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

I don't see how submitting photos would help anything.

If a team is going to cheat, a simple photo is not going to get in their way.

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

No, but it significantly reduces the paper trail. The inspectors would have a list of teams, before the event, with a checkmark (or not) letting them know which teams are compliant and which may need some prodding. In addition, RDs or SMs can reach out to teams who do not submit a picture in a timely manner and possibly catch issues before the event even begins.

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

I'm still arguing against the premiss of being more concerned about bag and tag than we are with all the other rules. I would much rather know if a team failed to comply with the frame perimeter rule early than if they did with bag and tag. The teams that get caught failing bag and tag aren't gaining a competitive advantage because they are normally the teams that haven't even read the rules. It's usually the teams that either are barely hanging in there or it was just an honest mistake by a team (forgetting a form in the hotel room is extremely common). Why do we punish these teams and give the inspectors more work?

Why add the overhead that comes with bag and tag except to put up some false sense of checking into the system? The teams that are going to cheat are going to cheat, luckily I strongly believe that none of the cheating teams ever win since so few would put in the actual hard work it takes to beat a strong team that follows the rules.

We don't even have online submission of BOM or a way to check the withholding allowance. Both of these systems are basically just honor code* why can't bag and tag be the same.

*yes inspectors look at the BOM but it would be very easy to falsify one if a team was inclined to do so.

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

Which is exactly the reason I'm in favor of an online checkin during February. If a team doesn't do bagntag properly, there's a good chance there are bigger issues at play that should be tackled early. This could throw up a red flag that FIRST needs to contact these teams - whether it's an issue of noncompliance or ignorance.

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

How hard is Bag and Tag, really, even for the Districts? The MN State Championship has Bag and Tag rules similar to Districts - we allow 8 hours of unbag time, used in a minimum of 2 hour increments. This was the second year for the event, and we've only had 2 Bag and Tag issues. The first year, one of the teams failed to bag their robot after their last event (Penalty: No work time or practice matches allowed - they could only touch the robot for inspection prior to their first Qualification match, but since it was the first year and things were a little confusing, we allowed them to play), and this year one of the teams had a different interpretation of "minimum of 2 hour increments", thinking that the last unbag period could be less than 2 hours in order to "use up" the remaining time (Penalty: They got a lecture from me and allowed to continue on their way this time, as they met the intent of the rule and the 8 hour total time, if not the strict letter of it. Since they now know better, the penalty next year would be more severe if this same team has another issue).

As long as we have a stop build day, I think Bag and Tag (with the form) is valuable. As it stands, there is NO robot rule that goes unchecked. We look at everything regarding the robot to ensure the rules are followed, and that includes Bag and Tag. If we stopped requiring a form and stopped checking it, it would only encourage teams to become more lax with it.

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

I've just read this entire thread, all 440 posts since yesterday and now I'm definitely feeling burnout!

I think most perspectives have already been addressed so I have little to add except to say that I both admire the all-consuming effort from mentors of elite teams, yet also feel sorry for them to some extent.

Once you've achieved an exceptional level of performance, the pressure from sponsors, students yourself and the wider community to stay on that hamster wheel must be intense.

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

Granted, I do not want to tell any team they can not participate just because of a mistake or two, and as you have described those are not what I would consider bannable offenses. I echo Patrick's post about the compressors. THAT is the sort of thing that should cause a team to no longer compete at that event - ignoring the order of the RIs.

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

^^^This. As a student, although I know that my entire team would like more time to build the robot, the whole point of the bag and tag deadline is to teach kids about real-world deadlines.

Also, a longer build season would certainly mean student's grades would suffer more than they already do. Not cool.

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

I don't understand the idea being thrown around that "we need bag and tag so kids can learn about deadlines". There's still a deadline without it! The deadline is now the date of your regional. If you're attached to 6 weeks as a concept - that is an issue separate from "stop build, wait, and compete" vs just "compete".

The bag itself has no impact on whether or not there is a hard deadline. The only way there would not be a hard deadline is if the regional was actually delayed by teams not being done with their robots.

If we got rid of Stop Build, we could always make Week 1 the same week as the former Stop Build day. Everyone who wants a 6 week build season without wanting to feel disadvantaged could choose to go to a Week 1 regional.

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

Interesting thread revival.

I for one would be very interested to hear how people approached this year's build season differently compared to previous years.

For me, this was the first year I did not feel "burned out" but I still felt some exhaustion at the end of the 6 weeks.

