sustainability factors beyond just time itself:
1. No B&T means we have much more room as a community to run scrimmages. This lets struggling teams get playing/testing sooner, even if on low-cost team fields with a few other robots. Even this level of insight could help a lot of the teams we're talking about, even if they don't have a second official event for that magic.
2. Using our first event as the deadline gives us all more time to help teams that are struggling/want collaboration. This would be a culture shift and would not happen automatically, but many teams (including 1640) do some limited outreach like this within the B&T deadline. More time, particularly more weekends, can help with that simply on a logistical level.
3. While poor time management can erase any gains, there is something to be said for the difference between unexpectedly losing 1 of 6 weeks to snow versus 1 of 9 (insert any numbers), particularly when the snow days are likely to still be early.
4. I won't claim this because it needs data, but I personally believe that we tend to ignore teams that truly don't meet very often. I've inspected teams that literally meet a few hours per week, end of story, for no fault of the students. I try to introduce them to VEX. There's nothing wrong with that, but there is an argument that adopting VEX/FTC's lack of B&T would open up opportunities and audiences we don't even know we don't know.
It's been my experience that if you extend the deadline that it just gives you more time to not be productive. I remember being told that a goldfish will grow to a size that is comparable to size of the bowl it's kept in. Point being...if time management is the problem(which is usually the case), then you're giving them more time to mismanage. I don't know of a good solution... project management training might be an option.Team34Guy and I are on the same page. If you extend the period, or shorten it, without altering the root causes of the problems, the outcome will change little (not zero, but little).
1. No B&T means we have much more room as a community to run scrimmages. This lets struggling teams get playing/testing sooner, even if on low-cost team fields with a few other robots. Even this level of insight could help a lot of the teams we're talking about, even if they don't have a second official event for that magic.Counterpoint 1: Scrimmages can be run at any time in the current build season that anyone wants to. However, if any team wants to pack as much untested function and complexity into their robot as is possible, that team will build (not scrimmage) right to whatever deadline exists. That is what most teams appear to be doing now. If a robot+drive station can be built in a weekend, then obviously teams can easily build robots in 5 weeks, then scrimmage, then spend the last 7-9 days adjusting what they built.
You don't need a longer build season in order to benefit from scrimmages. On the contrary, what you need is a plan that fits into whatever time is available (plus contingencies for weather, etc.), and you then need to execute that plan. The result might be a simpler robot that works instead of a more complex robot that doesn't. Mastering this is a hugely important skill for anyone contemplating a STEM career. Struggling teams will benefit far, far more from help planning and executing than they will benefit from more time to struggle.
2. Using our first event as the deadline gives us all more time to help teams that are struggling/want collaboration. This would be a culture shift and would not happen automatically, but many teams (including 1640) do some limited outreach like this within the B&T deadline. More time, particularly more weekends, can help with that simply on a logistical level.Counterpoint 2: See my other posts. Teams that want to spend time helping other teams can do it right now, and they can devote as many resources as they care to devote to that activity, right now.
My very, very strong hunch is that if the build season is lengthened, teams who aren't doing it now (because building, improving, and tweaking their own robot dominates how they spend the current 44 days of building), aren't going to think of additional days as days to spend working on someone else's robot.
If that mindset existed (in practice, not hypothetically), wouldn't most/many/those teams be building less complex robots already, so that they could spend the last week of the current 44 days helping other teams??? Color me doubtful, until teams building 35-day robots become plentiful.
3. While poor time management can erase any gains, there is something to be said for the difference between unexpectedly losing 1 of 6 weeks to snow versus 1 of 9 (insert any numbers), particularly when the snow days are likely to still be early.Counterpoint 3: If a team sets realistic goals for building a 5-week robot, manages their time well, and executes their plan; then in a year with a week of snow there will be no problem. In years without snow they will have a bonus week (yippee!).
Lengthening the build season doesn't affect the root cause of this problem. A group that is learning to correctly plan and execute a 44 day build season is going to also be a group that is learning to correctly plan and execute a 65 day build season. However, in the 65 day build season they will have X% of 65 days of planned work undone when they put their pencils down, instead of having X% of 44 days of planned work undone. It simply does not follow that more time results in more readiness.
I'm asserting that total time is not the dominant reason robots are unfinished at the end of 44 days, and I'll gladly bet a nice dinner on the topic. This was my point when I asked if anyone had a stack of anecdotes about struggling teams that were making steady progress executing a conservative plan throughout the current 44-day period, and who ran out of time because something out of their control used up more time than the cushion they built into their plan. Until those anecdotes become plentiful, again, color me doubtful.
4. I won't claim this because it needs data, but I personally believe that we tend to ignore teams that truly don't meet very often. I've inspected teams that literally meet a few hours per week, end of story, for no fault of the students. I try to introduce them to VEX. There's nothing wrong with that, but there is an argument that adopting VEX/FTC's lack of B&T would open up opportunities and audiences we don't even know we don't know.Counterpoint 4: I 100% agree that a less-complex engineering project, like VRC or FTC might be the right choice for these folks if they want to try to build a sophisticated robot (sophisticated in comparison to their on-the-field competition).
However, a few hours per week is all that is necessary to build a simple FRC robot that will perform consistently well in the hands of a practiced driver. Good scouts know that consistency is very valuable in FRC competitions. By assessing their own strengths and weaknesses, setting appropriate goals, and executing their plan; and team that only meets a few hours per week can show up ready, and be proud of doing what they set out to do.
Lengthening the build season would allow these teams to set more ambitious goals for the robot they take to each year's tournaments, but it would also give their on-the-field competition the ability to the same. If the team that meets less gets a net of 30-50 hours out of adding three weeks to the build season, doesn't their competition get 60-150 more hours?
To me that sounds like the teams that meet less (but that still show up with usable robots) fall further and further behind the other teams as the build season get longer. It that the outcome you want?
Getting on-the-fence, and initially uninterested students to try STEM activities is the reason inspiration rules in FIRST. Mentors, teachers, coaches, parents, sponsors, and student leaders can do that without letting the circus atmosphere of the tournaments drown out a group's accomplishments - and - they can do that without a longer build season. Struggling teams need less struggle (reduce the root causes of their struggles), not a longer struggle.
Blake
rick.oliver
27-05-2016, 16:32
I support the idea of eliminating Bag & Tag. I believe it will improve the mean quality of robots at events beyond their initial event. I also believe that it will reduce the cost to teams associated with becoming more competitive.
I also agree that it is unlikely to change the behavior of most teams.
The District Model appears to be very successful; has it increased the sustainability of FRC teams in those areas?
The data suggests that "Retention" has improved over the past several years.
I hypothesize that the increase in "Retention" has been driven by the expansion of the District Model and the increased number of matches and "out-of-bag" time associated with the District Model has been the contributing factor.
Therefore, I also support the proposal of implementing similar "out-of-bag" times for Regional events and in particular, a "fix-it-window" for teams who qualify for Worlds.
Rangel(kf7fdb)
27-05-2016, 16:47
If the team that meets less gets a net of 30-50 hours out of adding three weeks to the build season, doesn't their competition get 60-150 more hours?
To me that sounds like the teams that meet less (but that still show up with usable robots) fall further and further behind the other teams as the build season get longer. It that the outcome you want?
Blake
Don't want to get too much into this conversation but in regards to hours vs performance. There is certainly a diminishing return after a certain point. A team only really needs to be "good enough" in order to be competitive at the top. Now of course the team that invests the most man-hours generally has the advantage but it doesn't make them unbeatable. For example in 2013, a team that goes from 2 cycles of frisbees to maybe 5 cycles can be a big jump for realistically not that much time(relatively). All it really takes is to have a scoring mechanism(in this case frisbee shooter) that works pretty well and doesn't jam or break. Going further than that to 6 or 7 cycles of frisbees can take a ton of optimization and practice time though. I believe John V-Neun said it best though that ~"the last 10 percent is half the work"(can't find quote). That being said, 5 cycles of frisbees vs 6 cycles isn't a huge margin of error for the underdog to pull out ahead. Even without defense, a good match for the 5 cycler can beat the 6 cycler on a bad match.
To summarize, giving both a lower and higher tier team extra time, the lower tier team is likely to improve more than a higher tier team using more of that extra time.
cbale2000
27-05-2016, 16:50
The District Model appears to be very successful; has it increased the sustainability of FRC teams in those areas?
I don't have any data on this, but based on my personal observations Districts do have the benefit of increasing awareness of FRC in communities because there are more events at more local venues (making it easier for local spectators to attend) and districts usually are able to support more teams, thus raising awareness of the programs in schools. Reducing the cost of events, and having teams attend 2 events by default, also means teams have more opportunities to improve their robots throughout the season and have fun at competitions, preventing loss of interest by team members.
That said, the growth of Districts does have a few negative effects, including stretching sponsorship money thin as more teams are created (our main sponsor is cutting out budget in half next year because of how many teams they support now), and, for certain teams, limiting the availability of students and mentors to recruit (It makes it harder to make one, large, stable, competitive team, when all of the students and mentors in the area are being pulled into 10+ rookie teams).
Don't want to get too much into this conversation but in regards to hours vs performance. ...
To summarize, giving both a lower and higher tier team extra time, the lower tier team is likely to improve more than a higher tier team using more of that extra time.Struggling teams that we want to help/retain instead of lose, are, by definition, "struggling".
You used the phrase "lower-tier". There are plenty of nuances a reader can read into that term, but I'm pretty sure "lower-tier" and "struggling" are different in some very important ways.
With that in mind, I don't think that a struggling team will convert extra hours into results at a much, much lower rate than a non-struggling team will, regardless of whether the non-struggling team is a fierce competitor on the field, or is less strong on-the-field.
The transformation of hours into results will be affected by how far the team needs to "go" to satisfy their goals (that is your point), and by whether or not they are struggling, and by other factors.
Thinking about those two different effects, I agree that what you described is a real effect and that it applies in some situations; but my very strong hunch is that whether a team is "struggling" or not has a much, much greater effect on the benefit (or not) of a longer build season, than how far a team is from reaching it's goals.
For that reason, I don't think a longer build season is a good approach to helping struggling teams (helping them both stay in FIRST's FRC program, and become healthy teams). YMMV
Blake
PS: Remember that fielding a middle-of-the-road, or simple, or low-scoring robot doesn't identify a struggling team. Our goal isn't building robots, it's attracting students into STEM fields. A simple robot in the hands of a good FRC team can be a powerful tool for attracting students into STEM fields. Teams that accomplish that are the *good* teams.
jman4747
27-05-2016, 18:08
Blake
PS: Remember that fielding a middle-of-the-road, or simple, or low-scoring robot doesn't identify a struggling team. Our goal isn't building robots, it's attracting students into STEM fields. A simple robot in the hands of a good FRC team can be a powerful tool for attracting students into STEM fields. Teams that accomplish that are the *good* teams.
Okay then lets have FIRST do that by:
Reducing costs
Increasing our ability to share machining and human resources*
Increase time people have to deal with school bureaucracy in getting things they need
Make it more likely a team will have a "simple robot" in there hands
Attract students to stem fields and mentors and sponsors to FIRST with more diverse and impressive machines.**
*if you can get some parts made you can reduce what you need to by with cash and thus how much you need to raise. With this build schedule I makes it very difficult to utilize these businesses because of the lead times. If I didn't need to buy hubs or sprockets or gearbox parts or pre-drilled extrusion I could use that money literally anywhere else on the team.
**Building an overall more impressive robot makes it easier to attract attention from potential students, mentors, and sponsors. Why would I want to join this club to build a large RC car? Why spend time using my years of experience and training to help build what may just seem like a large RC car? Why do people only building glorified RC cars need THAT much money? From the outside in it can be difficult to see what that RC car with a brain actually means. And it takes experience to convey that which most rookies won't have. The easiest thing to use is of course the robot. It is the best or worst analogy of what all it took to make it but is always the most universal and immediate attention grabber no matter who you are talking to.
Counterpoint 1-3...I think we have 2 fundamental disagreements:
Logistics: As someone already involved in the outreach community, we're often limited not by misuse of person-hours but by literal dearth in weekends. Maybe we lose one to snow, one to exams, one to transportation, and all of a sudden there's only a few left out-of-bag. This isn't not because anyone bit off more than they could chew, and the problems don't scale directly with a longer season. Every season I'm in a position of saying I would've come again if there was another day. I hear this a lot from other outreachers--in fact many are volunteers rather than whole teams, so time management of the team's own build season isn't even as big a factor. It's literally just how many places you can go. Similarly, I disagree with the implication that everyone is a slave to Parkinson's law. Yes, teams that currently have poor time management will likely continue to. No argument! But not everyone does. A team that manages to run (4) 3-team weekend meets without a B&T is not incompetent because they only managed to run (1) with B&T.
Inward/Outreach Spectrum: I have minimum goals that I want to help my team toward before I allocate major resources (team or personal) outward. I expect every team falls in a different place this spectrum: maybe some can logistically run (2) 3-team meets with B&T as long as they sacrifice letting their own kids weld. Maybe some don't like that trade-off. The key is that inward goals aren't all competitive, so they don't inherently scale. Maybe it's "get N students CADing, master Y programming skill" rather than "be first seed". Without B&T (and particularly with good support resources and community norms), some teams further down the spectrum can aim for "get N+3 CADing, master Y, and meet with 2 rookie teams 3 times". I'm not saying this would happen automatically, but I think it's within our community's capabilities. Basing it around palpable schedule shift is much more realistically incentivizing than "everyone spend less time on your own team and reach out more"--even if we agreed that within the 6 week season that would benefit FRC as a whole, which I'm not totally sure I do.
However, a few hours per week is all that is necessary to build a simple FRC robot that will perform consistently well in the hands of a practiced driver. Good scouts know that consistency is very valuable in FRC competitions. By assessing their own strengths and weaknesses, setting appropriate goals, and executing their plan; and team that only meets a few hours per week can show up ready, and be proud of doing what they set out to do.I can count on one hand the number of 'few hours per week' clubs I've seen that have a practiced driver. This is hard enough logistically, but most teams have no understanding of competition mechanics at all. I'm not saying they all shouldn't understand this properly, but I don't see why we argue for them to do so on their own. Are we as a community really making the case that because we know it's possible, we'll ignore the challenges of those who struggle with it? It's just their problem? These are exactly the teams I and others try to reach during build season but struggle to within the confines of B&T. And I personally remember what it's like to be on a team that has no freaking idea how to build an appropriate robot. MOE reached out to us once, and it was huge. We would've gotten a lot less stupid a lot more quickly if only a few other teams had done so over the course of 5 years. It's not a high bar; it's just that the need far surpasses the hours.
And what about low-tier non-struggling teams? I can literally see and they often explain what more time could've done for them. And it's not 'we would've built an arm' or 'we'd've beaten everyone here!'. It's 'if we'd had a couple more more Wednesdays maybe Jane would've understood that programming skill' or 'maybe we would've convinced Carl to like electronics'. In fact I find that the infrequent club model is somewhat less susceptible to Parkinson's law, because they tend to view it primarily in this light. Unfortunately they also don't logistically get much FRC community support and the teacher tends not to continue past their event--or come back the next year. We have huge rookie attrition in this area in Philadelphia, both with struggling and non-struggling low-tiers.
In terms of the 'falling further behind' argument, I'm not sure I follow it. If Team 7000 finishes 56th with B&T and 56th without it, but in the latter Carl has decided to be an electrician and Jane understands Java and Alex came by 3 times to help with the design process, what's wrong with that? Moreover, I don't (even by your logic) see how they're falling further behind on a palpable level. As a former low-tier student, I really couldn't discern whether the Cheesy Poofs are Mars instead of the moon--or at least I wasn't upset by it. By your logic, the teams I was actually competitive against would remain pretty bad at managing their time (assuming no one got adequate outreach). The best get much better, but the ones I actually compare myself to still have the same problems I do, and there are still 24 robots in elims. Moreover, can't I switch that around and ask why teams who are bad time managers should benefit from an artificially shortened season against those that aren't? Isn't it better to incentivize time management and open more time for outreach rather than artificially compress the schedule?
Struggling teams need less struggle (reduce the root causes of their struggles), not a longer struggle.Agreed. (I think they benefit from a longer season to succeed in, once the community has greater resources to help them more.) I've belabored my outreach paradigm for doing this. What's your idea?
