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tjf
06-07-2016, 12:55
As a "Rookie" turning into a mentor, I learned a lot as I went. Tips and strange quirks about FIRST & FRC I learned along the way. (I didn't join Chief Delphi until after the season ended.)

As soon as the season ended, I set out to create a set of papers to help get people "up to speed" on FRC & FIRST. With help from my teammates, alumni, mentors, and other people as crazy as myself, it quickly became a sprawling document of links, posts, and notes on FRC.

I also realized that it could, in theory, be used by Rookie Teams as a sort of guide on how to start / keep a team going. Therefore, I present, the FRC Penultimate Manual (via Team 1257).

http://team1257.org/FRCPenultimateManual.pdf

Now, I understand that actual competition is considered by quite a few to be the only real way to "understand" FIRST & FRC, but hopefully this document gets people adjusted to the culture, and to understand more, faster.

Screenshots
http://i.imgur.com/JL4YJVe.png
http://i.imgur.com/9wBHROb.png
https://i.imgur.com/undefined.png
Table of Contents
https://i.imgur.com/A62Euhm.png

It currently includes 4 major sections:

1257's Notes on Subdivisions of Your Team
1257's Notes on FRC Events
1257's Curated List of useful tools for FIRST participants.
A curated list of Chief Delphi posts designed to help a team in difficult areas (Drive, Leadership, Programming, etc.)


For further additions, suggestions, and revisions, please either DM me or post below.

Best of luck, and happy FIRSTing!

Tim Flynn
Ether
06-07-2016, 13:28
Is this manual the next-to-last in terms of usefulness, or release date?

If the latter, how did you know someone would be releasing manual shortly after this one?
tjf
06-07-2016, 13:43
Is this manual the next-to-last in terms of usefulness, or release date?

If the latter, how did you know someone would be releasing manual shortly after this one?




Penultimate in the sense that it'll never be finished. It will always be "Penultimate" to the "final release". Constant adaption and improvement (I hope...)
Ether
06-07-2016, 13:50
Penultimate in the sense that it'll never be finished. It will always be "Penultimate" to the "final release". Constant adaption and improvement (I hope...)

Clever :)
tjf
05-08-2016, 18:32
In an effort to boost community involvement, the manual is now available on GitHub as a Markdown document.

https://github.com/MC42/FRCPenultimateManual

Feel free to make pull requests, fork and edit as needed.
marshall
05-08-2016, 19:54
In an effort to boost community involvement, the manual is now available on GitHub as a Markdown document.

https://github.com/MC42/FRCPenultimateManual

Feel free to make pull requests, fork and edit as needed.

Thank you for doing this. I have not read it completely yet but this is great and something that I've thought about doing myself but never had time to do. THANK YOU!!!!
tjf
05-08-2016, 20:07
Thank you for doing this. I have not read it completely yet but this is great and something that I've thought about doing myself but never had time to do. THANK YOU!!!!

It's really just a bunch of stuff I wish I had known going in. It grew from there :) I really have a few more sections to write if I'm honest...
tjf
13-08-2016, 19:22
UPDATE!

Okay, recently I sat down and organized the content for the business section, such that it has a progression in terms of things you might do (almost a step by step, but not quite.) I also added some logic to the Design section, and cleaned up miscellaneous points that didn't make sense.

As always, the document is on GitHub, and any mistakes, suggestions, or additions can be made via a fork & pull request.

https://github.com/MC42/FRCPenultimateManual/blob/master/FRCPenultimateManual.md

Happy FIRSTing, and enjoy your offseasons!