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

I'm our team captain, but in this topic I do not represent the opinion of our team, or that of our mentor. Although being restricted to 6 weeks can be very stressful for all people involved, it is part of what makes this competition "The hardest fun you'll ever have". Our team started four years ago, and has been desperate to catch up to the elite teams of our state, for those 6 weeks our students come in every day after school from 3:20pm to around 9:45pm or 10:00pm, we also come in on both Saturdays and Sundays at around 11:00am and stay till 10:00pm (often 11:00 in the last week), and finally this work may finally be paying off in putting us up in the elite. I understand that this is a lot to ask of our mentor, and he does put up with it to much, but we also have about five or so dedicated parents that often come in after they are done at work and help out, and although they aren't as technically skilled as our mentor, they are very helpful and help alleviate the pressure put on him. After the 6 week season ends we take a short break to recuperate, and then ease back into our work, this year I missed a total of about 4.5 days (work and illness) and although at the time I may have felt burnout, I knew that this was a necessary evil to accomplishing a working robot in 6 weeks, I say that because I believe in this case my mentor has the same opinion. As a final note I believe that "removing" the 6 week limit is detrimental and would steer new people away when they see the commitment required, it also takes half the fun out of the competition. 6 weeks is the way to go!

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

In my professional life, I work for a company that builds custom automated systems for the food industry. When the jobs get handed off to our engineering department we’ve got our budget, the design constraints, and a ship date. The design constraints can, and do often change along the way, but rarely does the ship date get pushed back. Sound familiar?

When we quote a new system to a customer, the customers are looking at how much we’re going to charge them, the quality of our work, and how quickly we can deliver the equipment. There are often many cases where we are not the cheapest quote, but since we can deliver a quality product faster, we win the contract.

Once our ship date comes around, if we’re not ready, we face financial penalties, and potential loss of future contracts. If something breaks or doesn’t work 100% on startup, we often fabricate warrantee replacement or upgrade parts (at our cost), and travel to the end users facility to install and troubleshoot the new components. Sound familiar?

I look at our 6 week build season as exactly the same situation. It’s not just who can build the best robot, but who can build the best robot in 6 weeks. I have a real appreciation for the teams that can come out in week 1 or 2 guns blazing, and set the bar for the rest of the season. The 6 week season is a great analogy for real world design projects, and I feel it is a must for FIRST. The withholding allowance is also very realistic, although I’d personally like to see it reduced to about 10 lbs or so, and exclude spare parts from it. Teams could still repair mechanisms that become damaged, but not replace or add entire mechanisms, minibot launchers, ball magnets, Frisbee pickups, etc.

In regards to mentor burnout, we are a very competitive team and we take our on field performance very seriously. If FIRST were to open the season wide open, we would work every bit as hard as we do during the current build season, right up until the championship. Any team who wanted to be a contender would be forced to do the same.

We would approach the season in one of two ways. Don’t compete at any early season events in order to maximize our testing and debugging time. Or build two completely different robots, one that was good enough to win an early regional and qualify, and another potentially completely different one designed and built for the championship. The second one would probably not be started until after week 1 of regionals, and would never compete before the championship.

I would be forced to seriously reconsider my involvement in FIRST as a result of the toll it would take on my health, and personal/professional lives. This is largely because of my competitive personality, and complete inability to lead a balanced lifestyle. My take on the whole idea, the FIRST season is great the way it is. Don’t change a thing.

If you want to see the most competitive and capable robots battling it out at the championship, open it up more, but be prepared to see some negative side effects as a result. If you want less mentor burnout, keep it at 6 weeks or less, get rid of the withholding allowance, and don’t allow any fabrication or software development after bag day, but don’t be surprised when we have lots of brave little toasters taking the field.

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

Really interesting point. Now I have more things to think about...

I still believe as it currently is set up, "build season" is from Kickoff to CMP. I agree with Tyler's closing thoughts on what next year could look like...

If this is the choice put in front of FIRST, what would they choose? I think we'll see a change next year, I just don't know in what direction.

-Mike

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

"It's silly to think we would pace ourselves, because I know there are teams that aren't. This is a competition. If you're not in it to give the absolute best effort you can, why even bother? If the rules let you work 7 days a week for 10 weeks, I'll be working 7 days a week for 10 weeks, and it will be everything else that suffers as a result, not the FRC team. "

So, because someone is unable/unwilling to set a work schedule that decreases their chance of burnout, we should limit every other team's options? As you may have surmised, my team is in it to give the best effort that we can (which is why we adopted a reduced work schedule to maintain our sanity and productivity) and we don't work 7 days a week for 6.5 weeks anymore (see my earlier post)...and we seem to be able to maintain a high degree of competitiveness. It's not the total number of hours worked that determines a program's success, it is the quality of the time spent. For me, working no more (and maybe even less) hours but spreading the hours/days out more would serve to reduce stress and allow for a better balance of personal-competitive life.

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

This has become one of my favorite CD threads of all time.

It is not often that you get to gain so much insight into the thought processes of others, the inner workings of so many types of teams, and so many rational and well-stated arguments on all sides of the issue. Although I continue to come down on the side of unlimited machine access, I do sympathize with the concerns many have (Parkinson's law and burnout, keeping up with the Joneses, cloning of effective designs, the life lessons of a hard deadline).

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

This argument plays exactly both ways. Our team is filled with students--and mentors--like this. And I've noticed a trend: particularly in students, but also some in mentors, the ones that don't want a longer build tend to have activities that would conflict more if so, usually because there's no/less overlap currently. (The trend seems to somewhat hold in this thread, though not entirely.) Most everyone else views a longer season as the ability show up less often, do more other activities, and still actively participate in FIRST. Why? Because we set that schedule, and that's what we want.

FIRST is about nurturing students to become these amazing leaders: how does making them put their lives on hold--their Boy Scout work, their FBLA, their music, etc--for 2 months of the school year help that? In reality, many of our kids don't do this, and it mitigates what they get out of FIRST. It drives many, many, many students away. I've lost count of the number of students who come in excited, and then dart to VEX when they find out how time-concentrated FRC is. Why? Because they have things to do 2-4 nights a week. Because they have lives, homework, work...just like the mentors we lose do. This ends up burdening the students and mentors who stay even more, which is what brings us close to burn out.