Caleb Sykes
28-05-2016, 00:38
Although I am fully in the "eliminate bag and tag" camp for other reasons, I think the argument that its elimination will improve team sustainability is a bit tenuous. I don't think it will improve struggling teams' robots by an appreciable amount going into their first event, and since I live in a regional area, I don't think it would help out teams at all here because the struggling teams are very unlikely to attend multiple events. The same argument may not hold in district areas, but I won't speak for those.
The one way I am convinced that bag and tag elimination could dramatically improve sustainability would be if every practice bot team committed to something resembling this (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1588540&postcount=20). If there were a big petition full of double robot teams that agree to something like this, I think FIRST might seriously consider eliminating bag day.
My best solution to improve sustainability would be to mandate that teams cannot register for an event unless they meet some set of requirements more stringent than "we might have $5000 in a couple of months." A sample set of requirements might be that all rookie teams must:
Meet with their region's Senior mentor at least twice (remote meetings are fine)
Submit a 2-year budget to their FIRST Senior mentor which he must approve.
Get another FRC team to commit to being their "big sister" team for the next 2 years (remote partnerships are fine).
Have four or fewer individuals on the team who together have at least 4 years of combined FRC, FTC, or VEX experience. These individuals may be either students or mentors.
Complete a training guide provided by FIRST*. The training guide would take approximately 10 hours to complete, and different sections can be completed by different individuals.
One of the above requirements can be waived by the FIRST Senior mentor depending on surrounding circumstances and provided that the team excels in other areas that are not accounted for in the above requirements.
Adding these requirements will force new teams to acquire knowledge and resources that they might not have otherwise thought to pursue, and if these requirements scare off any teams from forming, they likely wouldn't have lasted long anyway.
*Which would include one of Karthik's strategic design talks
waialua359
28-05-2016, 03:38
This thread has derailed into one where the word sustainability could be interchanged with competitiveness.
6 weeks is a lot of time to build a low to middle-tier robot (i.e. good 2nd pick robot). Building a very competitive one becomes way more time sensitive, especially those that build 2 robots.
For a team that spends quite a bit on our program, I still see building 2 robots somewhat wasteful, especially to circumvent the bag/tag rules in being more competitive.
FRC has turned into a program that had put all its eggs in the build season to one that teams schedule their build season around the events they participate in. Ironically, the robot allowance started this change in mindset/philosopical idea about what the actual build season is by allowing teams an avenue to keep working on their robots, and now many teams want to get rid of bag/tag. Wasnt the weight allowance created primarily to allow teams that got snowed out of construction?
It'll be interesting to see what FIRST does in the future, but as always, the benefit isnt always advantageous for every team that participates, similar to that of districts vs regional participating teams. I wish we would be on the receiving end of the advantage of eliminating bag/tag, but unfortunately not.
techhelpbb
28-05-2016, 10:04
Personally believe bag&tag is doing no favors to anyone.
1. It ends up creating duplicate robots driving cost.
2. Team issues aside: the increasing reliance on COTS parts sourced from over seas means you are in risky territory with vendors in just 6 weeks.
So...
If COTS parts make it easier to field a robot and COTS parts are easier to get in 7 weeks...one leads to the other.
3. If COTS parts can build almost an entire robot and teams plan on doing that their logistics are governed by vendor availability not planning their fabrication.
4. Teams in places like NYC often do not have shops they require a lot of COTS.
5. There are few high value modern skills you will teach in that slightly longer time: however if you teach those skills between seasons you can expect more time to practice on an FRC robot headed for a field instead of other things.
I routinely stump for FIRST at Meetups: I have watched people lose all interest over that 6 week lurch of a build season. Good qualified people want to help - but - not at the expense of an unpaid fire drill.
Having been a peripheral member of our team in it's rookie year, and a serious mentor since then, (just finished our fifth year), I've been involved in a few serious "can we keep the team together through this" moments (mostly second and third year), and a few where it wasn't so serious, but the question arose. I have also been following and contributed to a number of (often anonymous OP) "Help, My Team is About to Fall Apart" threads. While the numbers are impressions, not statistics, it seems that about 75-85% of these issues center on resources - whether money, mentors, head coach, build space, or (rarely) student team members, or a combination. The other 15-25% were based on interpersonal conflict.
None of 3946's crises or the threads I recall (including a wide sampling of threads from before I joined, as I like to click on highlight threads) boiled down to: We just can't build a competitive robot in 6-1/2 weeks, so we're going to give up the team. If we'd had 10 weeks without a bag, we could have held it together. While ending Bag and Tag is likely to raise the level of competition, I see no reason to think that it will improve sustainability, which was the question.
On interpersonal issues, FIRST has limited ability to help resolve the issues systematically. The only way I can think of to help in these cases is to better advertise the FIRST senior mentors to student team members, and possibly to increase the number of senior mentors to accommodate the increased load. Based on the relatively small number of these issues and the lack of leverage that Senior Mentors have in the politics affecting an individual team, I would not be surprised if this is just too expensive for the benefit to be worthwhile.
On the resource front, there are a number of things that FIRST could do, some of which might be worth the cost.
Dollars: Approach large, distributed tech and manufacturing companies, and have them commit some corporate funding to FIRST team sponsorships. Based on our experience, it is much easier to get support from a company headquartered nearby than it is to get support from a company headquartered elsewhere, even if it has a local office/production center. By working through global headquarters and emphasizing local funding, FIRST could probably grease the skids to spread funding around.
Mentors - FIRST does nothing as far as I am aware to help recruit mentors. FIRST could work through professional organizations such as ACM, IEEE, SAE, and so forth to put out the word that mentoring a FIRST team is a great way to inspire future members of these organizations. FIRST could also provide a "clearinghouse" to help prospective mentors and teams find each other, and/or work with sponsors to encourage mentorship.
Costs - Somehow reduce the entry-level cost each year. I look forward to competing in a district format someday, but as a way of increasing what the team can do with the same amount of funding, not as a fount of sustainability.
Mentors - FIRST does nothing as far as I am aware to help recruit mentors. FIRST could work through professional organizations such as ACM, IEEE, SAE, and so forth to put out the word that mentoring a FIRST team is a great way to inspire future members of these organizations. FIRST could also provide a "clearinghouse" to help prospective mentors and teams find each other, and/or work with sponsors to encourage mentorship.
Best suggestion in the entire thread.
Having been a peripheral member of our team in it's rookie year, and a serious mentor since then, (just finished our fifth year), I've been involved in a few serious "can we keep the team together through this" moments (mostly second and third year), and a few where it wasn't so serious, but the question arose. I have also been following and contributed to a number of (often anonymous OP) "Help, My Team is About to Fall Apart" threads. While the numbers are impressions, not statistics, it seems that about 75-85% of these issues center on resources - whether money, mentors, head coach, build space, or (rarely) student team members, or a combination. The other 15-25% were based on interpersonal conflict.
None of 3946's crises or the threads I recall (including a wide sampling of threads from before I joined, as I like to click on highlight threads) boiled down to:
We just can't build a competitive robot in 6-1/2 weeks, so we're going to give up the team. If we'd had 10 weeks without a bag, we could have held it together.
While ending Bag and Tag is likely to raise the level of competition, I see no reason to think that it will improve sustainability, which was the question.No surprise that I wholeheartedly agree with this evidence-based line of thinking.
The evidence is most definitely anecdotal, but it isn't contradicted by anything in my experience, or by anything posted here yet.
There is speculation that near the end of an extended build season some healthy teams will switch from improving their own prospects to helping struggling teams get over the hump. I don't doubt that some will (more than they do now), but I don't think that an extended build season is necessary for that, nor do I think that the change (across all of FRC) will be non-trivial (FRC losses about 8% of it's teams annually. How many teams will receive enough extra help if the build season lengthens?).
If there are other reasons to lengthen the build season, they can be debated outside this thread, but without evidence off a stronger connection between the two, don't advocate doing it to increase sustainability.
marshall
29-05-2016, 16:46
If there are other reasons to lengthen the build season, they can be debated outside this thread, but without evidence off a stronger connection between the two, don't advocate doing it to increase sustainability.
I will say it again: I think there are a lot of us that feel it is relevant to the sustainability of FRC teams and that is what this thread is about.
I've got another big reason to end bag and tag for sustainability... cost to FIRST. I don't mean merely money. It costs FIRST very little from a resources perspective to end it. In fact, it saves them on bags, zip ties, and the headache involved with that portion of the inspection process.
That savings doesn't help teams become more sustainable but in comparison to other ideas in this thread, it costs FIRST pretty much nothing from a resources perspective. It is low hanging fruit.
There are a lot of us that think it will help with team sustainability by enabling teams to become more competitive and giving them that "Eureka!" moment that creates an impetus to come back and do it all over again and again in spite of failure. When that moment never comes you get burnout, exhaustion, frustration, funding dries up, and participation ends.
I have seen my share of teams collapse over the years and I'd like to think ending bag and tag would have helped more than a few of them by showing them that this program can be very rewarding. I can't predict alternative outcomes but I'm not going to let someone else who can't predict them either tell me I should take my very reasonable ideas and go home... that's not how arguing on the Internet works. ;)
jman4747
29-05-2016, 16:50
75-85% of these issues center on resources - whether money, mentors, head coach, build space, or (rarely) student team members, or a combination. The other 15-25% were based on interpersonal conflict.
None of 3946's crises or the threads I recall (including a wide sampling of threads from before I joined, as I like to click on highlight threads) boiled down to: While ending Bag and Tag is likely to raise the level of competition, I see no reason to think that it will improve sustainability, which was the question.
Costs - Somehow reduce the entry-level cost each year. I look forward to competing in a district format someday, but as a way of increasing what the team can do with the same amount of funding, not as a fount of sustainability.
For the love of magic smoke the bag day argument is not just a competitiveness issue! Anyone arguing that increasing competitiveness is the main issue in terms of bag day and sustainability misses the point.
Anyone who thinks bag day doesn't effect things that contribute directly to the sustainability of a team hasn't actually been reading.
"75-85% of these issues center on resources - whether money, mentors, head coach, build space, or (rarely) student team members, or a combination."
Okay lets see how eliminating bag day can help with what you listed...
1. Money
Reduced shipping costs (edit: when ordering COTS parts)
Greater ability to get parts made (edit: via outsourcing to sponsors) as opposed to purchasing everything COTS
More time during the season to worry about other things like fundraising
2.Mentors/Head Coach
More spare time for experienced mentors to help rookies
A less frequent meeting schedule can give a mentor, who can only come to a fraction of a teams meetings, more of an effect on the team.*
Less frequent meetings could give a head coach more time off or more time during the season to deal with admin duties on a week to week basis
3.Build space
If for whatever reason you need to find build space (unsupportive school for instance) less frequent access needs and shorter necessary access times could make it easier to convince someone to let you use their space.
4.Student team members
A student who can't currently commit much time to the build season can now show up less frequently and make it to a higher percentage of meetings.
These aren't the only things that can be improved by this (anyone who can add to it please do). This isn't the only way to accomplish this and obviously technical tutorials need to improve and time management training has to come along with it. But now with more time overall you can spend more of it learning without sacrificing the draw of the program.
Finally I totally agree that FIRST needs to make an effort with engineering associations and organizations to improve mentor recruitment (add WIT and SWE to that list). I would also like to see that sort of effort in universities.
I would also like to see that sort of effort in universities.
There was, briefly, a student organization (of which I was never an official member, ironically, though several of my friends and co-mentors were) at the University of Maryland that existed for the purpose of providing mentorship to local FRC teams.
Unfortunately, there was never much support - from FIRST or from the university - and it died after two years.
Okay lets see how eliminating bag day can help with what you listed...
1. Money
Reduced shipping costs
Greater ability to get parts made as opposed to purchasing them
More time during the season to worry about other things like fundraising
Second and third bullet points, I'll have a harder time arguing, so I'll leave it at: for the third, you need to be doing that all year long, and for the second, "You mean we can purchase more parts that might actually get here in time?".
The first one, though, you really didn't think through. Teams already bring their robots to competition. Shipping cost is minimal already for most teams*. So eliminating bag day saves exactly what again? You still need to bring the robot with you to competition.
These aren't the only things that can be improved by this (anyone who can add to it please do). This isn't the only way to accomplish this and obviously technical tutorials need to improve and time management training has to come along with it. But now with more time overall you can spend more of it learning without sacrificing the draw of the program.
Finally I totally agree that FIRST needs to make an effort with engineering associations and organizations to improve mentor recruitment (add WIT and SWE to that list). I would also like to see that sort of effort in universities.
I'll agree on the engineering groups to get better mentor recruitment, and I think technical/time management can improve. But the whole "people will be able to spread out the time" is hogwash.
If you can't manage your time effectively now, you'll be just as unable to effectively spread out your extra X weeks and still get your work done. Meanwhile, the teams that are being very effective already will see that they've got extra time to make better iterations, and manage their time well to get that done. And then there's Parkinson's Law...
Personally... I'd eliminate Withholding Allowance entirely. You get raw materials (unlimited) and COTS (unlimited), and have to finish your work in the pit/onsite machine shop. If it isn't in the bag, and it's fabricated, back to the shop it goes... I realize that that's an unpopular opinion, but that's pretty much how we used to play back when any given regional had something like 40-50 crates to move around.
*The exceptions here are the long-haul teams: HI, South America, China, UK, and just about any other non-North American team that's traveling to North America to compete. Everybody else can drive their robot, meaning that "shipping cost" really means "gas cost", which can be split with the humans also in the transport vehicle that needed to get there anyways. Now, just so you're aware, these teams tend to get their KOPs late, and they need to ship their robots by a designated date just to make the tournament. So they're already at a significant handicap. Eliminating bag day makes that disadvantage worse--might even eliminate some of those teams, many of whom have a hard time on the field already. Just something to chew on here.
jman4747
29-05-2016, 19:26
Second and third bullet points, I'll have a harder time arguing, so I'll leave it at: for the third, you need to be doing that all year long, and for the second, "You mean we can purchase more parts that might actually get here in time?".
The first one, though, you really didn't think through. Teams already bring their robots to competition. Shipping cost is minimal already for most teams*. So eliminating bag day saves exactly what again? You still need to bring the robot with you to competition.
I made an edit to be more clear on point 1.1 and 1.2. I wrote them poorly. 1.1 I'm referring to COTS parts. 1.2 is referring to how outsourcing machining to sponsors can save you money on buying COTS at the expense of time.
"If you can't manage your time effectively now, you'll be just as unable to effectively spread out your extra X weeks and still get your work done. Meanwhile, the teams that are being very effective already will see that they've got extra time to make better iterations, and manage their time well to get that done. And then there's Parkinson's Law..."
And if you can you will benefit from the extra time to focus on other aspects of running the team or your life if you so chose. Which will be easier when you aren't spending as much money and have more help from veteran teams. I know fundraising is a year round endeavor. Emphasis on year round. With a smaller leadership team it's harder to focus on these efforts during build.
"*The exceptions here are the long-haul teams: HI, South America, China, UK, and just about any other non-North American team that's traveling to North America to compete."
Is that date after the current bag day? because then they would still have more time than they do now.
While I think the B&T rules don't necessarily dovetail very well with sustainability, I would be in favor of extending B&T if, and only if, a team does not have their robot capable of passing inspection, or able to perform a minimum of tasks (eg, for Stronghold, move), and allowing work to continue only toward those goals.
This would let struggling teams (not just rookies) get their robot into a competition-ready shape, but not allow them to work on their shooter, for example, until the robot is bagged. Perhaps this would help with some B&T and inspection stresses.
Alan Anderson
29-05-2016, 19:30
Okay lets see how eliminating bag day can help with what you listed...
I don't understand what side you're advocating. You seem to be trying to say that eliminating bag day would help sustainability, but your arguments do not help me toward that position.
1. Money
Reduced shipping costs
Greater ability to get parts made as opposed to purchasing them
More time during the season to worry about other things like fundraising
How does not putting the robot in a bag do anything to shipping costs?
How does taking longer to make parts save money over making them with a shorter deadline?
How does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?
2.Mentors/Head Coach
More spare time for experienced mentors to help rookies
A less frequent meeting schedule can give a mentor, who can only come to a fraction of a teams meetings, more of an effect on the team.*
Less frequent meetings could give a head coach more time off or more time during the season to deal with admin duties on a week to week basis
Again, how does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?