3467 tried something a little differently in that we imposed no meetings on Wednesdays (on top of no Sundays) and on long Tuesday & Thursday meetings we had "quiet time" for a few hours in our classroom and encouraged students to study to stay on top of school. We also met a little less on Saturdays (start an hour later and tried to end a little sooner). During week 6 we did shift to high gear meeting Sunday at the start of the week and met for nearly 8 hours each day including Wednesday leading up to our scrimmage event. We took Sunday off after a pretty good run at Scrimmage then regrouped on Monday/Tuesday to bag.

Overall this was the best build season I have been a part of. Student participation was greatly impacted since they had more time to study which meant they had more meaningful time to help in the shop. The mentors also penciled out a general schedule of the build season with weekly tasks and deadlines on design to help move the build season along. Overall we worked harder to push the team more at the beginning of the season as we knew weeks 1-3 was where our "burn" was created by not utilizing that time effectively. I had seen build schedules used in the past but never have I been able to stick to one getting behind almost instantly. It wasn't until the end of week 3 that we got behind on a task which was related to order delays out of our control. Overall by the end of the build season we blew the schedule by a day completing the practice robot one day later than we had hoped. We built two robots much faster than our team has ever made one robot and while its too early to say if it was a successful season, our team has been very pleased with our efforts thus far.

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

This. A million times this. Engineering in the real world is done under the looming threat of deadlines. The bottom line is that if you are assigned to a project at work and given 6 weeks to complete it, your boss is not going to care if you could make it better if you had 14 weeks. You have your deadline, and you are expected to abide by it. This is an invaluable lesson for high school students to learn. Remember, all the technical skills FRC gives you can also be learned at college, or even on the internet. What makes FRC such a valuable program is the less tangible benefits it provides.

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

Coming from a students perspective, I feel there is not a real good reason for the bag. Most of the issues I have against it have already been addressed but in all honestly, if you go to a event for another type of sport/competition you build/practice up to that event. I intern at a local world class manufacturing sponsor here in the area, the projects that I do as well as the engineers and other employees, don't work on their projects up to a certain point (lets say 3 weeks before their deadline) then stop, close up shop. They work, prototype, design, and refine until the deadline. I can see where F.I.R.S.T. is thinking the bag is the deadline but why not the actual comeptiton. This just causes teams to build double of everything, doubling the cost of the already expensive robots we make and actually causes more burnout then just making the build season open. Again, most of what I have said has been presented already.

Thats my 2¢

P.S. Good luck everyone!

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

Does anyone remember where bag-and-tag came from? From the old 'ship date' requirements. Why did we have ship dates? So teams local couldn't work on their robot until the last minute when out-of-town teams would lose days, or weeks, of time shipping their robots. There are still teams that have to ship their robots in advance of their events.

Maintaining bag-and-tag keeps the amount of robot access the same for everyone. It also rewards the teams that build a practice robot. If building a practice bot is too taxing on a team's mentors/students/funds and leads to burn-out... then perhaps a practice bot isn't for that team.

95 is, and always has been, a relatively small team. In many years prior we got by through working hard, too hard in my opinion. Mentor burn-out has always been a significant problem. In recent years, especially this year, we've taken several steps to reducing mentor burn-out: taking Sundays off, meeting from 530-830pm instead of 430-9pm during the week and 9am-5pm on Saturdays instead of 8am-6pm. Each coach is also encouraged to take a night off every week.

This has forced us to work efficiently, design within our means, design for fabrication and assembly, utilize CAD and CNC fabrication equipment more heavily, and spread out the design and management tasks so we can tolerate missing 1-2 coaches every night. All of these are very good practices that translate very well to real-life and have lead to the least-stressful build season in my 5 years of being head coach on 95. Not unrelated to this: I am now the longest continuously-active head coach on 95 that I'm aware of, and I haven't even been threatened with divorce!

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

Bag and Tag developed/was first used in Michigan in 2009. It would have been ridiculous to ship robots to districts, so this was the solution devised. I'm sure someone else can chime in with more details. 2011 was the first year it expanded outside of Michigan, where most events where Bag and Tag (not all were, ie. we had to bag for NJ but then had to ship our robot for Philadelphia). 2012 Bag & Tag became the default for all events.

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

I agree entirely. It still makes perfect sense for a majority of teams who attend local events, districts or otherwise.

My point is that the reasons for shipping, and bagging/tagging, are still relevant: it prevents some teams from getting an unfair advantage over other teams who are simply further away from the nearest FRC event. Consider teams from Brazil, HI, Israel, etc. who would loose whole weeks shipping their robot to an event while a team down the street can work up until the night before.