For 7 years, I've watched great students and adults walk out the door at the explanation "6 weeks". And not that I don't like VEX, but I want those people! Our only electrical mentor (too many have been scared off) is in a similar boat--not available for FRC as much as he'd like. Every year we have electrical problems, and we always struggle to mentor students interested in the field the way they'd like. We've lost a lot of them.

This year, we got a great mechanical engineer--awesome guy, great with the kids, did our first FEA analysis ever--but he's just not available enough to stay with a 6 week sprint. We haven't been able to engage him because he always feels behind when he comes. I end up doing basically everything he could be doing--that he wants to do--instead of concentrating on how to mentor my strategy team. Now both of my fields aren't up to snuff, and it's cost us a lot of inspirational opportunities. Not competitive opportunities. (Very different, and we basically got the competitive opportunity this year.) Inspirational: I know my students aren't growing the way they could be with more downtime, more mentorship, more one-on-one availability, more money left for other activities. I know I've lost a lot of students because of it.

As a non-school team, many of our mentors and families have rather long commutes: one our key mentor + student families drives an hour each way, every day in build. Their story is far from unique--I drive 3 hours each way over the weekend and back & forth on Wednesdays for build seasons I spend on campus. Wouldn't I love to just come down weekends? Not building a practice bot would have freed up at 3 weeks throughout this full season.

In short, a more open build season would allow us to set our schedule based on our team's needs. I am confident that we can enforce with discipline (though Gary may want to give back his key) and actually save ourselves the practice bot time. Because we already do set our schedule, we already send people home, and we understand the benefits:
- Recruit more students who shy from the intense time commitment
- Retain and positively impact students who want to do other activities in build
- Recruit, retain and fully utilize mentors who cannot commit to 4-7 days/week.
- Cut down on commutes and concentrated commitment for just about everyone
- Save loads and loads of money on the practice bot, expedited shipping, and just-in-case-buying that can be put towards more inspirational efforts
- Teach our kids (and mentors) further discipline! How to stay on schedule and not kill yourself with FIRST.
- More time to practice and help other teams, both during the season (collaborative weekends) and at events when we're not scrambling to update the competition bot.
- More opportunity to help other teams at on-season scrimmages, and all in all just "raise the floor" of FIRST.


EDIT: All that said...yeah, basically what Jared said.

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

I think they'll pick something in-between. Keep the 6 weeks but allow an un-bag day and some reasonable withholding allowance so people can do minor improvemnents/repairs, practice and programming. Bots get a little better but we don't open pandoras box of cloning and the robot design meta-game where you have to build a second completely new robot in order to compete at worlds.

I *like* that teams 1986, 1114, 254 benefited by coming up with such incredible "do-almost-everything" designs. With the limited build, they are able to feel confident to freely share what they came up with. When you go to a team's pit, most teams are happy to show you any detail of their robot. If we make the build season wide open, teams will all just take the best ideas and bring completely new robots to worlds.

No-one who wants to have a chance in the competition will be working "less" if we have a wide open build season. We will all be designing our "worlds" robot and building it in the final weeks. Tyler described it very well in my opinion.

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

I've been thinking a lot about this thread lately, and figured I'd post up some of my more recent thoughts/experiences.

Since 2011, my employer has been nice enough to sponsor whatever robotics team I've been affiliated with. The exact details vary a bit from season to season, but one thing that has always remained the same was a sort of 'unlimited' access to our sister companies resources as a machine shop. In 2011, we (at the time, we = 816) used them for a few small parts during the early build season and then not again until maybe week 3 or so of competition season, then in 2012 we outsourced a large portion of our robot to them and in 2013 after making the transition to 341, we had them run a lot of the sheet parts that you see on our robot this year - along with some of the 1/4" Plate Work.

In all three of those years, I was put in a very interesting position with my employer and my co-workers. To someone who didn't know the exact circumstances of the sponsorship agreement, it would appear as if I was shirking my responsibilies at work to play robots - when in reality robotics had become part of what I was 'supposed' to be working on while at work. (Protecting an investment sort of thing.)

Things get deeper from there, but to spare you much of the details here's the short and sweet... In both 2012 and 2013 there were parts orders that were sent to the machine shop through me that needed to be done on a schedule that would allow enough time for us to get the subsystems they were intended for done in time to ship the robot. This meant that the machine shop had to turn them around quicker than they usually would for nearly any customer and of course, if one thing needs to be done sooner than something else, that other thing is going to slip by the amount of time that the first takes.

In my case, the robot parts 'bumped' parts for a project that I am responsible for during my day job and things got really, really ugly for a bit. Much of what followed was the result of poor understanding at different levels and my failure to communicate exactly what was going on to my superiors and has since been resolved, but I can honestly say that weeks 5 and 6 of build season in both 2012 and 2013 have been two of the most stressful periods of my 'adult' life.

I guess the TLDR here is that the 6 week build season can really strain relationships between teams and sponsors - especially when employees of a sponsor are members/mentors/associates of the team.** Reducing the strain is possible through proper planning and a more 'structured' team/sponsor relationship I'm sure - but another more easy way to do this would be by relaxing the deadlines given to these people in an effort to reduce the amount of situations where we (teams) are asking for 'So Much' in 'So little time.'

** An interesting (annoying) thing that I have seen is that more often than not, the team that an employee is working with is referred to as 'Their Team' - when in reality, it should be something like 'The Team' or 'Team XXX'. This sort of reflects how a robotics team is thought of from an Employers Standpoint when that Employer Sponsors a team and Employees are involved. The Employees working with the team can often be held responsible for the teams actions since it is 'Their Team'.

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

Hello Again -

First, thank you to everyone for sharing their opinions. This is a very good discussion!