If a mentor can only come to a fraction of the meetings, how is making the meetings farther apart going to help?
If you're not suggesting fewer meetings total, how does that give anyone more time off?
3.Build space
If for whatever reason you need to find build space (unsupportive school for instance) less frequent access needs and shorter necessary access times could make it easier to convince someone to let you use their space.
I suppose there might be some contrived situation where it would be more possible to access a space less frequently, but you've totally broken your argument by suggesting that the time you need it would simultaneously be shorter.
4.Student team members
A student who can't currently commit much time to the build season can now show up less frequently and make it to a higher percentage of meetings.
I don't understand this at all, sorry. If you show up less frequently, how can you attend more?
I assume that you want to argue that a student who can only commit to a certain number of meetings per week will make it to more meetings in total if they are spread out over a longer time. I will grant that as a possibility, but it seems more likely to me that a student who does not have robotics as a priority (for whatever reason) under the current system will not make more of a commitment if the build season gets longer.
I made an edit to be more clear on point 1.1 and 1.2. I wrote them poorly. 1.1 I'm referring to COTS parts. 1.2 is referring to how outsourcing machining to sponsors can save you money on buying COTS at the expense of time.Translation: We can work with a more flexible schedule. That I can buy. Basically, you don't pay the expedited shipping, and you can have someone make more stuff. (I will note that one of my team's sponsors came on very late in build--we had the parts from them in a very short turnaround. We may be the exception, though...)
"If you can't manage your time effectively now, you'll be just as unable to effectively spread out your extra X weeks and still get your work done. Meanwhile, the teams that are being very effective already will see that they've got extra time to make better iterations, and manage their time well to get that done. And then there's Parkinson's Law..."
And if you can you will benefit from the extra time to focus on other aspects of running the team or your life if you so chose. Which will be easier when you aren't spending as much money and have more help from veteran teams. I know fundraising is a year round endeavor. Emphasis on year round. With a smaller leadership team it's harder to focus on these efforts during build. Parkinson's Law says that there IS no extra time. "Work expands to fill the time allotted."
Basically, you're proving my point: The teams that already manage their time well ("the rich") will continue to do so and get even better ("get richer") (and maybe even take a couple days off, har har) and those that don't... well, guess what? That makes this an even more uneven playing field than before, which can be discouraging. Discouraged teams can become discouraged former teams a little easier than non-discouraged teams can become non-discouraged former teams.
"*The exceptions here are the long-haul teams: HI, South America, China, UK, and just about any other non-North American team that's traveling to North America to compete."
Is that date after the current bag day? because then they would still have more time than they do now.I don't know, and I would expect that it varies by competition week and where they're coming from anyways. For a Week 1, it might actually be on bag day. For a Week 2... I checked B&T forms for "crate teams" at a Week 2, didn't see any unbag time logged. Not sure about the teams at the Week 4 I was at as I wasn't inspecting.
For those guys, you need to understand: If the robot isn't in the crate, it's gotta travel by suitcase. That gets ugly fast. Now imagine that you not only have to ship the robot, but nobody else has a "hard stop" to building theirs. They get two weeks on you, just of build time. Two weeks is a lot of time in this game.
Ryan Dognaux
29-05-2016, 19:57
I still haven't read one legitimate point about how bag & tag enhances the FIRST experience and makes FRC more sustainable. I've never heard a team state that because of bag & tag specifically that they had a better overall season. I'd love to hear the hard evidence that shows that bag and tag makes FIRST better.
If there are other reasons to lengthen the build season, they can be debated outside this thread, but without evidence off a stronger connection between the two, don't advocate doing it to increase sustainability.
How in the world can we produce hard anecdotal evidence for something that has never been tried in FRC? This thread is about discussing ideas that could lead to more sustainability. You don't get to tell people to go debate in some other thread because you don't think an idea won't work. I think it has legs and so do many others.
My 15 years of build season experience over 4 different FRC teams ranging from little resources to many resources tells me that every single one of those teams would have benefited from the removal of bag & tag. Bag & tag literally serves no purpose than to force teams with little to no resources to stop building while teams with mid to high resources don't skip a beat and keep right on going.
I don't get how bag & tag increases sustainability at all, please educate me.
jman4747
29-05-2016, 20:41
I don't understand what side you're advocating. You seem to be trying to say that eliminating bag day would help sustainability, but your arguments do not help me toward that position.
How does not putting the robot in a bag do anything to shipping costs?
How does taking longer to make parts save money over making them with a shorter deadline?
How does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?
Again, how does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?
If a mentor can only come to a fraction of the meetings, how is making the meetings farther apart going to help?
If you're not suggesting fewer meetings total, how does that give anyone more time off?
I suppose there might be some contrived situation where it would be more possible to access a space less frequently, but you've totally broken your argument by suggesting that the time you need it would simultaneously be shorter.
I don't understand this at all, sorry. If you show up less frequently, how can you attend more?
I assume that you want to argue that a student who can only commit to a certain number of meetings per week will make it to more meetings in total if they are spread out over a longer time. I will grant that as a possibility, but it seems more likely to me that a student who does not have robotics as a priority (for whatever reason) under the current system will not make more of a commitment if the build season gets longer.
I made edits to clarify the first two so I'll spend some time on 1.3. See my last. I'll add to 1.1 too.
1.1,
Longer time to work means parts don't need to get to you as fast so one of two things happens. A. you ship parts as fast as possible anyway and get done sooner or B. you can now afford to ship things slower and thus cheaper without worrying about the deadline as much.
on 1.3,
If you have a small leadership team and human resources are split between supporting the build effort and more of the work that gets done to maintain a successful program and all the planning for events etc, etc, then if you are able to focus on the build it self less often during the span of a week then you would have more time in that week for other things. Assuming that you spend roughly the same total hrs working on the robot between kickoff and competition as you did between kickoff and Feb X.
On 2
Again if you choose to work roughly the same #of hrs you have more days per week that you won't need physically be at your own program, and more time between meetings to do things like prepare for the next meeting or in the case of 2.1 drive or skype to another team you are working with.
In the case of 2.2,
Say Jim from GE can only spare 2 afternoon week days a week mentoring FRC. Regardless of remote presence options that's all the spare time he has. Lets say this rookie team meets 4 weekdays and a Saturday. That's 30 total team meetings and Jim could do 12 (40%). If the team met 3 weekdays and a Saturday for 8 weeks he made 16 total (50%). More time overall but the mentor also got to guide them through more of the work than before.
2.3,
The problem wouldn't be total work it would be how many different things is this new and likely small mentor base having to juggle at the same time. Burnout is burnout. You need more power to do x amount in 1 unit time than x amount in 2 unit time. I can give a more specific anecdote/example if you want.
3. Say management of X property would rather you end your meetings at 7 but you usually end at 8 on weekdays. Say in six weeks you met 3 weekdays from 5-8 and you can push it up because school. That's 54 hrs of weekdays in 6 weeks. If you have 8 weeks with the same number of weekday meetings you would have 48hrs(89%) as opposed to just 36hrs (67%). Now you have less of a deficit to make up by adding meeting days or adding weekend time (by ~22%). If management of X property didn't care than it wouldn't affect you and would be a wash.
4. Similar to 2.2-3,
If a team meets more often than a student is able to show up they can be left behind or not be able to join. If meetings were less frequent but you still had just as many they would be able to attend a higher percentage of said meetings.
jman4747
29-05-2016, 20:50
Translation: We can work with a more flexible schedule. That I can buy. Basically, you don't pay the expedited shipping, and you can have someone make more stuff. (I will note that one of my team's sponsors came on very late in build--we had the parts from them in a very short turnaround. We may be the exception, though...)
Oh you are the exception... before I explained the build schedule to our sheet metal fabricator he quoted 3 weeks for our parts...
I've found most dedicated machine shops have over 4 week turnarounds for milling & turning. Die makers are more. Everyone isn't the same and 2D (water, laser, plasma) is faster but limited. It also depends on time of year or if a tool is down or anything else you don't want to hear in week 4. Iv'e found that business that have these tools but don't just make parts for people (ie. manufacture their own products with them) can be a bit better but A. they have to be able to brake production B. the machinists need to be able to handle more than what the machine normally sees C. these businesses are a bit harder to identify. They don't advertise as job shops so it can be hard to know who would have that kind of tooling.
Alan Anderson
30-05-2016, 04:05
I made edits...
I see what you were getting at regarding costs now. I agree with Eric's summary of the benefit: extending the build season gives you more options for scheduling parts build and delivery.
2.3,
The problem wouldn't be total work it would be how many different things is this new and likely small mentor base having to juggle at the same time. Burnout is burnout. You need more power to do x amount in 1 unit time than x amount in 2 unit time. I can give a more specific anecdote/example if you want.
In my experience, power is not the limiting factor. Energy is. You're trying to argue that doing less for a longer time is preferable to doing more for a shorter time. The counterarguments come at that from both directions: a team that "needs more time" isn't going to benefit from doing the same amount of work across more weeks, and a team that already manages their time effectively is not likely to reduce their power in the way you're suggesting that "struggling" teams will be able to benefit from. You haven't obviously helped anyone, and you have very likely increased the divide between "low-tier" and "high-tier" teams.
I also disagree with your claim that "burnout is burnout". In isolation, that might be true. But add in mentors' families and you will find that it's often calendar days that matter, not just days of high effort. Even if I work with the team only three days per week for eight weeks instead of four days per week for six weeks, I'm still spending concentrated time on robotics for two more weeks according to the people at home who are counting.
3. Say management of X property would rather you end your meetings at 7 but you usually end at 8 on weekdays. Say in six weeks you met 3 weekdays from 5-8 and you can push it up because school. That's 54 hrs of weekdays in 6 weeks. If you have 8 weeks with the same number of weekday meetings you would have 48hrs(89%) as opposed to just 36hrs (67%). Now you have less of a deficit to make up by adding meeting days or adding weekend time (by ~22%). If management of X property didn't care than it wouldn't affect you and would be a wash.
This probably makes sense to you, but it's just number salad to me. I can see where the 54 comes from, but no matter how I look at it, I can't find a way to get any of the other hours or percentages you list. Six weeks gives 54, but adding two more weeks "with the same number of weekday meetings" somehow gives six fewer hours? Where does the "as opposed to just 36hrs" come from?
The first sentence seems to say you aren't working within the property manager's preferences, so how is any of this relevant anyway? And what the heck does "push it up because school" mean?
Based on the changes you made to your first two arguments, I figure there's just something in your head that didn't quite make it out your fingers clearly enough for me to work with.
4. Similar to 2.2-3,
If a team meets more often than a student is able to show up they can be left behind or not be able to join. If meetings were less frequent but you still had just as many they would be able to attend a higher percentage of said meetings.
This would be true if the only reason a student can't attend is an absolute lack of hours in the week to spend on the team.
But if the problem is a conflict between the meeting times and either a job or some other extracurricular activities, simply cutting out some of those meetings isn't necessarily going to help. And if the problem is that the student just is not sufficiently committed to the team, spreading out the meetings won't change the situation.
You also ignore the fact that teams are already meeting after bag & tag day. For many teams, if you reduce the frequency of meetings during the first six weeks after kickoff, all you've done is reduce the total number of times they meet.
jman4747
30-05-2016, 12:40
I see what you were getting at regarding costs now. I agree with Eric's summary of the benefit: extending the build season gives you more options for scheduling parts build and delivery.
In my experience, power is not the limiting factor. Energy is. You're trying to argue that doing less for a longer time is preferable to doing more for a shorter time. The counterarguments come at that from both directions: a team that "needs more time" isn't going to benefit from doing the same amount of work across more weeks, and a team that already manages their time effectively is not likely to reduce their power in the way you're suggesting that "struggling" teams will be able to benefit from. You haven't obviously helped anyone, and you have very likely increased the divide between "low-tier" and "high-tier" teams.
I also disagree with your claim that "burnout is burnout". In isolation, that might be true. But add in mentors' families and you will find that it's often calendar days that matter, not just days of high effort. Even if I work with the team only three days per week for eight weeks instead of four days per week for six weeks, I'm still spending concentrated time on robotics for two more weeks according to the people at home who are counting.
This probably makes sense to you, but it's just number salad to me. I can see where the 54 comes from, but no matter how I look at it, I can't find a way to get any of the other hours or percentages you list. Six weeks gives 54, but adding two more weeks "with the same number of weekday meetings" somehow gives six fewer hours? Where does the "as opposed to just 36hrs" come from?
The first sentence seems to say you aren't working within the property manager's preferences, so how is any of this relevant anyway? And what the heck does "push it up because school" mean?
Based on the changes you made to your first two arguments, I figure there's just something in your head that didn't quite make it out your fingers clearly enough for me to work with.
This would be true if the only reason a student can't attend is an absolute lack of hours in the week to spend on the team.
But if the problem is a conflict between the meeting times and either a job or some other extracurricular activities, simply cutting out some of those meetings isn't necessarily going to help. And if the problem is that the student just is not sufficiently committed to the team, spreading out the meetings won't change the situation.
You also ignore the fact that teams are already meeting after bag & tag day. For many teams, if you reduce the frequency of meetings during the first six weeks after kickoff, all you've done is reduce the total number of times they meet.
You seem to be just barely missing the main point. "extending the build season gives you more options for scheduling parts build and delivery." Change that to, "extending the build season gives you more options for scheduling everything about how you run your team between Jan and April"
As for power I literary mean work over time which is my example. X amount of work in 1 unit time vs X amount of work in 2 units time. If you would rather do X work in 1 unit time than how am I stopping you? If a team can function better doing X work in 2 units time then you are hurting them.
"This would be true if the only reason a student can't attend is an absolute lack of hours in the week to spend on the team." And? That's one more sub group of students that can attend that couldn't. Meanwhile the examples you mentioned aren't even hurt by the change. Explain how that is not a net gain.
"You also ignore the fact that teams are already meeting after bag & tag day. For many teams, if you reduce the frequency of meetings during the first six weeks after kickoff, all you've done is reduce the total number of times they meet."
If you already meet after bag and tag then this doesn't affect you. My argument isn't about how much extra time you get to build a robot it's about how much extra time you get to do everything else since you can focus on the robot a little less. If you are already meeting after bag & tag day then don't change your schedule unless you want to. Again how is that not a net gain?
"I can see where the 54 comes from..."
Yes I spelled it out. I'll do it farther.
3 weekdays, 3hrs each, 6 weeks. 3*3*6=54 hrs
Management of X property would rather you end your weekday meetings 1 hr sooner. You can't make up the time by meeting earlier in the day because it is a school day.
If the build is still six weeks:
3 weekdays, 2hrs each, 6 weeks. 3*2*6=36 hrs or 67% of the amount of time you had when your meetings were 3hrs long
If their is no bag and tag (we'll use 8 weeks as an example).
3 weekdays. 2hrs each, 8 weeks. 3*2*8=48 hrs or 89% of the amount of time you had when your meetings were 3hrs long and you had 6 weeks.
A difference of 22%.
If management of X property doesn't care how long you stay than it doesn't matter and you lose nothing. Net gain.
I'm not saying everyone should or can do anything I'm writing rather I'm giving you some examples of how someone can use the added time to improve their specific situation. If you would rather not spread out your meetings then don't. If you want to meet every day anyway then do. You seem to think I think that everyone will benefit significantly and that for this idea to be valid everyone needs to. Of course everyone won't take advantage of it properly but their are people who will and if that ends up saving that team it was worth it.
I'm not saying everyone should or can do anything I'm writing rather I'm giving you some examples of how someone can use the added time to improve their specific situation. If you would rather not spread out your meetings then don't. If you want to meet every day anyway then do. You seem to think I think that everyone will benefit significantly and that for this idea to be valid everyone needs to. Of course everyone won't take advantage of it properly but their are people who will and if that ends up saving that team it was worth it.
What we're saying is this:
If you want to be competitive with your local powerhouse, this schedule will make. things. worse. I can't be any clearer than that. You're not helping the teams that don't do time management well.
And the reason is that while you're spreading out your time to ease up a little on your crew, they're maintaining their schedule and using that extra time to get that last 10% of untapped optimization down to 5%, 2.5%, you get the idea.
Let me put it this way: I can think of at least one team that would still show up at their first event needing a lot of help. And by a lot of help I mean that they'll be lucky to have a structure with some functional parts mounted to it when they show up. Not having to deal with a bag probably won't make a difference.
