Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

I'm being silly. I spent every Sunday with a second-year team this past year; they're the next closest school at 20 miles. :D

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

Zero teams ;)

That was easy. Our towns are spaced out quite a bit here.

50% is an impractically large amount of time, you're talking about thousands of hours for another team. That's likely more than that team even works.

We have helped most local teams, and will always helped when asked. I don't think mandating it is helpful or necessary; especially since winning a regional doesn't at all imply you're capable of helping someone else.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

This is a horrible idea and wouldn't be effective. You can mandate things like this, they need to happen naturally.

Plus pretty much every team that is capable of helping other teams is already doing so.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

I am a huge proponent of helping teams but I agree with Cory. I wouldn't want to work with a team that is being forced to help. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Teams spend a long time building programs that work for them and finding ways to do the most for their students, their community and the greater robotics community. I wouldn't want to do something like this if it drives away elite team mentors or even makes their robots slightly worse on the field (robot performance is one way to inspire students). Teams should decide how they weigh the values of their teams, FIRST encourages certain ones and awards explanatory examples of them. There are teams that value Safety, Spirit, Coopertition, GP, and a whole list of other things.

Also 50% is just way to high, I give a lot of time to other teams during build season but nowhere near 50% of my time. This year that would have been well over 200 hours, that's just not possible (most other teams aren't even awake during a lot of the hours we work).

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

I'm not sure "rule" was supposed to mean as in Section 4.5.1* of the 2014 Administrative Manual. More of a norm. While I agree every regional winner may not be up to this, I have to say we were surprised by the help we could give when we started. Some days I still think of my coach's button as being from the team that went 2-9 at Pittsburgh '07.

I'd say the take-home is more to push yourself outside your comfort zone (your team), even if it's just a little. You might be as surprised about what you can do for the community as you are what the community can do for you.


*I didn't check what this actually is now.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

I completely agree, you can go through our Chairman's stuff and see what we do for other teams, it's a pretty huge amount. I'm just saying that if a team decides that their time is better spent working at food pantries in their community or petitioning their state senate or something else that is fine. I strongly believe every team should work to improve the greater FRC community but I'm just saying there are other ways to do it besides helping rookie teams. There are way more teams than there are rookie teams so we can all find different ways to help. Spectrum does make it our main mission to help young teams, but that doesn't mean we should force that on other teams.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

I've been thinking more about the specifics of a limited "out of bag" experience after "bag day". Here are some ideas:
- give all teams X hours 'out of bag' between the first 'bag day' and their first event. (I'm not dealing with the district model here, since I have no experience with that; I assume a team competes at one or more regionals, and possibly champs.)
- Those X hours can be used anytime (there can be a minimum, such as one hour or two hours, but no weekly maximum. This allows a team competing in week 1 the same number of hours before their first competition as a team competing for the first time in week 5; they may have to use them in a more concentrated manner, but the same would be true of a team competing in week 4, that had to ship their robot in week 1). This helps to equalize things for teams that have to ship, and for teams competing for the first time in different weeks. (Of course there is an advantage to having extra weeks before competition, even with the robot in the bag, but I don't think that can be avoided.)

- No 'out of bag' time after the first competition (except at the event itself). This helps to equalize things for teams that compete more than once.

Another idea would be to give teams X out of bag hours, which could be used any time (even after the first competition), but count pit hours at competition in some way against the total. So a 3-day competition would count as 18 hours "out of bag", a 2-day competition as 12 hours (or lesser amounts, these are just examples). This would help equalize things between teams that can afford to compete in multiple events, and those that cannot.

Another idea would be to allow teams to swap hours out of bag for withholding allowance. So for every 'out of bag' hour not used, from the total allowed, a team would get Y pounds of withholding allowance. This would allow teams that CAN'T use all their time (due to a need to ship their robot early to an early competition), to have a bigger withholding allowance so they could take more fabricated parts into the competition.

There are a lot of options here for trying to level the playing field. I love it.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

Interesting quote that showed up in my spotlight from 2005.

I thought it was appropriate.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

IKE and I are working on a letter to FIRST. With so many bag and unbag entries, the current Robot Lockup Form will be very difficult for robot inspectors and there will be many pages. Would somebody like to draft a new form so we can include with the letter when we present it to FIRST?

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

Very good point. What about something like this? It can handle 44 discrete (un)bag operations instead of 18. I get the impression the original form was designed to be able to "read down" and compare the tag numbers, but as an inspector I find it's pretty cumbersome anyway (small space + handwriting), and my bigger slowdown is checking that the times work out. This fixes the latter, and if FIRST is ok with confirming the last 3-4 digits of the unlock tag (which is what happens at events anyway), it'd be easier to do both. Otherwise the form can accommodate the full tag for unlocking.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

I hope IF a different system were implemented across FRC, we may be able to push for something electronic for this. Something like logging into TIMS, "Checking the robot in" and then "Checking the robot out", etc. Inspectors at the event would then just need to look at to make sure A. the robot had been 'checked in' and that B. the team had not 'checked out' the robot for more than X number of hours.

Just an idea (it saves a couple trees as well...)

-Brando

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

Also provides for better enforcement with less potential for problems on written forms due to confusion.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

This change is reasonably easy to add to the rules as it stands right now. There's some communication and approval work, but it's doable. Adding a section to TIMS adds cost and complexity. I think it would make sense to talk about a paper system for now with a side note that an electronic system would be nice to have in the future.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

The only problem is it requires a team to have reliable internet access at the time.

Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
 

What is the value of documenting all of the bag and unbag events? Is it really necessary? Could it be as simple as, the robot must come to the event in a sealed bag. An adult team leader must affirm on a form that the team has adhered to the robot access guidelines.