So, once again, I'm hearing that extending the build season will have the some positive effects:

1. Reduce mentor burnout by allowing mentors to schedule less frequent meetings - spreading out the same amount of work over a longer period of time. If you are calling for an extended build season so that you can reduce the number of hours you are working during the 6.5 week build, why not simply reduce those hours anyway? There is nothing stopping you - it is your choice - you can set your own schedule. If the 6.5 week schedule is too intense, make it less so.

2. An extended build season will reduce costs. No more overnight shipping, no having to build a practice robot. I can understand this argument, but it leads to more questions: Why not limit your materials to what you can obtain locally? Why do you have to build a practice robot? You are not required to build a practice robot, so you don't need to incur those added expenses.

The answer to these questions is "to remain competitive". That's not going to change.

While extending the season to reduce burnout and costs might make sense "on paper" I don't believe that in application it will come out that way. The drive to be competitive will push teams to meet with the same intensity for a longer period of time.

There is already a stop work day, and yet hundreds of teams have found ways to work around it - at great expense, but they feel it is worth it. Many have already admitted that they are in a 4-month build season as it is.
So, I ask the mentors of those teams: Have you found that you are less stressed, have more free time, are able to commit to the other elements in your life more now that you have already extended the build season?

- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

PS - I miss the days of whatever came in the kit, extruded aluminum, 1 sheet of plywood, wire and Small Parts...

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

Not to keep beating a dead horse, but with no end build day we wouldn't have to make a practice robot, which would save alot of money and time when it comes to our sheet metal sponsor. It would save the team alot of time and money when it came to buying spare motors, gears, wire, etc. Then having to put together 2 robots, then having to program and teak 2 robots(1 we have unlimited access to and can prefect and another that we have about 8 hours on practice day of competitions or 4 hours if at Championships to perfect). The overall quality of robots *should/would* increase if build season didn't have a solid end date. Want examples see VRC, FTC, and FLL.

Speaking on just 2826 if we had unlimited access to our robot this year would have been, I believe, much different for us. I believe that we would have won both regionals we went to instead of being finalist(I believe this because our auto mode would have been "perfect" and led to us being 1st after qualifications at both competitions) Our championship experience robot wise would have been different as well, not saying we would have done better in the elims, but I believe we would have seeded better in quals(again due to getting auto down on our comp bot like we had it perfect on our practice bot).


The fact of the matter is, is that no matter what the "schedule" teams are given from FIRST there will always be those people/teams who work harder and longer hours than others. Increasing the length of build season will just allow those who don't work non stop to have more time with their robots to perfect them, or those who do work non stop a chance to have a day or two off a week during build and see their family and friends or relax.

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

I have to agree with Dustin. The 6 week build is a burden on our sponsors. The build season is during the last leg of the fiscal year, so a lot of companies are expediting to finish projects including my own. It takes up a lot of my own time but also shop time that were able to procure. Often our parts are being made in over-time. This makes determining part value tricky because of we were to report the overtime cost, it would be huge. hence, we are often forced to have an mentor to make the part to make its value zero, adding to burn-out. At this point we are begging machinists, engineers and technicians to come in to see the robot and talk about their jobs in an effort to add them to our mentor list.

To give use more time with our resources, it would be nice to make parts in November "at risk." We could then have extra time during the build season, time to have students present/operating the machines, and a chance to start CAD models earlier. Also this would prevent us from getting to carried away, because everything is at risk, so we would limit ourselves to common parts or risk making an obsolete part once the game is announced. Of course every year we compete with the pros and cons of the kit-bot frame because it could give us the same savings in time. However, drive trains have not been the bottle neck in our builds.

I should add, I don't think I would give up the practice bot even with a extend season. It has been very nice to have it around for spare parts. Also having a second data point has been nice to catch a few technical issues.

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

True, but how will the international teams handle an unlimited build season?

For teams like 3132 and 359, if the 2013 build season were extended how much time would you realistically have your robot if you competed at the same events?

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

Forgive me, but this is making a number of assumptions that do not hold true for me.

1. Our schedule in build (and otherwise) is not such as it is simply to remain competitive. The world of FIRST is not all relative. We set a certain standard each year that we want to achieve. It's absolute. This year, it was 3pt pyramid shooting and a 30 point climb. We worked our tails off because we wanted that climb. If we'd gotten it sooner, which I guarantee we would have in a more open season (because it works beautifully on our practice bot...), the schedule would not have been as intense.

Yes, this is true even if we'd gotten trounced at our events by a couple of 1986s. We wouldn't have stopped dead in our tracks, of course, but we were more than prepared to dialed it back. Because it's not all about competition, it's about achievement. At some point, a point we're pretty much at now, our design plateaus. And we're cool with that. When we discussed trying to get full court shooting abilities and/or floor pickup--this was when we'd only been 2nd pick district semifinalists, mind--we decided against it, because we had lives.


2. This answer's shorter. We buy things we have to ship because we want our students to have experience with those real-world items. For instance, this year we bought material to mold our own polyurethane wheels. Yes, it helped us competitively (well, kinda), but we did it because the kids wanted to try it and because we wanted that climb. The same goes for the things we ask our sponsor mentors to machine--it's just great experience for the students.


In short, my answer is not to be competitive. It's to be inspirational. In many ways, this is an absolute, and in terms of robot function, it realistically plateaus (unless you're one for a total rebuild, which we're not). More time gives me more of an opportunity to do that: to gather more mentors to help more students, to engage more students for a meaningful time, to reach out to more teams in more ways, to save more money for other efforts, and yes, to 'cram' less.



In terms of competition though, I seem to have forgotten how we determined more time would change relative competitiveness of the top 1/2-1/3rd. The bottom rising I get: more time to cross-team mentor, maybe more mentors signing on...but the top? We seem to have spent most of this thread talking about how the elite and pursuing-elite teams work through the 4 months anyway, and how we all don't want to work harder than we already do. How many people actually think the Jones' would get untouchably better in an open season, or would even force us to work much harder? The Jones' I've seen here seem in favor (whether they're for the concept or not) of spreading out in an open season just as much as others. We've already heard from 67 that they don't even work the schedules we're talking about, we see Daisy's at their limit, and we know 1114's mentors are mostly weekenders. I guess I just forgot, because the gap hadn't occurred to me before.