This thread has largely devolved into a "Will Not/Will Too" conversation. The opinions are so clearly opposite as to what will or will not improve sustainability, and no one seems to be shifting position, or even understanding the other side's arguments, as though we're having two different arguments. As a first hack at this apparent Gordian Knot, I'll ask (and answer) the question:
What does FRC sustainability mean to you?
My definition derives from a more general definition I found on line. Applied to an FRC team, to me it means:
The ability of an existing active FRC team to continue being an active FRC team indefinitely.
As lack of sustainability is the primary source of team attrition, attrition rates (or more precisely retention rates) are a good first order measure of team sustainability. Teams can improve their sustainability through diversification of their various resources (mentors, students, money, facilities, supplies), and even more so through implementing a plan or culture through which new mentors, students, and sponsors are regularly identified/recruited at least as fast as the existing ones cease.
Does FRC sustainability mean this, or something different, to you?
Alan Anderson
30-05-2016, 20:14
You seem to be just barely missing the main point. "extending the build season gives you more options for scheduling parts build and delivery." Change that to, "extending the build season gives you more options for scheduling everything about how you run your team between Jan and April"
Forgive the bluntness, but nope.
Eliminating (or delaying) a bag & tag deadline will not give you any more scheduling options for anything which does not involve building a robot, because you have all those options already.
"This would be true if the only reason a student can't attend is an absolute lack of hours in the week to spend on the team." And? That's one more sub group of students that can attend that couldn't. Meanwhile the examples you mentioned aren't even hurt by the change. Explain how that is not a net gain.
The examples I mentioned can definitely suffer if the robot build takes longer. Don't you notice an obvious increase in "catching up" with schoolwork, chores, social events, etc. once the robot is in the bag? That's not likely to change just because the team meetings are an hour shorter. If the problem is time management in general, adding time is not a useful solution.
"I can see where the 54 comes from..."
Yes I spelled it out. I'll do it farther.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I think I might have been confused by a missing "not" (or at least a missing "'t" on the word "can") in your original post, and I know I was confused by failing to grasp that the 3 hour meetings were being changed to 2 hour meetings.
I mostly understand what you're saying now. I don't accept the outcome, because there are many unaddressed factors, but I do accept the math of what you do address.
You seem to think I think that everyone will benefit significantly and that for this idea to be valid everyone needs to. Of course everyone won't take advantage of it properly but their are people who will and if that ends up saving that team it was worth it.
I have seen many teams. I have seen how a lot of them work, and I have seen how a lot of them struggle. I can point to none of them as being able to benefit from applying their present build effort over a longer time.
If getting rid of bag & tag will help a team become more sustainable, it's going to be because they can spend more time on the robot, period. You have described well how to reduce the number of hours spent per week, but you have not shown any evidence that the number of hours spent per week is a problem.
marshall
30-05-2016, 20:35
This thread has largely devolved into a "Will Not/Will Too" conversation. The opinions are so clearly opposite as to what will or will not improve sustainability, and no one seems to be shifting position, or even understanding the other side's arguments, as though we're having two different arguments. As a first hack at this apparent Gordian Knot, I'll ask (and answer) the question:
What does FRC sustainability mean to you?
My definition derives from a more general definition I found on line. Applied to an FRC team, to me it means:
The ability of an existing active FRC team to continue being an active FRC team indefinitely.
As lack of sustainability is the primary source of team attrition, attrition rates (or more precisely retention rates) are a good first order measure of team sustainability. Teams can improve their sustainability through diversification of their various resources (mentors, students, money, facilities, supplies), and even more so through implementing a plan or culture through which new mentors, students, and sponsors are regularly identified/recruited at least as fast as the existing ones cease.
Does FRC sustainability mean this, or something different, to you?
I agree with this definition.
I agree with this definition.
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
I also agree with the definition, and would like an explanation in similar words how shipping the robot would do the same. Read as: why we're complaining about this now instead of 10 years ago.
(I'm an old-timer, when I graduated high school everybody stuck their robot in a crate and turned it over to the shipping folks by midnight on ship day instead of sticking it in a bag at midnight on ship day--and what's this thing about "withholding allowance" again?)
Chief Hedgehog
31-05-2016, 00:12
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
Second...
And to go off on a long limb (this does not reflect back on you or your comment, GeeTwo, just a tangent)...
What is so bad about attrition as long as the FRC pool of teams continues to rise? In essence - some teams die on the vine and others flourish. This is not a reflection on FRC but an exercise of Darwin's 'natural selection'. Teams that have what it takes can make it - and others do not. FIRST and it's sponsors have already done their work by spreading out their resources to teams that may need it - but how have those teams used these resources?
Or are we in a place in FRC that we all need equal access to all resources?
Yes, my team wants to have what the best of the best have - but we are confined to the resources in our area. And I will be honest with you, I believe that we have enough resources to compete with the 'best of FRC teams'. We feel that our greatest resource is 'time' with 'talent' being a close second.
So here is what sustainability means to me:
Build/create a strong mentor core that can withstand the exit of student talent. Have a SWOT plan in place so that we can withstand long-term ebb and flow of sponsors/student talent/space/etc. Creating a Booster Club to aid in our fundraising efforts and back the team/club when the School Board is making significant changes that effect our funding. Founding and supporting FTC and FLL teams that will produce the new wave of innovation for the FRC team. Creating a HUB from teams in a similar geography to aid each other in time of need.
You see, none of these rely upon FIRST - and none truly go back to the students themselves. If your FRC team is set up to succeed - it is set up so that the students can succeed as the mentors and support groups do the work that they are designed to do. Yes, it takes a lot of work by the lead mentors; and yes it may take years to establish this culture... but for us in Becker, MN - it has served us well. FRC 4607 is a success as it graduates 10-15 students each season and we look to bring in another 10-20 that can take the place of those that graduated. How do we do this? By creating opportunities for those in the lower grades. Last year we started 3 FTC teams and 3 FLL teams.
Last Wednesday we registered students for our FTC teams and we are now creating 2 more teams... and by September I am expecting to create 2 more. That means in a town of 4500 people, we will have 6-7 FTC teams. These teams will be made up of kids from Becker, St Cloud, Big Lake, Clearwater, etc. And I am certain we will have at least 5-6 FLL teams as well.
Oh - and our largest sponsor gives us $3500 a year. Most of our sponsors give between $250-500 (cash and in-kind). And we have 24 of these - all of which we worked our butts off to bring into the fold. And we are in Central Minnesota, in the middle of Potato Fields - 9-15 miles in every direction.
edit - I am not saying that teams need to fold, but teams need to have strong leadership. Money can entice leaders, but it does not guarantee strong leaders.
marshall
31-05-2016, 07:13
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
How about when a first year team has a miserable first year because they can't iterate on their design due to a stupid plastic bag...
How about when a first year mentor gets scolded by an LRI because they lost the B&T form and that causes them to have a terrible event experience (seriously, happened this year)...
Explain to me how keeping B&T keeps teams alive. You can use big words though.
I can't guarantee that giving teams more time to iterate on their designs will help everyone but it has the ability to help some and it is a reasonable idea. Eliminate the bags! #NeverBag
Sperkowsky
31-05-2016, 07:35
Story time.
In 2015 our team was coming off 2 terrible seasons. We had designs both those seasons but failed to execute them running out of time every year.
We had a design and executed the whole thing in time. Our issue however was that, that design did not work. We could have probably fixed all the flaws and had a decent season but, we found this out on bag day.
I even frantically posted this thread for help - http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134801
But.... It was too late.
We went to our one and only competition spent the entire time trying to get it to work only to ultimately fail due to our lack of tooling and time.
We finished in dead last and continued our 5 year streak of no awards.
If bag and tag was not there we may have been able to gut the old system put a new one and compete at the very least.
This year we finished week 3. I guess that's a result of SBDSD.
Chris is me
31-05-2016, 08:56
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
People have been doing this the whole time, but you don't really consider their arguments valid or correct, so why bother?
The biggest impact is on teams barely going to two events - they have a robot in the bag they know can be fixed but their chance to fix problems is artificially limited by a garbage bag that a third of FRC has a stronger emotional attachment to than the actual goals of the program. This was my old team, 2791, for many years. Small changes we could make, big changes we could not. We went to the CT regional in 2011 knowing we were terrible, that we had almost no chance of making the elimination rounds, and with really no opportunity to make improvements to the robot. The team almost died that year. Obviously there's more to the story than "the robot was in a bag" but these things were related.
Several people are posting arguments to the effect of "well, some teams will still be bad, therefore it won't completely solve the problem, therefore we shouldn't do it". What a bunch of hogwash. If even a few struggling teams do better this way and can play at a more sustainable and competitive level, isn't it worth it? This will make some FRC teams more sustainable, it's just a matter of if we're willing to do it, or if the people that don't feel like trying after 6 weeks without the self control to stop themselves will make the entire league worse for the sake of an outdated tradition.
Ryan Dognaux
31-05-2016, 10:23
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
It may not outright kill teams, but it sure isn't doing us any favors when trying to grow & sustain FRC teams.
I've personally witnessed team success drive team sustainability. Many argue that robot performance does not matter at all, that it has zero bearing on if a team will succeed or fail long-term. I believe that this is false and that long term sustainability and long term improvement - both on and off the playing field - share a common link.
A team that plays well and to the best of their abilities and has some measure of success at a competition is an inspired team. They're excited, they're happy, they're proud. The students, mentors, & sponsors feel good because all of the time and effort they put into their teams paid off in some tangible way. Not an intangible "we really learned a lot this year, have a pat on the back" way but "wow, we programmed 3 autonomous modes that worked in 90% of our matches and won an award because of our consistency, and made it to the elimination rounds."
There are teams that never have that second moment I just described, ever. And at some point enough is enough - the students, mentors and sponsors don't see the students getting excited and they as a team aren't feeling inspired. Those are teams that fold after repeated years of feeling not so great after competitions.
Could ending bag and tag help improve the above scenario? I'd argue yes, it very well could for many teams. It gives teams a little more time to have that 'ah ha!' moment and get things working. It doesn't punish teams that can't build an extra drive base to put their 30 lbs of withholding allowance on to continue to practice and iterating. If we can raise the bar even a little bit for the lower and mid-tier teams, isn't that worth it?
Look to the VEX robotics competition if you want an example of how it should be done - no bag and tag. Constant robot access for iteration, improvement and practice. Would VRC be half of what it is today if they had a tools down / bag & tag policy? I'd argue no.
I still haven't read one statement arguing why bag and tag is still necessary other than statements that hint at "It's the way we've always done it!" I'm sorry, but that's not a good enough reason to continue to do it. There were plenty of people who shot down the district model because it was different. Now it's the future of FRC.
As a community that's supposed to be innovative and trying to drive culture change, we sure are afraid of trying anything new.
Michael Corsetto
31-05-2016, 10:37
... their chance to fix problems is artificially limited by a garbage bag that a third of FRC has a stronger emotional attachment to than the actual goals of the program.
Zing!
EricLeifermann
31-05-2016, 10:39
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
B&T is the epitome of doing something just because we always have. FIRST is about innovation and inspiration. Removing B&T has a huge ability to do both.
popnbrown
31-05-2016, 11:09
I still haven't read one statement arguing why bag and tag is still necessary
For the sake of giving you an answer, since you've asked a few times, and because adding more chaos sounds like a great idea. 6 weeks has always been a selling point. We always tell potential sponsors/students/mentors how we build this robot in SIX WEEKS.
So while I can't argue it's necessity, the value it does provide is a universal limited time frame that's apparently significantly shorter than real world projects. I view it as a really really good opportunity to learn about project/time management.
nuclearnerd
31-05-2016, 11:32
For the sake of giving you an answer, since you've asked a few times, and because adding more chaos sounds like a great idea. 6 weeks has always been a selling point. We always tell potential sponsors/students/mentors how we build this robot in SIX WEEKS.
So while I can't argue it's necessity, the value it does provide is a universal limited time frame that's apparently significantly shorter than real world projects. I view it as a really really good opportunity to learn about project/time management.
Which doesn't go away if you lose bag and tag. Tell your sponsors you have an 8 week or 10 week build season. They are still going to be hella impressed at your time management.
Andrew Schreiber
31-05-2016, 11:38
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
Is B&T actively killing teams? No. Absolutely not.
Is removing it going to make FRC harder for at risk teams? I don't have evidence to believe so.
Is keeping it making life harder for those same teams? I believe so.
What benefit does B&T really bring to our program besides an artificial constraint? And is that artificial constraint important to the goals of the program?
Michael Corsetto
31-05-2016, 11:43
For the sake of giving you an answer, since you've asked a few times, and because adding more chaos sounds like a great idea. 6 weeks has always been a selling point. We always tell potential sponsors/students/mentors how we build this robot in SIX WEEKS.
Every time I tell someone we built our robot in six weeks, my nose grows a few inches...
Ryan Dognaux
31-05-2016, 11:45
For the sake of giving you an answer, since you've asked a few times, and because adding more chaos sounds like a great idea. 6 weeks has always been a selling point. We always tell potential sponsors/students/mentors how we build this robot in SIX WEEKS.
While that is a nice selling point, that's mostly what it is - just marketing. With withholding allowances and second robots, plenty of teams keep right on building and iterating past bag & tag. Replace six weeks with eight or ten and it's no less impressive to a potential sponsor or mentor. I fear that the 6 week selling point has been engrained in FRC's culture for so long now that it's basically a non-starter for discussion.
EricLeifermann
31-05-2016, 11:47
While that is a nice selling point, that's mostly what it is - just marketing. With withholding allowances and second robots, plenty of teams keep right on building and iterating past bag & tag. Replace six weeks with eight or ten and it's no less impressive to a potential sponsor or mentor. I fear that the 6 week selling point has been engrained in FRC's culture for so long now that it's basically a non-starter for discussion.
The 6 weeks came about also because of the out dated need to actually have FedEx come pick up your robot so they could get it to your competition in time.
We no longer ship our robot why are we bagging it?
Alan Anderson
31-05-2016, 11:47
I still haven't read one statement arguing why bag and tag is still necessary other than statements that hint at "It's the way we've always done it!"
It's obviously not the way we've always done it. Back in the day, FRC had a single deadline for crating and shipping the robot. At the very beginning of FRC, that was perfectly understandable, because there was a single competition. As regional competitions came to be, with different dates for some of them, it still made sense to keep a consistent crate & ship date so that every team got the same number of days to design and build their robot. Now that shipping crates to competitions is no longer a universal thing, we get the same effect by having a single deadline for placing the robot out of reach of tools.
So there's the past and the present. Now let's consider the future.
Is it still reasonable to "artificially" end robot work on the same day for every team? I think it is. It keeps the playing field level and doesn't put early-competing teams at a disadvantage by giving them less time to work on their robot. High-resource teams can find ways to make productive use of additional time even without access to the robot, of course, but I believe that to be a team strength that should yield benefits. It is not something that can be easily addressed on the "playing field" front.
Having the six week deadline is also a concept that I know many mentors plan on in order to justify deep involvement with a team during the build. Without it, I myself would definitely cut down the time I spend in a given week, and I am pretty sure I would end up contributing significantly less time in total outside the actual competitions.
Alan Anderson
31-05-2016, 11:58
Every time I tell someone we built our robot in six weeks, my nose grows a few inches...
Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?
Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.
Whatever
31-05-2016, 12:34
My daughter was a Freshman this year and this was her first year of FRC after two years of FTC. She made the comment to me that one of the things she liked about FRC versus FTC was bag and tag.
In FTC, it always seemed like someone would have an idea about how to make this part or that part better. The result was the robot would get torn apart between competitions and it became a stressful race against the clock to get it back together. She liked the fact that the competition bot for FRC was safe in a bag between competitions and the tinkerers had to work their improvements out elsewhere.
Ryan Dognaux
31-05-2016, 12:35
It's obviously not the way we've always done it. Back in the day, FRC had a single deadline for crating and shipping the robot.
The artificial stop build day is what I refer to when I say 'it's always been done this way.'
Back when we shipped robots it made sense - there were few competitions and transit time needed to be factored in. Now we bag and tag for some reason - even though it really doesn't make sense to. There's no need (except international teams) to crate up the robot and ship it anymore.
Why stifle a team's creativity and innovation by making them put their robot into a bag a few weeks before they'll actually compete?
Michael Corsetto
31-05-2016, 12:59
Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?
Our robot is built in 16 weeks, not 6. The robot on Einstein was very different than the robot at our first regional. This has been the case for 1678 the past 4 years, just look at our photo albums online.
We build three robots and develop throughout the four month build season. We use withholding allowance to get new parts on the robot. We are not alone.
To say we built our championship robot in 6 weeks/45 days is simply not true.
Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.
I do miss the "identical spare parts" wording. That would be very nice for spares.
However, getting rid of withholding means we have to make all of our parts at the regional if we want to upgrade our robot. Don't worry, we would still upgrade our robot between events. CNC router, lathe and drill press in the pit would help make that possible.
Adding more barriers between teams and their robots will make the best teams even better than everyone else. We have the resources to get around every barrier you (or FIRST) can think of. Just stop trying.
-Mike
Fusion_Clint
31-05-2016, 13:06
My daughter was a Freshman this year and this was her first year of FRC after two years of FTC. She made the comment to me that one of the things she liked about FRC versus FTC was bag and tag.
In FTC, it always seemed like someone would have an idea about how to make this part or that part better. The result was the robot would get torn apart between competitions and it became a stressful race against the clock to get it back together. She liked the fact that the competition bot for FRC was safe in a bag between competitions and the tinkerers had to work their improvements out elsewhere.
I agree 100% with this!
I even plan on making a bag and tag rule for my FTC teams this upcoming year to help manage teenage procrastination and the tinkerer syndrome.
Andrew Schreiber
31-05-2016, 13:09
Adding more barriers between teams and their robots will make the best teams even better than everyone else. We have the resources to get around every barrier you (or FIRST) can think of. Just stop trying.
And if you don't have them, you can get them. Thus denying either those resources or time you could have given to teams in need.
AdamHeard
31-05-2016, 13:10
I agree 100% with this!
I even plan on making a bag and tag rule for my FTC teams this upcoming year to help manage teenage procrastination and the tinkerer syndrome.
What some people negatively refer to as "tinkerer syndrome", others positively refer to as "continuous improvement".
Allison K
31-05-2016, 13:22
Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?
Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.
Speaking as head coach of a team that's spent three years consciously working towards being highly competitive (observing and interviewing top teams, and emulating them)... limiting withholding to identical spare parts or removing it entirely wouldn't particularly have an effect on our ability to work outside the six weeks and within the rules. We rebuilt a significant portion of our robot at one of our events this year (state champs) and when we ran out of withholding allowance we simply designed mechanisms that we could build from raw materials & COTS, during the practice match period, and with equipment we can reasonably fit in our 10x10 pit. We built up the new mechanisms once or twice at home to make sure we knew what problems to expect, used the practice robot to do dry runs of tearing mechanisms down and rebuilding them to improve speed, and then left all that at home and packed up the raw material and COTS to do it all over again. From week one of build we planned our season around continuous iteration through World Champs. District #1 goal was breach & score low, District #2 goal was breach and score high, State Champs goal was vision tracking auto (spectacular fail, busy rebuilding everything else), and World Champs goal was add scaling (also fail, turns out it's hard to do much in the 10 days between states and worlds).
Per the original topic on what HQ can do to remove barriers to continued participation... reduce costs, particularly in registration fees. I guess I've always assumed that the initial registration fee is a marketing decision (it's like a fancy car, would lose prestige if it were lower) but I'll give HQ benefit of the doubt and say that the current revenues are justified and well utilized. What would we be willing to go without in exchange for reduced initial registration fee and/or reduced district champs/second regional registration fee? Kit of Parts? Personally I'd probably give up KoP if it meant a few thousand saved.
EricLeifermann
31-05-2016, 13:34
I agree 100% with this!
I even plan on making a bag and tag rule for my FTC teams this upcoming year to help manage teenage procrastination and the tinkerer syndrome.
Except for the fact it is both easier and cheaper to completely rebuild a FTC robot compared to an FRC robot.
Arguments about teams having a lack of self control and knowing when to take breaks or not do something to their robot are BS. Its not up to FIRST to control how and when your team meets or how much work your team puts in. If you don't have the will to stop when your burnt out then that's your problem.
B&T only costs teams money, time, and heartache. It does not level the playing field. It does not save people/teams from them selves. It does not inspire. It does not do anything of benefit.
Chris is me
31-05-2016, 13:40
Except for the fact it is both easier and cheaper to completely rebuild a FTC robot compared to an FRC robot.
Arguments about teams having a lack of self control and knowing when to take breaks or not do something to their robot are BS. Its not up to FIRST to control how and when your team meets or how much work your team puts in. If you don't have the will to stop when your burnt out then that's your problem.
B&T only costs teams money, time, and heartache. It does not level the playing field. It does not save people/teams from them selves. It does not inspire. It does not do anything of benefit.
The poster even noted how they were implementing a similar rule in FTC. Note how they didn't have to change the rules of FTC worldwide to impose that restriction on themselves! They just decided to use self control and to limit themselves by their own choice.
Getting rid of B&T doesn't stop anyone who wants to stop working from doing so. They are still free to put their tools down on ship day. Sure, nobody else who is competitive (and able to keep working) will stop working on ship day, but they already weren't stopping anyway. I bet for most of the top teams in FRC, their meeting schedule doesn't even change after bag day.
PayneTrain
31-05-2016, 13:45
Gentlemen! Congratulations on a fantastic thread so far. I have been hesitant to enter the fray up until this point, but the discussion is just so riveting and well reasoned, I finally stopped bloodying up the wall at my desk with my head to post this. The bag and tag <SNIP> has never been so incredible to bear witness to.
Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.
At this point you are either trolling or refuse to read the thread. On the first page of the thread, a poster made this comment on it:
It hits on the most obvious way to improve sustainability immediately, reduce the logistical and financial barriers to entry. Bag and tag creates artificially high barriers that are too much to overcome for many teams who operate near the margins.
So if the inverse was true, bag and tag in his eyes increases logistical and financial barriers to entry.
Whether or not you choose to believe that line of thinking is not on me, but you aren't doing yourself a lot of favors by complaining that people do not understand one side of the argument when you seemingly blatantly are ignoring the already existing replies on the topic. I would applaud such a breathtaking troll job but I fear you are sincere.
It may not outright kill teams, but it sure isn't doing us any favors when trying to grow & sustain FRC teams.
I've personally witnessed team success drive team sustainability. Many argue that robot performance does not matter at all, that it has zero bearing on if a team will succeed or fail long-term. I believe that this is false and that long term sustainability and long term improvement - both on and off the playing field - share a common link.
A team that plays well and to the best of their abilities and has some measure of success at a competition is an inspired team. They're excited, they're happy, they're proud. The students, mentors, & sponsors feel good because all of the time and effort they put into their teams paid off in some tangible way. Not an intangible "we really learned a lot this year, have a pat on the back" way but "wow, we programmed 3 autonomous modes that worked in 90% of our matches and won an award because of our consistency, and made it to the elimination rounds."
There are teams that never have that second moment I just described, ever. And at some point enough is enough - the students, mentors and sponsors don't see the students getting excited and they as a team aren't feeling inspired. Those are teams that fold after repeated years of feeling not so great after competitions.
Could ending bag and tag help improve the above scenario? I'd argue yes, it very well could for many teams. It gives teams a little more time to have that 'ah ha!' moment and get things working. It doesn't punish teams that can't build an extra drive base to put their 30 lbs of withholding allowance on to continue to practice and iterating. If we can raise the bar even a little bit for the lower and mid-tier teams, isn't that worth it?
Look to the VEX robotics competition if you want an example of how it should be done - no bag and tag. Constant robot access for iteration, improvement and practice. Would VRC be half of what it is today if they had a tools down / bag & tag policy? I'd argue no.
I still haven't read one statement arguing why bag and tag is still necessary other than statements that hint at "It's the way we've always done it!" I'm sorry, but that's not a good enough reason to continue to do it. There were plenty of people who shot down the district model because it was different. Now it's the future of FRC.
As a community that's supposed to be innovative and trying to drive culture change, we sure are afraid of trying anything new.
I think people can argue over whether there is direct causation of team sustainability coming from on-field success, but I hypothesize that 95% of teams who make eliminations in one year make it to the next year, and the number is significantly lower for those teams who do not. There is a correlation there worthy of investigation.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the 365 day season of VRC is not necessarily all sunshine and roses. I'll spare this board the invoking of BnS or asking the rhetorical questions like "Why does 118 wait until right before VEX champs to unveil their VEX bots publicly?" but I do not think the design convergence would happen to the same extent in a 15 week FRC season.
**ATTENTION CDENIZENS: PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT TALK ABOUT DESIGN CONVERGENCE'S RELATION TO BAG AND TAG IN THIS THREAD**
My favorite part about FIRST is how that more often than not, people like to argue things that make sense when grouped together into a philosophy or other school of thought, but when using a point in favor or against one thing in the group of opinions, it betrays another part of the philosophy.
B&T is the epitome of doing something just because we always have. FIRST is about innovation and inspiration. Removing B&T has a huge ability to do both.
For example here, I totally agree with you, but some yahoo is going to have an opening here to tell you about why you should like the ending of the singular cmp for the two postseason expos is an example of change people don't like. Then we can circle back to stuff like "Why aren't we all just buying stuff out of the Small Parts catalog from Amazon?" and we'd be talking about the 10 regionals Michigan has.
However one of the most interesting things about this round of the b&t bout is that those who are against its removal seem to be avoiding arguing for how bag and tag improves sustainability. It's been hit on, but not for the sake of telling you how bag and tag keeps the playing field level. I don't give a flying fish about the playing field being level if we are having a problem keeping teams alive. CONSTANTLY DYING FRC TEAMS CAN BE WORSE THAN NO TEAMS. I've been fortunate to be part of only a few totally DoA seasons and they suck and make everyone feel sad. That's not the competitor in me, that's me seeing upset students and worn out mentors. I don't understand why we want to keep putting that on people unless it's a masochism thing.
The internet has evolved into "meme culture". However, one of the OG memes is not something like Rick'Rolling or SANDSTORM DARUDE, but the 6 week build season.
The entirety of my 8 years in FIRST, this line has become more and more farcical.
For the sake of giving you an answer, since you've asked a few times, and because adding more chaos sounds like a great idea. 6 weeks has always been a selling point. We always tell potential sponsors/students/mentors how we build this robot in SIX WEEKS.
So while I can't argue it's necessity, the value it does provide is a universal limited time frame that's apparently significantly shorter than real world projects. I view it as a really really good opportunity to learn about project/time management.
I find the idea of telling mentors and students you build the robot in six weeks to be interesting. How many mentors do you keep when you tell them what is essentially a giant lie up front? How many families? Maybe your team literally does nothing outside of the competitions after you bag it. If not, you're lying.
When it comes to sponsors, we actually talked to our key sponsors this year about our plan to run a true 16 week build season. We talked about how we can improve student engagement by planning a season around building two robots and competing at 5 events over 16 weeks. How did they respond to us wanting to double our build load and triple our competition load? They doubled our money. I'm not saying you get this from every potential sponsor, but taking the opportunity to show them what value we get out of extra events and extra robots really excited them.
Every time I tell someone we built our robot in six weeks, my nose grows a few inches...
Pretty much. Ever since we stopped saying it, student and sponsor retention has gone up!
Is it still reasonable to "artificially" end robot work on the same day for every team? I think it is. It keeps the playing field level and doesn't put early-competing teams at a disadvantage by giving them less time to work on their robot. High-resource teams can find ways to make productive use of additional time even without access to the robot, of course, but I believe that to be a team strength that should yield benefits. It is not something that can be easily addressed on the "playing field" front.
Having the six week deadline is also a concept that I know many mentors plan on in order to justify deep involvement with a team during the build. Without it, I myself would definitely cut down the time I spend in a given week, and I am pretty sure I would end up contributing significantly less time in total outside the actual competitions.
The sphere of thinking that concerns B&T enabling a level playing field requires some mental gymnastics to get to the idea that B&T aids sustainability. One alliance wins a given tournament but all FRC teams have a chance to chase their own success and catch inspiration along the way. How much success can a team catch if they can't drive their robot?
As far as I know, no one is putting a gun that could shoot you in the head in the same bag and tag as the robot your team builds. No one makes me show up to a 422 meeting. I think FIRST would be better off instituting a weekly hours limit with no bag and tag. I am hanging that one out there so someone can tell me its unenforceable.
Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?
Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.
I hope you are in the same trolling academy as GeeTwo. 1678 has to compete like hell to get into worlds in the state of California, as they have to compete in the regional system with no rolling pre-qualifiers to the championship or the new postseason expositions. You're welcome to gum up machine shops at regionals under your proposed rule change. That'll earn a lot of fans.
Although we are guaranteed to get at least 30 more posts in this thread over a bunch of freakin' garbage bags, Andrew did us the favor of putting the horse down already:
Is B&T actively killing teams? No. Absolutely not.
Is removing it going to make FRC harder for at risk teams? I don't have evidence to believe so.
Is keeping it making life harder for those same teams? I believe so.
What benefit does B&T really bring to our program besides an artificial constraint? And is that artificial constraint important to the goals of the program?
I eagerly look forward to what I can only imagine to be <SNIP> that is more circular discussion of a bunch of plastic bags!
----
What is so bad about attrition as long as the FRC pool of teams continues to rise? In essence - some teams die on the vine and others flourish. This is not a reflection on FRC but an exercise of Darwin's 'natural selection'. Teams that have what it takes can make it - and others do not. FIRST and it's sponsors have already done their work by spreading out their resources to teams that may need it - but how have those teams used these resources?
Or are we in a place in FRC that we all need equal access to all resources?
Yes, my team wants to have what the best of the best have - but we are confined to the resources in our area. And I will be honest with you, I believe that we have enough resources to compete with the 'best of FRC teams'. We feel that our greatest resource is 'time' with 'talent' being a close second.
I think the argument about what you are saying comes down to whether or not you believe the primary growth model of FRC should be shotgunning rookie registrations and seeing what happens. As far as I know, there is not a double digit loss of high school lacrosse programs every year. I would like to believe the powers that be know what is best for growing FIRST, but with each passing year I doubt the "shooting the money wad" strategy more and more.
I think how you approach the challenge of sustainability in FRC depends on your answers to at elast these two questions:
Is the current "money shotgun to rookies" growth model still the primary way we should be growing FRC?
Is a bad FRC team better than no FRC team?
notmattlythgoe
31-05-2016, 14:20
...
http://cdn.mothership.sg/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/standing-ovation-ndr.gif
Gentlemen! Congratulations on a fantastic thread so far. ...TL,DR: Teams that struggle to build a sound robot will be best helped by practice before the build season, and the ability to reuse what they accomplish, not a by longer build season for all of FRC.
I'm at the LOL stage. Not the beating my head on a wall stage, and certainly not the thunderous applause stage.
Every argument you (PT) listed has a decent counterargument, and every one of those counterarguments has a decent counter-counterargument,. A few from one side or another have been left out, but most are here somewhere.
What comes to mind most often for me over the last couple of days are these thoughts:
That someone in FIRST didn't set the 44 day limit because of shipping deadlines. That would only be possibly true if the build start date were a law of the universe. It's not. So, does it make sense to drop that line of reasoning? From day one FIRST could have kicked off each season in the Summer/Fall, if they wanted to, and could have created a 6 month build season.
That while the length of the build season is creating a lot of virtual smoke and thunder now, some time in the future I'm confident that robot weight limits, or the number and types of allowed motors, or the rule(s) about restarting from scratch each season, or mandatory bumpers, or ... will be the bete noire and cause celebre. ALL of those cause struggling teams to struggle more when building an FRC robot. ALL of those are arbitrary decisions someone took when they were explicitly deciding what challenges/constraints the FRC annual challenge would entail. But! They were/are arbitrary only in the sense that they involve some judgment/wisdom. I'm 100% sure that their current settings were not chosen capriciously. FRC isn't about building the best robot that can play each game. A part of FRC is about the learning experience of satisfying lots of constraints to build a compromised robot that can do well at the game. Time is simply one of those constraints. This (and the previous bullet) is my observation for Ryan D. and others who rail against the imposition of a time constraint.