@Brandon: I agree, there are certainly logistical issues in an open season. No argument. They may even be intractable, though I doubt it. (Are you sure this doesn't fit in the overhead bin, Sir? :P Perhaps we should be sponsored by American Airlines instead of FedEx.) I don't think anyone's timeline for opening the season is January 2014. It may even have to wait for more districts, but I still think it's worth talking about.

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

This topic has been hard to get off my mind... I read Van and Sanddrag's post and agree so strongly. Then I go back to Jim's post and I also agree with him as well.

So guess what. FIRST should do what is in FIRST's mission.
- If they want to keep the feel of a 6-week build - mimicking real world engineering challenges - then go for it... Keep it 6 weeks, no withholding allowance. Some without enough mentor support or experience, may field robots that are limiting. The Jones' will continue to inspire and amaze.
- If they want to involve more students in robot building and develop a robot competition that is exciting to watch. Then open up the season. More teams will find success and the Jones' will still continue to inspire and amaze.

What I can't stand is this half way stuff. We call it 6 weeks - but it is really 3-4 months. FIRST needs to decide what direction do they want FRC to go. Which experience do they want students to have?

Personally, I think the 6 week experience is like no other experience kids face and it many ways it is a great opportunity for them to learn skills that have nothing to do with robotics. To meet an almost impossible deadline, with minimal and insufficient resources, and not a how-to-book within sight. Aren't these the characteristics employers want these days? In the end, isn't that what is most important?

As far as my burn out goes... If they go with an open build season, it will force me to cut back. I'd like to think that I can do this, but in the back of my mind, I'm afraid I might not be able to follow through. Perhaps go to set work days or mandatory days off as others suggest. It will sure test me.

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

By and large the "elite" teams are already milking the 16 weeks for all it's worth. There wouldn't be any change in that regard if we went to an open competition.

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

The few posts I think that have real merit to the top 1/3rd of teams getting much better with an open season are those that believe they would build entirely new robots for championship. We see this in VEX a lot yet rarely is it the team that copies someone that is winning the World Titles but I guess the meta-game of trying to beat the current fad copy machine could be a bad thing.

However I just don't think this will happen in FRC or at least not at the scale that it happens in VEX. It's just much harder and resource intensive to copy most mechanisms in FRC and get them right. If the game allows for something very simple to be copied that dramatically improve effectiveness then teams will do it and already are Minibots, ball magnets, etc. However I just don't think many teams would see something like 1114's climb in Week 2 and have a duplicate/improved machine ready to go for championship. There are teams that are good enough, have the machining capabilities and drive to do this sort of drastic overall and rebuilds and some of them do it now. However since you can't build an entire FRC robot in a weekend or at least not one that can compete for a world title like you can in the smaller robot competitions I don't think you will see nearly that many direct copy robots or even complete rebuilds.

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

Let's look at this from a pure competition standpoint because I believe that much "burnout" occurs in competition due to the fact that many teams want their students to at least field a competitive robot so that their team does not lose say 125-10 and feel that their efforts ment very little as far as being competitive playing the game. So now let me ask a question to either alliance captains or their first pick that had won regionals this year.

Did any team end up winning a regional as an alliance captain or first round pick while not building a practice robot or keeping their withholding allowence under 5 lbs.? For teams in a district setting I would ask the teams this same question for those that qualified for championships based on robot performance.

If the total amount of teams that answer yes to this question is over 60% of the total amount of regional winners and district qualifers then I say we keep bag and tag. If it is under 60% I would say that we eliminate bag and tag to give us underfunded teams a chance.

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

Of the last several pages, this stood out to me the most.
This is every bit true for me and I'm sure many others!
I dont live a balance lifestyle. For me, I have to add my 4 year old daughter, wife and immediate family to that list of things that get neglected.
I do blood tests every 3 months, and my diet is at its worst, during build season and while we travel.

During any event, I ignore the lunch and dinner schedules. All that matters is when our next match is!

Sounds bad, but this is reality.


On the other hand, Joe brought up some good points about working smarter and NOT harder. I think in general, our team does that. However, if we plan to take the next step and make those hard decisions to take greater chances in robot design, we'd have to be even smarter about it.

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

For all of your arguing that we should go to an open season and for the purposes of spreading out the work, since many of us have already commented that we wouldn't, what about going back to my original idea of mandating a "FIRST Teams may work 6 (or 5) days per week, and must declare a consistent non-work day".

I'd be more inclined to be in favor of a longer build season if there was no legal way to work more than 5 or 6 days per week. So long as teams are free to work as many days and as many hours as you can, teams will, and we will to remain competitive.

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

I just don't see how this is any different from it is now. There are a few teams that already work 7 days a week for 4 months and most of them aren't world champions. Yet there are teams that work 4 or 5 days a week and constantly produce top 25 robots in the world. I strongly believe there is a limit to how much time can really help in terms of getting from 90% to 99% in terms of robot quality. You could give some teams half as much time as everyone else and they would still build a world class robot, they have been doing it longer and just are better at than other teams.

However, getting from the bottom 20% to the middle of the pack, time can make a huge difference.

My team meets nearly everyday, but that's not because we think we have to if we want to compete to be world champions. It's because we like seeing each other and I believe it's good for the program. Every team has their reasons for doing what they do.

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

Indeed. That's why I'm also for a severe limitation (or elimination) of withholding allowance.

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

I can certainly confess to this Glenn, It has gotten so bad that the parents have actually assigned someone to make sure that I eat.
It is simply in my nature to be competitive and to give my students 100% of my effort.

It isn't so much about the winning... it is about the competing.

I can tell you that the key to having more balance in the mentor/coaches lives is to create a really good parent/mentor/coaching system by giving everyone something of value to do and to celebrate that.