That helping struggling teams have a successful build will be best done by helping them practice the construction, programming, and project management before the build season. I say this in the sense of helping them learn to fish, instead of giving them a fish. I suggest adding an inexpensive, Fall, annual, robot-building & project management curriculum, and KOP/BOM, and letting the simple robots built during the Fall compete unmodified (maybe allow some modest changes) in the Winter/Spring (think of plowie in Dave's animations). There will be plenty of devils in the details, including avoiding letting too much of the game cat out of the bag, but the intent behind the current 44-day time constraint will be preserved (won't be circumvented further) in a useful sense; and struggling teams will have a valuable safety net. Siri asked earlier what my idea it's. This is it.
Blake
PS: My suggested Fall curriculum would contain a double-dose of mentor training to dislodge the instinct that "It is about the robot/banner"; and to help them learn how to inspire students to try STEM activities and careers without falling into the trap of letting their team's year in FRC be overly influenced by the few hours they spend at a tournament.
PPS: Did anyone notice what I tried to do in that 3rd bullet? I suggested giving struggling teams a much longer build season, and a way to increase the strength of their team's foundations; without giving non-struggling teams a free pass to over-invest (any more than they might now) in the robot-building part of FRC.
Brace yourselves, reality check incoming.
I would first like to preface this response by letting everyone know that a bag and tag discussion as intense and "bloodying" as this one was not my intention when creating the thread. I also did not think it would morph into an argument this strong.
Before we address the topic of Bag and Tag and whether or not it leads to more sustainable teams, we should define FRC team sustainability itself.
What is FRC sustainability?
Sustainability, by Wikipedia definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability), is the capacity to endure. I will alter this definition slightly for the purposes of future discussion in this thread:
Sustainability, in an FRC sense, is the ability of a team to have a good enough foundation to stay as participants year after year. This foundation is comprised of a team's community support, mentor (technical/business knowledge) support, monetary support/sponsor relations, and finally, a school/student partnership (an incoming stream of students). This foundation should be strong enough that if there is mentor or student turnover, the team should be relatively unaffected in its' ability to continue to participate in the program.
We do NOT need to define sustainability as a level of competition. Being competitive doesn't necessarily mean that a team is sustainable. However, the key here is that when teams improve sustainability and build up their foundations, increased level of competition will come as a side effect.
On the topic of B&T...
Short and simple, Bag and Tag will help improve team sustainability indirectly by allowing lower resource teams to have a longer build season, but it will increase teams' level of competition more than it would increase sustainability. For this reason, I believe that Bag and Tag would be a nice thing to eliminate, BUT building foundations for weak and unstable teams is FAR more conducive to sustainability than getting rid of Bag and Tag.
Edit: To summarize: Help teams build foundations and that will lead to infinitely more sustainable teams.
Now, everybody take your mind off sustainability for a while and go read 254's technical binder (https://media.team254.com/2016/05/97d107e6-technicalBinder2016.pdf). It's awesome.
Remember, the majority of participants in this thread are members of sustainable teams. We should be thinking about several of the new teams in the 5-6000s that had no foundation and will not be participating next year, and how FIRST - the community AND the organization in New Hampshire - can save these teams from going defunct and help grow all of FIRST as a result.
PayneTrain
31-05-2016, 16:00
...
I frankly couldn't give a toss about counter-argument vs argument in the way that my post wasn't really there to take a side on any opinion on B&T; I just wanted to make sure I was not alone in witnessing a stunning lack of awareness of some posters.
On the topic that you were pushing in to, I have a loosely developed idea of how a Division II of FRC could work in some areas but it's not hammered out really well right now and is part of a larger post that this thread at the moment would not benefit from...
Essentially a Division II FRC would take place from August to December, playing a modified version of the game Division I experienced from January to April.
Targeted benefits of Division II
-Cheaper registration fee: Division II events would essentially be FIRST sanctioned offseasons in their structure and venue. You are playing on a worn field. You could/should be able to register a team for $1000 and get two district events?
-Allow Division I teams to mentor Division II teams: it's out of season for potential division I teams so they can use some outreach efforts just by taking their robot to a division II team shop and showing them what they did, or they could invite a division II team in to their shop.
-Train up new volunteers in new roles: pretty much moving a benefit from an offseason competition into a "second season" competition.
-Try out new higher-level rules like no bag and tag, motor allotments, bumpers.
-Give COTS manufacturers time to develop and stock relevant items to lower the cost for these teams
-Probably more benefits
I could also list the drawbacks that I have already considered but frankly I'm interested into seeing how people try to rip it apart. At the administrative level it's hard to see how this can work in anywhere that isn't Ontario, Minnesota, California, or Michigan, and these teams likely would not go to a postseason exposition like Division I has, but the idea is that they might not be able to afford it anyway.
... I have a loosely developed idea of how a Division II of FRC could work in some areas but it's not hammered out really well right now and is part of a larger post that this thread at the moment would not benefit from...
Essentially a Division II FRC would take place from August to December, playing a modified version of the game Division I experienced from January to April.
...
When I thought about creating a division-style split among the teams in order to help struggling teams, I thought of some reasons that discouraged me from suggesting it
A) It would definitely have an effect on struggling teams, but I think the change doesn't directly attack a root cause of teams' struggles. I think those root causes are being ill-prepared for starting the build season part of FRC, plus a few others.
B) I think that struggling teams need a foundation of being better prepared, and need a safety net. Competing in a lower-performing division is still competing (that will include some learning), and competing is distracting. To me creating two divisions didn't shed enough of the problems teams encounter in the current annual rhythm, and didn't focus enough on zero-risk education and practice (that would carry over as a safety net in the Spring).
Blake
Caution, long post.
If I can summarize the B&T debate succinctly so we can get back to increasing sustainability, and be advised that the numbers are just to identify, and assigned in no particular order:
Side 1 says that eliminating B&T makes more sense, would help them more, and teams can still choose to follow B&T if they want to. Side 1 says Side 2 just doesn't get it (and rather openly, I might add).
Side 2 says that keeping B&T makes more sense, and would help them more, for usually opposite reasons than Side 1. And Side 2 also says Side 1 doesn't get it (also rather openly).
Side 3 (a very small minority, generally landing with side 2) says that Side 1 and 2 are both wrong and we should still be operating under robot shipping rules as far as withholding goes.
And no side is willing to back down. I guess Side 4 would be "It doesn't matter what we say, we'll see what FIRST says, now can we get back to discussing sustainability?"
So how about we agree to disagree on that topic (at least for another six months or so, when FIRST announces whether or not B&T is back), assume that at least as far as sustainability is concerned it's a wash either way, and continue on?
Sustainability. What I see there isn't necessarily something HQ can actually do much about. I mean, short of lowering the barrier to entry (anybody not want to pay $4K instead of $5K?), the financial side is always going to be problematic. (I figure a rookie team budget for their first year to be an absolute minimum of $10K--registration, robot, and maybe some cheap T-shirts and tools.) If a team can get that part taken care of, they might or might not be sustainable--let's go with they'd be 33% more sustainable if they can guarantee a revenue stream (and remember, 83% of all statistics are made up on the spot, including the last two.) Maybe Dean's Homework this year will help. Maybe it won't.
Mentoring can be a problem too. I've got a challenge for all ya mentors out there. I see that a lot of experienced folks move to a new area and end up with an established team. A team that's got mentors and has been around a while, and is sustainable. How many teams could you help turn from "maybe they show up with a robot" to "sustainable" by simply working to mentor them instead of the more established team? Think about it. (There's other considerations, I'm aware--for example, the team actually needs mentors because they're set on the rest but NOT mentors--but that's kind of been niggling at me the last 3-4 years.)
Nomadic teams tend to have problems too, I'd think. Imagine having to move every. single. year. Can it be done, sure. I've heard of those teams succeeding despite all the moves. But I think it can be argued that an established "home base" can do a lot more for a team's sustainability than overzealous parents can.:p At least they know where to find the team...
And then there's the dedicated student factor. As in, the students so dedicated that when they graduate the collective team knowledge is gone... Or not dedicated enough to bother showing up.
How many of those
What can FIRST HQ do? More seminars on team management (fundraising, recruiting and retention, finding places to build--that's a start, maybe include "replacing your primary sponsor"). Lower costs of entry. And more Senior Mentors to help teams find those missing pieces. That'd be my top 3 for things that FIRST can do.
If I can summarize the B&T debate succinctly so we can get back to increasing sustainability, and be advised that the numbers are just to identify, and assigned in no particular order:
Tricky thing about sustainability - the two resources are time and money. If all of the members are stressed out and burned out at the end of the season, the team risks folding because low participation time the next year.
--- (my musings on this thread) ---
At this point, I'm of the opinion that most school-based teams would be better served if their finances were a split between a school district and an independent NPO. So many state and local legislatures screw with how extracurriculars are funded/allocated that, IMO, the booster club model is the only real way to sustain a team that doesn't have one large central sponsor. I wonder what FIRST would come up with if they analyzed creating a membership-based financial arm that served as that NPO entity for teams. This would allow GREAT fundraising by a single group of students/adults to really have an impact in later years - something that usually isn't possible in a school budget.
The B&T debate (for me, FWIW) isn't about competitiveness or challenge so much as it is about the stress of a season. As a team who has consistently made it to Worlds we know that our competition season extends the build season by another 8-9 weeks. Even take away all of the CA wins, we would consistently make it to DCMP's now, meaning the season is another 6 weeks after build season.
The 6 week season is a lie for participants who are held accountable for robot performance, and has been for about 8 years. B&T stresses every single one of my build team members - adults and kids - long after 'bag day'.
Alan Anderson
01-06-2016, 16:23
I wonder what FIRST would come up with if they analyzed creating a membership-based financial arm that served as that NPO entity for teams. This would allow GREAT fundraising by a single group of students/adults to really have an impact in later years - something that usually isn't possible in a school budget.
It should be informative to look back at this year's PNW funding structure and see the influence it might have on team sustainability.
Citrus Dad
01-06-2016, 17:43
I frankly couldn't give a toss about counter-argument vs argument in the way that my post wasn't really there to take a side on any opinion on B&T; I just wanted to make sure I was not alone in witnessing a stunning lack of awareness of some posters.
On the topic that you were pushing in to, I have a loosely developed idea of how a Division II of FRC could work in some areas but it's not hammered out really well right now and is part of a larger post that this thread at the moment would not benefit from...
Essentially a Division II FRC would take place from August to December, playing a modified version of the game Division I experienced from January to April.
Targeted benefits of Division II
-Cheaper registration fee: Division II events would essentially be FIRST sanctioned offseasons in their structure and venue. You are playing on a worn field. You could/should be able to register a team for $1000 and get two district events?
-Allow Division I teams to mentor Division II teams: it's out of season for potential division I teams so they can use some outreach efforts just by taking their robot to a division II team shop and showing them what they did, or they could invite a division II team in to their shop.
-Train up new volunteers in new roles: pretty much moving a benefit from an offseason competition into a "second season" competition.
-Try out new higher-level rules like no bag and tag, motor allotments, bumpers.
-Give COTS manufacturers time to develop and stock relevant items to lower the cost for these teams
-Probably more benefits
I could also list the drawbacks that I have already considered but frankly I'm interested into seeing how people try to rip it apart. At the administrative level it's hard to see how this can work in anywhere that isn't Ontario, Minnesota, California, or Michigan, and these teams likely would not go to a postseason exposition like Division I has, but the idea is that they might not be able to afford it anyway.
So how would this fit into the existing offseason events? It might be more fruitful to modify the offseason events to emphasize the experiences for the Div II teams. Changing the draft rules to break up power teams could be one small step. Changing rules to increase the value of easier tasks is another. Other ideas?
Citrus Dad
01-06-2016, 17:51
That helping struggling teams have a successful build will be best done by helping them practice the construction, programming, and project management before the build season. I say this in the sense of helping them learn to fish, instead of giving them a fish. I suggest adding an inexpensive, Fall, annual, robot-building & project management curriculum, and KOP/BOM, and letting the simple robots built during the Fall compete unmodified (maybe allow some modest changes) in the Winter/Spring (think of plowie in Dave's animations). There will be plenty of devils in the details, including avoiding letting too much of the game cat out of the bag, but the intent behind the current 44-day time constraint will be preserved (won't be circumvented further) in a useful sense; and struggling teams will have a valuable safety net. Siri asked earlier what my idea it's. This is it.
[/LIST]
Blake
I think this is a potentially fruitful strategy. The question is how to got more experienced teams to find it in their best interest to reach out--incentives can be incredibly powerful. I suggest that FIRST announce in September that some form of team work will be needed to score maximum points in the upcoming game. In 2014 it was the assist, this year it was getting on the batter to capture. On the other hand, in 2015 a third robot too often became a liability. FIRST should be delivering a clear message about the benefits of coopertition before the build season starts.
That helping struggling teams have a successful build will be best done by helping them practice the construction, programming, and project management before the build season. I say this in the sense of helping them learn to fish, instead of giving them a fish. I suggest adding an inexpensive, Fall, annual, robot-building & project management curriculum, and KOP/BOM, and letting the simple robots built during the Fall compete unmodified (maybe allow some modest changes) in the Winter/Spring (think of plowie in Dave's animations). There will be plenty of devils in the details, including avoiding letting too much of the game cat out of the bag, but the intent behind the current 44-day time constraint will be preserved (won't be circumvented further) in a useful sense; and struggling teams will have a valuable safety net. Siri asked earlier what my idea it's. This is it.
SE Michigan already does something similar to this. A local robotics competition, called OCCRA, is held from September-November. Robots are slightly smaller (but on the same scale) as FRC. Games usually borrow elements from past FRC and VEX games. Some of the key differences:
No direct mentor help
No precision machining (bandsaw and drill press is about as precise as you can get)
No B&T, build throughout the season
A rule book can be found here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17297&d=1410283204
I think this is a potentially fruitful strategy. The question is how to got more experienced teams to find it in their best interest to reach out--incentives can be incredibly powerful. I suggest that FIRST announce in September that some form of team work will be needed to score maximum points in the upcoming game. In 2014 it was the assist, this year it was getting on the batter to capture. On the other hand, in 2015 a third robot too often became a liability. FIRST should be delivering a clear message about the benefits of coopertition before the build season starts.
Yes & Thanks for the hopeful thumbs-up.
My suggested criterion/goal would be "Carry out this lesson plan, and you will build a simple robot (plus driver controls) you can (re)use. Additionally, if you fully take the lessons to heart you will learn how to plan and build a custom robot whenever you feel ready to take that plunge".
Because of the uneven nature of help from other teams, I would urge FIRST to produce a set of pre-season-build, how-to instructions/classes that FIRST standardizes. Experienced teams could become familiar with the instructions and supply valuable face-to-face help.
For new teams FIRST might even make completing the simple bot mandatory in teams' rookie years?
For long-established teams going through a rough patch, building the simple bot gets students' and adults' feet back on the ground, (re)teaches technical and/or project mgmt skills that might have been lost, defuses some arguing & churn, is inexpensive with an easy BOM, generally simplifies everyone's season/year, and ensures that the team will have something to show for their work.
However, getting back to your points, help during the pre-season (wherever it might show up) from experienced teams would be a good thing, and coopertition points to make the resulting simple, consistent robots more useful on-the-field would be a good thing too.
Blake
What I think teams need, and which has only been mentioned a couple times in this thread, is institutional support from FIRST in procuring human and financial resources.
Teams fold because they lose mentors and/or money. There are other reasons, but those are the ones I've seen the most, they're the ones I've experienced myself, and they're the ones that seem to be most prevalent in the (limited) data we have. If FIRST wants to do something about team attrition, they need to do something to help with this. Everything else is just, to use a tired metaphor, rearranging deck chairs in the titanic.
pianotech70
01-06-2016, 22:57
As a newbie to FIRST and robotics in general, as this is my first season, and in a rookie team at that, I would like to offer a few observations. But first I must make a few qualifying statements. We are blessed with great machining facilities, several higly qualified mentors who are well versed in machining and engineering, and decent income. We are not connected to a school, which is a plus factor in some ways, and negatives in others. All in all, we have done well for ourselves in competition in several of the teams we have active. That being said, I look at a few things that have happened, and scratch my head a bit. I originally thought that B&T was a good idea, but since we were able to build a second bot to experiment and tweak and for practice purposes, I guess the B&T idea kinda stopped making as much sense. We did as others do, build a second bot and so recreate our comp bot to an extent because we had the ability to see where a measurement may be off a bit, a motor not tough enough, or a tolerence needing adjusted. SO, B&T was observed, and adhered to stringently to the rules, but we were able to work past that deadline using our practice bot. Not everyone has that ability.
Being that we are not school based, but area based, we don't have to seek permissions that schools ask to 1) travel out of state 2) arrange school transportations 3) deal with class time restrictions 4) beg a school for funding. But we have our own issues anyways as most of you already are aware can arise. Our local school systems are in very tight budget restraints and our independent status is a plus for us. Our money flow is different, and our mentor base is not restricted to a school system's requirements.
But.. as to mentoring needs, there is a goldmine of retired people out there who would love to mentor. There are people in nursing homes that would love to share their expertise with students in the areas of business, and mechanical talents. I personally know a man who was retired that worked for Ford making cars and R&D on rocketpacks!!! Perhaps some of these folks could be tapped? And some retired people have great shop facilities, by the way.
But mentoring can be a great financial aid where money is tight, to reduce the costs of prototyping a design and possibly wasting materials in experimentation, a mentor may be able to steer discussion to more usable directions and avoid obvious mechanical failures.
I guess what I am saying is, B&T is part of the game, but there are ways around it.... if you have the money and wherewithal to afford 2 bots or similar solutions. Mentors are out there, but maybe we need to look in unusual places to find unusual mentors. And utilization of our resources greatly depends on the individual constraints of each individual team. No silver bullet is going to fix all or even most of the problems. I kinda like the dual tier ideas being passed around.
Just my piddling two cents worth from a newbie.
What I think teams need, and which has only been mentioned a couple times in this thread, is institutional support from FIRST in procuring human and financial resources.
Teams fold because they lose mentors and/or money. There are other reasons, but those are the ones I've seen the most, they're the ones I've experienced myself, and they're the ones that seem to be most prevalent in the (limited) data we have. If FIRST wants to do something about team attrition, they need to do something to help with this. Everything else is just, to use a tired metaphor, rearranging deck chairs in the titanic.
Allowing struggling teams to build in the Fall, and use in the Spring, a simple, inexpensive, standard, teaching robot (capable of helping win tournament matches); would allow them to need fewer mentors, to need less from the mentors they have, and to train new mentors.
It would also probably reduce costs (at least a little), while freeing up students and mentors for fundraising activities, instead of consuming them in a typical year's build prep, build, and post-build upgrade time sinks.
The suggestion isn't a miracle cure, but it does seem to help (at least in my head) on several fronts.
Established teams who choose to adopt the option would be consciously choosing to put the robot on the back burner for a year (it's not about the robot) in order to focus on other matters, like getting their funding and/or mentoring house(s) in order; without having to abandon participating in tournaments, etc.
If FIRST did implement something along these lines it wouldn't be the type of direct institutional support from FIRST HQ you had in mind Oblarg, but it would at least be indirect support in that it takes some pressure off struggling teams by putting an easily implemented floor under the robot part of their annual task list.
Blake
IronicDeadBird
02-06-2016, 09:53
I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that teams shouldn't have to reach out to sponsors and school boards to sell them on the merit of FIRST?
This response is so late that I feel bad but roughly speaking yeah a teams resources should be going to growing themselves instead of advertising the benefits of FRC.
FRC has the ability to represent itself better then any group of students (come at me people who disagree) because the people in FRC have better points of contact in industries where if we got more support we would be better off. If we grow the relations between the real world and FRC then a team has a better platform and more support to stand on. If companies more actively came out and sponsored teams as opposed to teams going to companies that sends a pretty strong message. That says this company supports what we are doing, a business is investing actual time or money into these students (or both). That is some great evidence for a school board or a parent who goes "what have you been doing after school?". That would mean that the small team of 5 students and some crazy mentor have some real solid proponents and advocates that help when dealing with naysayers.
IMO...
Alan Anderson
02-06-2016, 10:10
What I think teams need, and which has only been mentioned a couple times in this thread, is institutional support from FIRST in procuring human and financial resources.
Like the FIRST Senior Mentor position, you mean?
Like the FIRST Senior Mentor position, you mean?
For those not interested in doing the digging:
http://www.firstinspires.org/senior-mentors
"FIRSTŪ Senior Mentors (FSMs) are a group of highly skilled and talented technical and non-technical individuals, who focus on recruiting, supporting and expanding all four FIRST programs. Founded in 2005, the FIRST Senior Mentor program prides itself in its cross-program, grass-roots approach...."
************************************************
I posted this because:
We do not have them in Michigan (to my knowledge), so I didn't know there was such a thing until probably 2012 (after 7 years of involvement in FRC).
Lil' Lavery
02-06-2016, 11:52
This response is so late that I feel bad but roughly speaking yeah a teams resources should be going to growing themselves instead of advertising the benefits of FRC.
FRC has the ability to represent itself better then any group of students (come at me people who disagree) because the people in FRC have better points of contact in industries where if we got more support we would be better off. If we grow the relations between the real world and FRC then a team has a better platform and more support to stand on. If companies more actively came out and sponsored teams as opposed to teams going to companies that sends a pretty strong message. That says this company supports what we are doing, a business is investing actual time or money into these students (or both). That is some great evidence for a school board or a parent who goes "what have you been doing after school?". That would mean that the small team of 5 students and some crazy mentor have some real solid proponents and advocates that help when dealing with naysayers.
IMO...
I understand your general rhetoric, but I'm still having trouble seeing how anything changes in reality. Are you saying you think FIRST HQ needs to attempt to recruit sponsors to help various individual teams?
This response is so late that I feel bad but roughly speaking yeah a teams resources should be going to growing themselves instead of advertising the benefits of FRC.
FRC has the ability to represent itself better then any group of students (come at me people who disagree) because the people in FRC have better points of contact in industries where if we got more support we would be better off. If we grow the relations between the real world and FRC then a team has a better platform and more support to stand on. If companies more actively came out and sponsored teams as opposed to teams going to companies that sends a pretty strong message. That says this company supports what we are doing, a business is investing actual time or money into these students (or both). That is some great evidence for a school board or a parent who goes "what have you been doing after school?". That would mean that the small team of 5 students and some crazy mentor have some real solid proponents and advocates that help when dealing with naysayers.
IMO...
I understand your general rhetoric, but I'm still having trouble seeing how anything changes in reality. Are you saying you think FIRST HQ needs to attempt to recruit sponsors to help various individual teams?
What I interpret it as saying is: FIRST should have companies that would be willing to consider sponsoring FRC team(s) make it more obvious that they will consider it. When you are seeking out sponsors, it is usually easier to get a sponsorship from a place that you have a 'way in', or direct connection to (i.e. parent or mentor works there, etc.). But if the company is willing to consider sponsoring FRC team(s), then FIRST could help make it so that saying "I'm from FRC team ####" can be your 'way in'. Not sure if that makes sense, but that's my interpretation.
Like the FIRST Senior Mentor position, you mean?
One person for a large number of teams is not very much "institutional support."
The problem with placing the onus of finding money and mentors (especially mentors) entirely on teams is that it results in a "rich get richer" system. Teams that are struggling to scramble enough resources to produce a working robot at the end of build season naturally do not tend to have overflowing spare time with which to pursue acquiring new resources. On the other hand, teams that have a comfortable amount of resources and lots of spare manpower can spend quite a bit of time hunting down new mentors and sources of funding.
It is tempting to appeal to the "well, if you want to do well, work harder!" line of rhetoric (and I have seen many people do so), but this fundamentally ignores the fact that teams that are struggling and at risk of collapse often have mentors who are overworked in the first place. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I took a semester off from my undergraduate education and loaned a large chunk of money out of my pocket just to keep 4464 afloat in 2015. I burned out pretty badly as is. It was not reasonable to expect me to hunt for mentors to replace ones who had left, or even to search for my own replacement for future years. My hands were full.
As Alan mentioned earlier, I think the pilot funding model that PNW introduced this year is a great first step towards this "institutional support". By simplifying the cash flow model through teams/local FIRST organizations/HQ, FIRSTWA was better equipped to fundraise on the behalf of the teams. Looking at the registration fees that PNW teams paid this year, there was a substantial benefit.
Yes, this only addresses the monetary aspect, but I think it's a good starting point.
One person for a large number of teams is not very much "institutional support."
...Teams that are struggling to scramble enough resources to produce a working robot at the end of build season naturally do not tend to have overflowing spare time with which to pursue acquiring new resources. ...
... teams that are struggling and at risk of collapse often have mentors who are overworked in the first place. ...I agree this is a problem, or at least a symptom of a problem.
Do you have a method in mind for accomplishing what you would like to see change?
Do you think what I suggested (suggestion) (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php) (or paynetrain's two-divisions suggestion) would take a big bite out of this reason why teams struggle?
Blake
Lil' Lavery
02-06-2016, 14:46
What I interpret it as saying is: FIRST should have companies that would be willing to consider sponsoring FRC team(s) make it more obvious that they will consider it. When you are seeking out sponsors, it is usually easier to get a sponsorship from a place that you have a 'way in', or direct connection to (i.e. parent or mentor works there, etc.). But if the company is willing to consider sponsoring FRC team(s), then FIRST could help make it so that saying "I'm from FRC team ####" can be your 'way in'. Not sure if that makes sense, but that's my interpretation.
So.... like the NASA grants?
Alan Anderson
02-06-2016, 15:55
One person for a large number of teams is not very much "institutional support."
How many FIRST Senior Mentors would you want in order to call it sufficient support? This past season, I think there were enough to average one for about every 65 teams.
ehochstein
02-06-2016, 17:06
How many FIRST Senior Mentors would you want in order to call it sufficient support? This past season, I think there were enough to average one for about every 65 teams.
Keep in mind that the FIRST Senior Mentor program is for every program FLL Jr. through FRC. So that number might be a little small :)
On a personal note, there are more teams in MN between the 4 programs than I have time to support. I do everything in my power to do so but at the end of the day I do need sleep. In an ideal world, we would have many more FSMs.
One person for a large number of teams is not very much "institutional support."...
How many FIRST Senior Mentors would you want in order to call it sufficient support? This past season, I think there were enough to average one for about every 65 teams.I can imagine, but not realistically expect FIRST HQ, or any other entity I know about, will be able to hire "enough".
Oblarg might have a different expectation.
Seems like recently posted data showed about 8% of roughly 3000 teams dropping out of FRC annually. If most of those are teams that wanted to stay but couldn't because of too much struggling, and if FIRST HQ wanted to have someone meet with each once every two weeks throughout a 26? 52? week period...
Back of the envelope says:
8% of 3000-ish teams = 240 FRC teams to be helped.
Traveling to visit 8 FRC teams every 2 weeks = Visitor's rate
(240 FRC teams every 2 weeks) / (8 FRC teams every 2 weeks / visitor) = 30 visitors.
Employing 30 people on the road across North America, and a few other parts of the world, for 26? 52? weeks per year to try to prevent 8% of the FRC teams from leaving the program would be a huge expense, and might not have a large effect.
Also, what I roughed out above would not give any special attention to the remaining 17% (510) FRC teams that would be in the bottom quartile (in terms of team "health") each year.
Maybe investing in online classes, and similar training/help would give a bigger total ROI, and consume a smaller total investment?
Blake
How many FIRST Senior Mentors would you want in order to call it sufficient support? This past season, I think there were enough to average one for about every 65 teams.
1/regional, plus an additional 1 per 50 teams in a district, would be the bare minimum, I'd think, if it was just FRC. And I do mean bare minimum (it's not uncommon to find 3 FSMs at a single SoCal regional of 40-60 teams--and at least two of the same three at a different SoCal regional a week later).
The problem is that when you add FTC, FLL, and JrFLL, a 1:50 ratio rapidly turns into more like 1:200+. Not all teams will need the FSM's help (and the "smaller" teams are more likely to be able to get 3-4 teams helped at once, courtesy of often having 3-4 teams per school), but even so, the poor FSM is trying to coordinate help to way too many teams. If you were to call it a 1:100 ratio across the board, you might be able to get there... but that's a LOT of FSMs, something like 300 for FRC alone.
My thought would be to, in addition to adding FSMs, have various "instructional" videos on various ways to find funding, mentors, facilities, and other things that teams need.
I also like the idea of an early simple robot. Concept: Teams who opt for the kitbot in their KOP have it shipped to them and are allowed to build it immediately, and use it in competition that season as their drivebase. Teams that don't opt for the kitbot would have to wait for Kickoff to build stuff for competition. Basically, you got drivetrain going right away, you got 6 weeks to build the superstructure and make it work. (Or...not. BLT robots work too, now you got 16 weeks of driver practice!)
IronicDeadBird
03-06-2016, 16:33
What I interpret it as saying is: FIRST should have companies that would be willing to consider sponsoring FRC team(s) make it more obvious that they will consider it. When you are seeking out sponsors, it is usually easier to get a sponsorship from a place that you have a 'way in', or direct connection to (i.e. parent or mentor works there, etc.). But if the company is willing to consider sponsoring FRC team(s), then FIRST could help make it so that saying "I'm from FRC team ####" can be your 'way in'. Not sure if that makes sense, but that's my interpretation.
I understand your general rhetoric, but I'm still having trouble seeing how anything changes in reality. Are you saying you think FIRST HQ needs to attempt to recruit sponsors to help various individual teams?
Little bit of both well minus picking favorite teams.
If FIRST was more mainstream, if more people heard about it, if companies took FIRST seriously getting sponsors would be a lot easier for any team. It would shift the appeal to sponsors away from what impact a team has made and move it to "oh you guys are with FIRST sponsoring someone in FIRST is a smart decision cause of how good the program is."
If FIRST was more mainstream and more prominent in its impact with the world, more schools would be open to the program, and more schools wouldn't just view having a FIRST team as a money sink and a legal risk.
If FIRST was mainstream it would be a lot more likely that teams would have helping coming to them.
I'm not saying being part of FIRST should make us entitled to help, I'm saying that if FIRST was a household name, and taken more seriously it would promote an environment where growing is easier.
FIRST needs to step up its presence on social media, and general presence to the public. It isn't a shocker that people don't take FIRST teams seriously when they don't understand what FIRST is or frankly even know about it.
The other thing FIRST needs to do is towards its clients towards the teams it needs to find a better way to deliver information to where it is needed. Teams shouldn't be coming to chief delphi for information FIRST is supposed to be in charge of distributing. Its dumb, the best way to deliver content about your product isn't through someone elses website. Even those of us who participate in FIRST people like me who aren't "hardcore" not knowing resources exist is kind of weird.
An interesting aspect to point out about the community is that FIRST doesn't have a decent wikia (which I find hilarious). With a community this large you think someone would have thrown together a wikia for FIRST. Most video game communities come together and get a solid reference point and factual database done for a video game in like a year. Yet somehow nobody has spearheaded a top level FIRST wikia where we centralize useful information taking some of the burden off of FIRST to distribute said information...
marshall
03-06-2016, 16:44
Even those of us who participate in FIRST people like me who aren't "hardcore" not knowing resources exist is kind of weird.
Every year I have been involved in FIRST, I learn about a new piece of documentation or document repository that I've never heard of previously that has been around for more than a few years. FIRST as a whole needs to sort out the documentation process and library/catalog. It's a mess. In fairness to FIRST, they know it is a mess based on the conversations I've had and there are plans to work on it. I'm not convinced putting out all of the documentation in a single place will make teams more sustainable but it will help with the headache of constant searching and data collection.
PayneTrain
03-06-2016, 17:19
Every year I have been involved in FIRST, I learn about a new piece of documentation or document repository that I've never heard of previously that has been around for more than a few years. FIRST as a whole needs to sort out the documentation process and library/catalog. It's a mess. In fairness to FIRST, they know it is a mess based on the conversations I've had and there are plans to work on it. I'm not convinced putting out all of the documentation in a single place will make teams more sustainable but it will help with the headache of constant searching and data collection.
On top of that, unintentionally fractured communications can be overwhelming to coaches. As a raging buffoon, one of the few ways I attempt to gain a competitive advantage for 422 is trying to get plugged in to every movement in the community.
This shouldn't mean that I am in rare company for being someone who had to go through the championship website, email blasts, the blog, and team updates to piece together the entire load in procedure! It's harrowing to think about how easy FIRST makes it for coaches to be uninformed.
marshall
03-06-2016, 18:04
go through the championship website, email blasts, the blog, and team updates to piece together the entire load in procedure!