I don't think switching a few hours/days/regulations here or there or forcing change on the FIRST system will do anything to reduce the "mentor burnout". It will always be there no matter how much time is allowed. Of course it might help individuals one way or the other... but it is not a real solution to this "problem"

Our team has been blessed with a wonderful group of mentors and parents...it allows us to do things that other teams have difficulty doing. If everyone gets the same amount of time... teams that have this kind of support are going to do better. It is really that simple.

Invest your off season time... gain support from somewhere...find people who want to volunteer... make them part of your team... Time spent doing this will solve so many problems that you have..

What you are doing is incredibly interesting and it has great value.. and its a great deal of fun for mentors and students alike... let it shine... make it loud... reap the benefits... How many times have you heard
" I wish they had a program like this when I was in school..."
Well NOW they can be in this program....

Don't just say " Our team has no mentors.... we can't find any more"...go out and tell people about your team... you will find supporters... once you have a few... getting more will be easier and easier...

The one thing you can't do is just sit back and wait for them to appear.
Or expect someone else to do it for you.

Make it happen...

sorry for the soap box... You may now return to your scheduled broadcasting...

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

I am not sure I agree. I believe the top 5% or 10% of teams already make significant use of the time between build and competitions so they may not see as much of a benefit. But there will be some, and I know these teams would find even more ways to take advantage of the extra time. Probably the top 20% or even 30% could benefit more from a longer season, and are also likely to be in a position to take advantage of it. But from what I have seen of the bottom 20% or perhaps even the bottom 40 or 50% is that many of these teams are mostly resource and mentor limited. These teams are in the worst position to take advantage of any extra time. I believe that making the season longer is more likely to cause them to fall further behind the pack and become less inspired. If you really want FIRST to become more competitive this is the area that really needs to be addressed.

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

In my opinion, I think Mr. Gregory summed it up pretty nicely. It's not so much time that teams need, (although I think a 7th week might help quite a bit, rarely do I see even from the top FRC teams a bot ready to go week 1) but it's the motivation to want to be better that is required. FRC is a serious time commitment, and I'm having a tough time believing that teams won't make efforts to squeeze every bit of time out that they can. Again, it's a choice, but I think more teams will try to use it all rather than use it effectively.

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

I've been doing this for years, with mixed success. I'm not sure that the vast majority of people appreciate what living twenty miles from a stoplight really means in terms of running an FRC team.

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

On our team the students have figured out that when I'm sick our team has an amazing competition/wins awards. I typically skip breakfast/lunches at events because food isn't the priority at the moment!

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

This argument reminds me of what Karthik is fond of saying, though -- that you can increase your relative competitiveness either by raising your own team up, or by dragging the best teams down.

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

It's not dragging the best down - their absolute performance might be worse than it is with the current ruleset or a official longer build period, but they're still going to win. It's not like proposed (as in, often proposed in whiny threads on CD) rules against spending, tools, sponsors, or shop-built robots that would disproportionately hit elite teams. 1114 was great in 2003 (I was there) when there was no withholding allowance, and they're great now. Their relative performance would almost certainly not change. But everyone's mentors and teachers would see their families more, and you'd have an easier time retaining teachers (having been on several teams where the massive time commitment has put a strain on the teachers involved).

To put it another way:
-A build season that was actually 6 weeks long would remove exactly the same amount of build time from every team rich or poor, big or little. We all get the same amount of time.
-Rules against spending or tools or sponsors or high-end COTS components or software disproportionately fall upon top-end teams, and would more fall under the quote of "trying to drag others down".

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

Part of the hard part in being competitive in nearly everything has been getting myself to trust the other mentors on my team who do not share in the same philosophies with respect to designing for and playing an FRC game (CAD first, we only have self-imposed restrictions, #35 chain on the drive train IS ok, etc). My wife has been paramount in helping me let go of decisions that shouldn't matter to me to begin with. That type of thing definitely helped reduce stress when thinking pessimistic thoughts out loud concerning the smaller robot size constraints while CAD'ing at home.

For the first time in 5 seasons, we will have a significant amount of our students returning next year. I hope it will help reinforce lessons learned with the adults come next year.

New mentors are sometimes a mixed bag the first season (especially with alpha-types). It also helps (I think) that I am finally no longer mistaken for a student by new mentors* :rolleyes: In retrospect, after everyone survives a season with others' personalities, new mentors can definitely become the people us competitive vets lean on at critical times in future years.

*Still happened once this year, even though I just turned 30 in St. Louis...

No soapbox there -- that's genuine inspiration.

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

I'm lost in the comparison. Isn't the argument that tool/sponsor limits affect top teams because such teams take advantage of them currently? If so, isn't that the exact same case with the withholding allowance? It removes the exact same potential time from all teams, just like limiting tools remove the exact same tool options from all teams. Could you explain further?

I'd also like to point out that pulling the top down is not inherently relative to competitiveness. It could well be absolute: what if no one (ok, fewer, some miracle workers didn't need the extra time/allowance) had pulled off a 7 disc auto? Or a 12 second climb? It might not cut the competitiveness, but it cuts the inspiration. What if Einstein had looked more like Week 1?


To answer nicholsjj, no, we never have. We've been second pick for all our wins except Philly 2011 (alliance captain), made semis as first pick and got skipped in MAR points since we won--every single one involved a practice bot, most involved 10+ lb withholding allowances. We might have pulled Philly off without a practice bot (we basically rode the minibot), but every other one needed it.

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

I have read every post in this thread and have already posted. Nothing I have read compels me to change my perspective. My first preference is to eliminate the bag and tag requirement; provide teams with a voucher which they may choose to use to ship their robot to and from the championship on a date of their choosing.

To the question of what would 4028 do differently under the circumstance I described? As I am the lead mentor, not the dictator, I will share what I would strongly advise our team to do. Our work schedule would not change in the first 6.5 weeks – we have not proven we can get it completely done in 6.5 weeks, so until we demonstrate we are more efficient, no schedule change. We would continue to select two events from the same Regional events which are relatively close and we would work around any major school events. We would avoid back-to-back events and likely target weeks two through six; ideally three and five. We would continue to build prototype subsystems and more effectively assemble them to ensure that they work together as designed. We would complete our design, fully test, debug and practice. If I can find the resource close, I would pursue the idea of getting pre-inspected.

Net, we would come to our first event complete, practiced and ready to inspect. I know from experience that when a team can do that, the competition is better and everybody has a much better time.

To the comments concerning the value of the 6.5 week deadline and its representation of real world requirements. I have been an engineer in the chemical process industry for 35 years. I understand that deadlines and commitments are real and students need to learn how to meet them. I also know that some deadlines are hard and fast while others are soft and may be renegotiated at times. For the past 23 years I have worked for a consumer product company. I have designed manufacturing processes for new-to-the-world products; redesigned manufacturing processes for major reformulations of products; modified existing process subsystems to work more effectively and remove “issues”. Here is one thing I know for sure – we can never stop innovating or we will be buried by the competition. Sure, we push hard and keep schedules to get the product out as fast as possible. Then we continually improve the product and the manufacturing process to provide new and better benefits and lower costs. This is my reality and this is what I want to help our students experience. We will do it under the current rules; we could do it more cost effectively without the bag requirement.

Concerning the relative competitiveness. I want no parts of constraining anybody from executing an excellent design to near perfection. I want to see highly effective machines fully playing the game compete on Einstein every year. If we could be one of them, great … I am not going to kill myself trying or lose any sleep when we don’t make it. I will celebrate the success of those who win and learn from them.

Concerning burnout. I get exhausted by the end of build (is that burned out, perhaps). But I recover quickly. Without the bag requirement, I know that the stress and frustration of not being complete would be at best eliminated and at worst postponed. Certainly no worse. The stress at competition would depend upon performance and reliability. I believe we would be more reliable and perform better. We would meet more during the build season as needed, but I believe under less stress and more effectively with access to the competition robot.

Finally, to those who express the concern about burnout, I will offer the following wisdom which has been shared with me over the years. The first is live your life based on priorities, balance is a trap and invites you to always compromise. It makes you feel like you are cheating one of your priorities. Another is to ensure that you manage your time such that you have margin (time which is unscheduled so that you may respond to the emergencies and opportunities in life). The last one I learned recently, limit yourself to five roles. These are my five roles in priority order:
1. Disciple of Jesus Christ
2. Husband
3. Father/Grandfather
4. Engineer at Procter & Gamble
5. Lead Mentor of FIRST FRC Team 4028

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

For those arguing that extending the build season will make the disparity between the most well funded and least well funded teams smaller, I have to ask "Are you really sure about that?" Yes, being able to make a practice robot is an immense advantage, but is it more of an advantage than being able to attend multiple regional competitions? Will being able to attend more regional competition be an even bigger advantage with the unlimited build season?

My team just completed our 11th season. I would call us a moderately well funded team. We have built a practice robot the past couple years, but this was the first year where we built a fully functional one. (Thank you Denso for the grant!) But before that we were able to build most of a practice robot with the accumulation of spare parts from years of doing FRC. This year was the first in which we could afford to attend a second regional competition. It was an eye opening experience. We had a pretty good robot by the end of the build season, but multiple little issues kept it from really performing well until the elimination rounds at Queen City. But this year we were able to take our now fully functional robot to Buckeye. The advantage of the teams that routinely go to two or three regional competitions will be magnified by an unlimited build season.

I guess my view on this question comes down to asking "Which choice will provide the most benefit?" I know that for my team at least (and I strongly suspect for other teams) the extension of build into the spring will push away more students due to other season commitments than we will gain by spreading out the time commitment. And I feel strongly that an unlimited build cycle will pose an existential threat to more than a few teams who rely on teacher participation. So I think there is a not inconsiderable risk of there being fewer students and fewer teams in FRC if we switch to an unlimited build season.

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

My argument is that you won't need to go to multiple events to gain the same advantage. If instead you spend Saturday at a nearby school with your competition robot competing against another team, you can gain a similar advantage to a team that is at an event that week.

118 hosts small scrimmage type things from time to time and those are some of the best days we have during all of build season to learn about our robot. Only teams with practice bots can go though.

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

Bob,
I couldnt have said it any better. Spot on!

The real work as you have mentioned is finding the right mix of mentors/volunteers/supporters for your team, and NOT trying to do it all by yourself........because "its just too much work to find help."

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

Like most of you, I have been watching this thread closely, as my addiction to this program has affected my personal life.

1998, Ladder Logic, Rutgers "regional", with my newly formed Team 195, I began to cry seeing three of my passions, engineering, education, and sports, altogether under one roof. I was hooked.

Back in the day, we put the Robot in a crate, and it was laded in between competitions, at great expense.

To reduce monetary costs, the program has evolved to "bag and tag", with multiple regionals and "withholding allowances". This is bad for an addict.

Three teams later, I have to keep reminding myself: "It's not about the Robot".

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

I don't see why it should in any way remind you of that quote. FIRST already has a great deal of rules--that is, artificial restrictions--designed to create some level of parity. I'm all for money and motor and pneumatic limits, too... and I don't see how that makes me in any manner anti-Kanagasabapathian.

I want FIRST to grow; to expand to other schools and communities with sustained, awesome programs where kids do awesome things. The three major barriers I see to that are (a) mentor burnout, (b) brave little toasters (which, let's face it, aren't terribly inspiring to those who built them or to anyone watching them), and (c) money.

(a) and (c) are both impacted by extending build--(c) is definitely helped, while (a) is definitely hurt (I know, I know, people are free to disagree with me on that and be wrong :p ).

What I do not see as a major problem in FIRST right now is the top-tier and high-middle-tier teams fielding non-competitive robots.

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

If FIRST got rid of the witholding allowance, as many in this thread seem to favor, you would absolutely see the ceiling come down.

We definitely would not have designed a 30 point climber if we knew there was no witholding allowance. We made substantial changes to the functionality of every system on the robot post build. Very few of those changes could have been done at the event with no witholding allowance.

I imagine many others would have designed different robots with less functionality as well. It may not be about the robot, but it's definitely inspiring seeing the robots that manage to do everything well, or be the absolute best at a few things. With less chances to tweak/upgrade/fix things, a lot of that goes away.