These should be unified and not disparate. Information should be over-communicated and duplicated on all of these. You hear me Frank?
I'm not convinced putting out all of the documentation in a single place will make teams more sustainable but it will help with the headache of constant searching and data collection.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png
marshall
03-06-2016, 18:29
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png
Not really what I'm saying at all. For instance, we use mailchimp for unifying our team communication. Our team emails go out via email, Facebook, Twitter, and on the web all at once.
How many FIRST Senior Mentors would you want in order to call it sufficient support? This past season, I think there were enough to average one for about every 65 teams.
There is no way the one Senior Mentor could connect with as many potential sponsors/mentors as the 65 teams could. They do supplement the effort the teams make to generate interest in FIRST creating potential for more mentors and resources.
...
An interesting aspect to point out about the community is that FIRST doesn't have a decent wikia (which I find hilarious). With a community this large you think someone would have thrown together a wikia for FIRST. Most video game communities come together and get a solid reference point and factual database done for a video game in like a year. Yet somehow nobody has spearheaded a top level FIRST wikia where we centralize useful information taking some of the burden off of FIRST to distribute said information...LOLz about game communities doing the game developers' work for them.
Folks my age find it hilarious that game vendors have trained their players to document how to play their games instead of those vendors paying their own staffs to write and distribute decent manuals with the games.
I know the typical wikia can contain discussions, strategies, hints, and other info that might not go into a vendor's game manual, but what current players let vendors get away with is sometimes just absurd.
Maybe writing the wikia info is part of the fun???
Regardless, back to FIRST, two thoughts come to mind.
1) You said communities create/write wikias. So, shouldn't the part of the community that wants one (you?) (I don't think I need one, so don't look at me) be beavering away at developing one? Does HQ maybe need to kick things off by renting a server computer and moderating what gets put into it?
2) What info do you want to see in this wikia, that isn't already in the annual game manual, or in CD, or in the TBA site, or in ...? Will all of those voluntarily merge into the wikia, or will large sections of the wikia mostly contain lots of links to outside sources?
Remember that FIRST's games and other activities are messy real-world things with unpredictable, chaotic influences, evolution, and outcomes. That is very different from the closed, highly-constrained worlds of computer games. Beyond the game manual info, and a limited amount of info about standard parts, and red tape, you move from facts to highly-subjective opinions very fast in FRC, FVC, and the FLLs.
cbale2000
04-06-2016, 03:16
An interesting aspect to point out about the community is that FIRST doesn't have a decent wikia (which I find hilarious). With a community this large you think someone would have thrown together a wikia for FIRST. Most video game communities come together and get a solid reference point and factual database done for a video game in like a year. Yet somehow nobody has spearheaded a top level FIRST wikia where we centralize useful information taking some of the burden off of FIRST to distribute said information...
There was FIRSTwiki that was hosted here at CD (though through a different domain) but it was shutdown a few years back (it had been overrun with spambots, and had woefully out of date software). There is somewhat of a push to create a new FIRSTwiki (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147329) (current attempts are based out of GitHub, which I personally have mixed feelings about), but honestly it needs someone to setup a good backed (domain, formatting, database, captcha, etc). I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to be editors (myself included), they just need something to edit.
techhelpbb
04-06-2016, 11:38
There is not a single post I can derive this from so I will touch on a few things that cover a wide range of points from various posters:
Organized funding of an education goal is the reason for public schools to exist. The fact that FRC is so vital is specifically because organized funding of the schools can often fund goals and set achievements that various elements of the communities the school serve do not agree are priorities. So long as FRC is a patch for the educational system it is extremely likely to have a 'rogue' funding model where: mentors, sponsors and families essentially go beyond their required contribution (usually in property taxes) to pursue an education goal that often the school system has either failed at or has decided is not a suitable common goal. This 'rogue' funding model is 'disruptive' to the education industry in it's very nature and one could argue that there is value in teaching students how to fund being disruptive to an industry because it is increasing required to be innovators when you are an adult. Lets face it - common currency and a lack of barter very likely mean that fund raising is a vital skill.
The idea of building a simple robot before build season is actually something FRC11/FRC193 has tried with MORT-U before competition season starting in September for some time. I believe it is not enough. The core issue is that FRC is a driving a set of skills into the educational system not well serviced for a wide variety of reasons. We actually got better at addressing this by creating FRC193 as junior varsity where the students have up to 2 years to acquire the skills for varsity FRC11 and even then the learning curve for the more advanced manufacturing has not entirely been satisfied. FRC would just be a contest to a vocational schools that already have goals set into the design and manufacture of machines. Those same schools would have their shops ready and have a clear set of: standards, goals and tests to insure they achieve their foundation education goals and as a result can present evidence to back that achievement up when required. FRC does not make this requirement. FRC participation is just close enough to the skills still out in the community that even in an area where manufacturing is nearly dead you can usually find some people that have a good idea how to get this done. The issue becomes: between the funding for this activity and trying to be a proper educational program, which so many FRC teams are actually doing without possibly understanding, we are actually fighting a battle so much bigger than it appears.
From my experience FRC teams need to realize that they are effectively educational and apprentice opportunities. If the schools that often support these FRC teams fail to grasp that large FRC teams signal a need in the community for something they are not doing, then these schools are going to make it much harder on the community element in that team because those people are all paying their mandated share (usually through property taxes) and whatever it takes to continue to fix what is not getting done. I know a few people that actually hoped to 'win' shutting down FRC teams by hoping that refusing support for an educational goal under-served was going to make it painful enough these FRC teams they would just go away. This led to a lot of stress and pain for those teams. To put this in perspective most years I double my mandated share of education cost to the community with my contributions to FIRST so that's $10,000+ that is lost in my: materials, time and money (one can say this is a choice but sitting idle 'getting mine' while others stumble is not my style).
I think if we acknowledge that this is a disruptive educational opportunity as a whole we can refocus our resources in much more effective ways. I know that some schools might view my statements here as a direct challenge to their authority but frankly: that authority is supported in part by my $11,000+ a year in property taxes that go to those schools.
I have always believed that the sort of people that thrive in FRC are the sort that would be just as happy to setup ad-hoc vocational schools of their own if public education was not there because the need exists and it should be served. The problem is you already have a system that doesn't always meet that need and you are addressing both the costs of that and the added cost you are accepting. So basically the schools need to get on board. Otherwise you realize you just need to build that vocational/incubating opportunity and call it a makerspace ;).
To this end: FRC is only somewhat sustainable as a whole, and it should be, based on exactly the situation it is in. If FRC were sustainable it might not even attract the kind of attention it gets. This is both the driver of heroic effort and a general failure that heros are often the folks that don't make it. If you think about it, FRC drives attention to specific people and the larger the accomplishment of those people the more likely it is to do that. If the barriers fell and everyone worked together the challenge would be less. It's the paradox that, I think, leads to mavericks giving way to strategists. Mavericks drive people hard but eventually when the pasture is greener people want to slow down so they start to ignore the mavericks and the strategists start to figure out ways to pick up where sheer force of will and a battle cry leaves off.
Basically if the goal of FRC is to make heros: we got that. If the goal of FRC is to make it stable and sustainable you might find what made you a hero today makes you a bit of a crank tomorrow. To this end I think you need the maverick to found a team (odds are long and obstacles many) but the strategist (understanding the limits, finding motivation, planning for good and bad, planning season over season) to sustain a team.
That's not a just FIRST issue BTW. I just finished with a job that had a maverick CTO. Worked everyone to the edge but actually made progress against insurmountable odds. Then when the pastures got green everyone started to gripe and started slowing down. Then I left because the charge against all odds was not followed by transition to a sustainable strategy between the top speed and no speed. I am glad I saw that, in part because of my FIRST experience, because I made out very well on my personal strategy to seek sustainable growth leveraging the aftermath of that charge when those around me were unable to hit that mark. Where I left will now seek out a position of much less growth which unfortunately is probably not very competitive in their market and will eventually result in attrition that will create the next maverick. Ever see an FRC that is hit or miss? That pattern exists into some of the most central industries on Earth.
marshall
04-06-2016, 12:46
http://static1.fjcdn.com/comments/That+s+the+thousand+yard+stare.+You+lizard+s+seen+ some+++_e8b6a33d7bedefc3c3eb136e73329a68.jpg
Word.
techhelpbb
04-06-2016, 13:24
Word.
Hey it's only $50 million dollars that last place spent.
What's $50 million really? :)
T-pbb,
Good points.
About the idea of letting teams build, and later compete with, a Fall SimpleBot ... I agree that without more training than would be necessary to simply follow IKEA-style instructions to assemble and program a SimpleBot plus Driver's Station, teams won't become ready to do more sophisticated design, construction or programming.
However, instead of using the SimpleBot to prepare for building a space shuttle ;) , I envisioned that struggling teams would use it to avoid dropping out of FRC entirely. It would be the simple, inexpensive, reusable, safety net they would use while regrouping, or to avoid the dreaded robot-parts-still-in-the-KOP-crates syndrome at their first rookie tournament.
In a perfect world, the SimpleBot curriculum would sneak in enough project management training to enable a team to correctly plan introducing more advanced subjects in future seasons. I'm sure most of us agree that accurate & consistent time/project management is the bedrock skill that enables a group to get the most out of whatever resources they have. The point would be (re)teaching them how to (re)teach themselves how to fish. I think that is a more fundamental goal than what you guys were trying to do with your JV/varsity split
Blake
techhelpbb
04-06-2016, 14:15
The point would be teaching them how to teach themselves how to fish. I think that is a more fundamental goal than what you guys were trying to do with your JV/varsity split
Blake
I am sure many early stage teams today would get value from even assisting in the assembly of a kit of parts. This was why the senior mentor for my area is asking FIRST if we can teach a class in the summer with my robots so they can see this process for themselves. Not stuck on teaching it myself, just offering up parts I have without impact to FRC11/FRC193. I was hoping we could open it to anyone that could get there so we were being kind of formal.
Where I think your idea goes a step further is it seemed like you wanted to offer early play. At least in MAR we have the guts of a field without the field controls so if a venue was made available one could be the maverick and push an early stage build and play if we could just get the control system or adequate alternative.
On the scale of build a KOP robot or do nothing: I accept completely to build a KOP robot. Plus a slow build would be a great place to document cleanly.
...
Where I think your idea goes a step further is it seemed like you wanted to offer early play. At least in MAR we have the guts of a field without the field controls so if a venue was made available one could be the maverick and push an early stage build and play if we could just get the control system or adequate alternative.
On the scale of build a KOP robot or do nothing: I accept completely to build a KOP robot. Plus a slow build would be a great place to document cleanly.Some folks suggested "early play", or two-tiered play, and there definitely are successful examples of Fall (or Sunmer) competitions of varying sophistication.
However, for what I suggested for struggling and/or rookie teams, I would explicitly not include a Fall competition. Instead, I would save that part of FRC for the Spring (the current system), and would allow teams to use their (unmodified?) SimpleBots in those Spring events (they aren't forced to take it apart and start over, they get to just use it).
Why? Preparing for competitions is a distracting time-suck on many levels, and it pushes teams to go out on limbs with their robot (more risk, more churn, more uncertainty, more internal debating, more stress, more expense, more struggle, ...).
Instead, my suggestion is to spend the Fall carefully managing the construction of a SimpleBot (that is identical to every other Fall SimpleBot). Then, after doing that once or twice, when the team is ready, they try accurately planning and building a modestly more complex bot for a regular season. Then, in the the season after that, they turn things up another notch. Lather, rinse repeat.
If the teams can keep their project management skills intact, then they can safely grow (in whatever direction they want to take) as much as their resources and ingenuity allow. But first, they have to acquire those skills and make them part of the team's soul.
Going on field trips (going to competitions) is a different activity/skill. Doing that is definitely an interesting part of FRC, but it's a different part.
Blake
IronicDeadBird
05-06-2016, 15:31
LOLz about game communities doing the game developers' work for them.
Folks my age find it hilarious that game vendors have trained their players to document how to play their games instead of those vendors paying their own staffs to write and distribute decent manuals with the games.
I know the typical wikia can contain discussions, strategies, hints, and other info that might not go into a vendor's game manual, but what current players let vendors get away with is sometimes just absurd.
Maybe writing the wikia info is part of the fun???
Regardless, back to FIRST, two thoughts come to mind.
1) You said communities create/write wikias. So, shouldn't the part of the community that wants one (you?) (I don't think I need one, so don't look at me) be beavering away at developing one? Does HQ maybe need to kick things off by renting a server computer and moderating what gets put into it?
2) What info do you want to see in this wikia, that isn't already in the annual game manual, or in CD, or in the TBA site, or in ...? Will all of those voluntarily merge into the wikia, or will large sections of the wikia mostly contain lots of links to outside sources?
Remember that FIRST's games and other activities are messy real-world things with unpredictable, chaotic influences, evolution, and outcomes. That is very different from the closed, highly-constrained worlds of computer games. Beyond the game manual info, and a limited amount of info about standard parts, and red tape, you move from facts to highly-subjective opinions very fast in FRC, FVC, and the FLLs.
1.While I cannot say at all this is a hard "need" it would have to have the end goal of being a quality of life improvement for those who need information otherwise it would be pointless. With something of this caliber if done correctly it would be helpful for everyone. No flak against CD but the white paper section of the site, is a little gross to wade through. There is in my opinion just too much information and it isn't constrained in a meaningful way. Think of how many times you have seen someone post a question on chief delphi and someone responds with "that was already talked about in this thread." That's dumb and its a waste of time, if that information was easier to access instead of creating more empty threads people would get the answers they need and move on and thats just on chief delphi I don't delve into the FRC reddit or whatever other third party sites exist. I do agree that having a manger for this project is important, with something of this scope you need someone on point. However I would hope all parties who are interested in contributing to this would be mature enough that they wouldn't doof up a website with bad info. Moderation wouldn't be as necessary because all those involved in content writing would want to do it for the right reason. In all honesty I'd be happy to help with content management for a wikia if I had the time. I also know though that this scale of a job most people wouldn't take without a paycheck regardless of if they had the time to do so or not.
I'd love to look at how wikias get up and running so quickly because it is an interesting phenomenon to me (a bunch of nerds go into unpaid hive mind mode and all of a sudden they create the community standard for information distribution in the form of a wiki and yet I see businesses open up where they can't get a website with a decent color scheme in a year).
2. I used a wikia as an example because of how they often provide only factual information, and a center for "official" information distribution. All while not necessarily being a part of the games developers. A wikia is a great way to aggregate a lot of information in a clean way. As opposed to chief delphi or the reddit where its a lot of digging. The point isn't to create helpful information (I mean don't get me wrong helpful information is good) its just to make all the information easier to access or even just accessible to begin with. If someone gets frustrated trying to find information before they find it they are less likely to find it. Currently I find it frustrating that I find myself digging through a 3rd party forum (chief delphi) to find information about FIRST, and I'm sure yet other people find it frustrating when they ask a question on Q&A because they want official feedback and they get a bounce back. If there was a website out there with the hard standards of a wikia where the information was unbiased, and factual, as well as endorsed partially by FIRST it would be a help a lot of teams more then a weekly blog.
"Remember that FIRST's games and other activities are messy real-world things with unpredictable, chaotic influences, evolution, and outcomes. That is very different from the closed, highly-constrained worlds of computer games."
I would disagree that it differs from computer games when they have games where while they don't release a new one every year they patch the game and change game play every other week. A lot of games out there are just kinda sitting in an endless "build season" where players are learning how to master the game. While developers push out new updates and then gamers have to adapt to that.
snorthey
08-09-2016, 00:23
Have a curriculum for schools to offer a class....
I know that some of you may do this already from years of experience or other programs like PLTW that often are feeder groups for the robotics program...
Currently I find myself at both a small project based school and a student population that cannot stay after school, so for my proposed rookie team to be sustainable and building.
I need training for the students in the form of a curriculum of standards based units that link the skills needed to build a robot successfully and thus would allow me to offer it at a science elective in my situation. The STEM/ STEAM groups are out there pushing ideas why not link the competition to a class.
Thoughts...
Is there a curriculum out there for FRC already?
Is there anyone with an FRC class they are willing to share?
Please contact me at snorthey@sageacademy.org
Thank you
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