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

...so? All of a sudden, a two-level climb would be the amazing thing at the regional. The amazingness of a 30pt climb isn't simply because it is a 30pt climb, it's because it was very rare and very difficult to pull off under the current build-season ruleset. Shorten the season, and something slightly less amazing would become the amazing thing that'd get people off their feet (and, of course, the 1-2 teams that managed a 30pt climb in a 6-week strict build would be even more amazing).

If they extended the build season, you'd see more 30pt climbers, which would reduce the specialness of a 30pt climb, and then the inspiring thing would be someone doing it in like 4 seconds.

Of course, if they limited the build season or extended it, I'm sure the GDC would change the game rules slightly to make things a little easier or a little harder, and so the "most amazing" thing you could do on the field would still only be doable by 3-4% of teams.

I believe the withholding allowance is used by far more mid-tier teams than the other things I listed. Particularly in the context of whiny CD threads, that are always like "111/1114/254/987/25's ROBOT IS BUILT WITH SUPER-TOOLS BY ADULTS AT THEIR SPONSOR-DONATED METAL SHOP CAMPUS. BAN EVERYTHING THEY USE SO MY TEAM IS CLOSER". I've been on teams that always did pretty poorly with just one mentor and still used the withholding allowance and the added time that came with it. The withholding allowance is nowhere near being something only elite teams use. And in any case, unlike tons of money, big sponsors, or amazing tools which are harder to acquire, it is something that is available to every team equally. Removing it thus removes the same opportunities from every team equally.

As for the inspirationalness of 12-second climbs, see what I said above. There isn't anything inherent in a 30pt climb that makes it amazing, it's the fact that only a few percent of teams managed to pull it off. In a shorter build with somewhat-less-capable robots, whatever other thing that was only pulled off by 5% of teams would become the inspirational/aspirational things for teams to chase. If we gave every team a year, a 30pt climb would be an expected feature and wouldn't be inspirational at all.

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

[quote=Bongle;1275017]...so? All of a sudden, a two-level climb would be the amazing thing at the regional. The amazingness of a 30pt climb isn't simply because it is a 30pt climb, it's because it was very rare and very difficult to pull off under the current build-season ruleset. Shorten the season, and something slightly less amazing would become the amazing thing that'd get people off their feet (and, of course, the 1-2 teams that managed a 30pt climb in a 6-week strict build would be even more amazing).

If they extended the build season, you'd see more 30pt climbers, which would reduce the specialness of a 30pt climb, and then the inspiring thing would be someone doing it in like 4 seconds.[/QOUTE]

I disagree. 20 point climbing is the same thing as 30 point climbing, from a climber design standpoint. 30 point climbing just repeats the first motion. We would not have 20 point climbed either. I think very, very few teams would have 30 point climbed if they knew they absolutely had to get it right the first go around. I can't speak for 1114, but if I were them and were deciding between floor pickup and 30 point climbing I'd probably pick floor pickup because there's far less risk of not having it perfected in six weeks.

It was so hard to do that I don't think you would have seen many teams adding one. You could certainly scrap everything above your base and make a 30 point climber, if you had an open competition, but it would be very, very difficult to retrofit one around your existing design. Maybe some more teams would have built one, but there'd still be no more than a handful that would be worth the time they took to align and get to the top.

Regardless, it's one small section of the point I was trying to make. If the best robots aren't as good and do less things in a less impressive fashion, it hurts all of FIRST because students on other teams aren't as inspired by the amazing things the really good teams are able to do.

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

Perhaps it's the lack of parity that makes the uberbots so compelling.
If we all had unlimited time and budget to design and build robots, we'd all have designs that score 15 discs autonomously from the top of the pyramid.
But we don't, so the teams that can do that are few, far between, and a-m-a-z-i-n-g.
The 6-week restriction is a big part of what makes FRC great, what makes it different. Using "we can't do it because we didn't have enough time" isn't a valid excuse - we've all got the same amount of time.
Also - the notion of teams arbitrarily self-limiting their schedules in a longer build season paradigm is laughable. We're engineers, scientists, teachers. We don't do things that are arbitrary. We do whatever it takes to try to be the best at accomplishing our goals.

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

Surely you don't believe this is true?

The great teams are pretty close to the upper limit on performance. They can't get that much better. Maybe 5-10%.

The pretty good teams can probably get a lot better. Most of them probably not quite to the level of the great teams, due to resources, mentors, design skill, etc, but pretty close.

40% of teams have no hope of ever getting anywhere near the great (or even pretty good) teams, IMO. The best hope would be that if you make build an open process the teams in the first two categories could have the ability (through more time) to help those "lower tier" teams to at least build functional robots that could meet some minimum standard of competitiveness.

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

I'm not going to comment on what we should do with the withholding allowance or if we should keep the 6.5 weeks or not. I think there's a bigger problem.

I'm not trying to pick on either one of you, you're just the two most recent posts saying this.


This is part of your problem.

I'm reasonably confidant that any mentor worth his/her salt would NOT let a student do that. We make sure our students eat, that they're drinking lots water, that we send them home at a reasonable hour, and that (if we're in a hotel) we make sure to send them to their rooms at a time that allows them to get a decent amount of sleep. (Whether or not they sleep at that point is out of our hands.) Why don't we do the same for ourselves? Just like your students, your body cannot give you 100% if you're not taking care of it. And that includes doing trivial things like eating. Even if all you're doing is taking five minutes to inhale a sandwich or slice or two of pizza and chug a bottle of water.

Part of the reason why so many people get burned out is because they're not taking care of their body. You need to eat, you need to stay hydrated, and you need to sleep. To take it a step further, sit down for a moment or two every hour. Take some of the strain off your feet and back. Spending all day running around on concrete/wood floors does NOTHING to help you feel better.

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

You said what I said. My question, poorly phrased, was "why is that inherently bad?"
I, for one, have added admiration for the greats because they were able to do so much in so little time. That separation, that parity, is what makes them incredible.
We're historically firmly entrenched in that 40%. We're graduating students, getting them scholarships, hooking them up with internships and work experiences, spreading the Gospel According to Dean, slowly but surely getting better as a team - I'm okay with being in the 40%. What I'm not okay with is making myself (more) exhausted, straining my relationships with my family, friends, career, and ask others on the team to do the same - just to maybe get to the bottom part of the 60%.
Our competitive limitations are not a direct result of the 6-week period. They're a result of a larger set of issues - ones we're working toward resolving.

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

Please go back and read the posts from Joe Barry (987) and Adam Freeman (67) in this thread. They are among many teams that already have self-imposed time off on their build calendars. On 341 we generally avoid meeting on Wednesdays and Sundays, at least until a final push is necessary. We have learned over the years that a bunch of fatigued and stressed out team members working around the clock is not the preferred way to build a robot, regardless of what your team's capabilities are.

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

I don't want to speak for the 'greats' but MANY of these teams are not accomplishing their amazing designs in 6.5 weeks. What Cory was describing earlier is that these very elite teams are already near the peak of robot performance. These teams are working for 4 months, using withholding allowance and practice bots to reach an unbelievable level of play.

Opening the build season will not dramatically change the level of play these teams are already achieving...

-Brando

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

Just a few thoughts after reading the latest posts on here.

* The top/uber teams will work from kickoff until championship regardless of any rules limitations. Even with no withholding, they will perfect a practice robot, dial in their autonomous, and spend lots of time figuring out how they upgrade the competition robot at their next event.

* Being able to build and test code and "driver's training" on a practice robot is a huge advantage. Why not let all teams have that chance by letting them at their competition robot?

* FIRST made a big push this year and for the past few years to make the game and competitions spectator friendly. We now have the "Make it Loud" award, etc... What would the competition be like if we cut back access to the robots? Not nearly as exciting, especially at the early regionals. And it would hurt the middle tier teams the most.

* Over time, the game challenges/tasks (especially autonomous) have become more difficult. The software is a lot more complicated than the old IFI days. The mechanical side has gotten maybe a little easier with AndyMark and Vex, etc... But I can't imagine what it would be like to be a rookie team now. Cramming all that into 6 weeks has added to burnout.

* If robot access or the season were expanded, project management and time management skills would be a must for all teams. These are good lessons to learn as well as technical skills.

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

There are diminishing marginal returns to increased time put in. Past a certain point, spending a given amount of time AWAY from robots is optimal to success. So this means that the top teams stand to gain the least by opening build season from a competitive stand point, whereas less competitive teams stand to gain the most. I recognize that there are other factors involved in the opinions expressed here, but this is why I'm surprised by the lines that have been drawn and where people tend to fall on this issue.

To Jared's point, we took off Fridays through and including week 4, and if not for a big snow storm, probably could've continued to take them off all season. That's another thing that an open build season would self-accommodate: it would allow for more resilience despite problems completely beyond teams' control like bad weather. Bad weather can cancel meetings for the better part of a week, significantly delay shipments, and cause other issues that require the immediate and undivided attention of FRC participants. An open build season will help alleviate these issues.

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

An interesting thing about this thread: usually when somebody says "our team can't do xyz," people tell them to go out and find a way to do it anyway (recruit more sponsors and mentors, work in the offseason, etc). People jump all over that type of thing. But when a team says "we can't stop ourselves from overworking," there are more people agreeing than criticizing the "I can't" claim. I've already been critical of that, so I'll just say that I experience the same problem to a degree and empathize.

The people posting are largely a bunch of overachievers and people who, when told "you can't do that," will go out and figure out a way to do it out of spite. The overachieving culture is a big reason why so many teams bite off too much in their design process and end up not finishing the robot properly. Maybe this is something all of us should think about more when we decide our overall approach to an FRC season, whatever the length. Our ambitious, overachieving selves push us to make irrational decisions. That includes choosing fanciful robot strategies and choosing 7 day schedules for 20+ hours a week (or 30, 40...).

This thread has me dreaming of what we could accomplish in a longer build season, but I am also thinking about what I can do to make next year's 6.5 weeks more efficient and less stressful. It has been a very thought provoking thread.

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

Extending the build season is very far from the only manner in which this can be done. You're right that it is a possible solution to this problem, but it's only one of many, and I can think of quite a few that I would call better.

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

This may sound like a stupid question, but I'd like some serious responses.

What about shortening the build season to 4 or 5 weeks, with no witholding?

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

What are some ways teams can use to lower mentor burn out with the way the season is currently set up? What are some techniques that teams have used to reduce work loads early in the season?

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

If I were to start my own high school robotics competition:
-- I'd want my build season to start the first weekend in January, so that college-age alumni can attend kickoff before they go back to school. This lets the high school students capture a little bit of the alumni's institutional knowledge, but it also (1) challenges the students to make their own decisions that will (2) establish themselves as the new team leaders and (3) push the envelope of the team's capabilities.
-- I'd want my build season to have a defined "stop build" date, even if it means that the date must be chosen arbitrarily. This is essential in order to teach the concepts of project management.
-- I'd want my build season to end before the college students have a chance to come home on their spring break.

By these criteria, my build season ends up being ~6 weeks long.

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

Since my previous question didn't generate much traffic (yet), here are some of my thoughts behind asking it:

- Many people on this thread argue that extending the build season will create more stress on the mentors. Then finding a way to pull the season back to 4 weeks might be better for everyone. If 8 weeks is worse than 6, then 6 must be worse than 4 (or not?).

- Shortening the build season forces more design tradeoffs - "do everything" robots will become exceedingly difficult to pull off. Maybe forcing some more design tradeoff through time limits is not a bad thing.

- It might force FIRST to simplify some of the design challenges so teams can build competitive robots in 4 weeks. The game could still be exciting, so maybe that's not such a bad thing.

- We've discussed lengthing the season, but haven't at all talked about shortening it. Why not?

- If you feel that 4 or 5 is simply not enough time, then why exactly is it not enough?

During kickoff, Woody always makes a speech along the lines of, "we give you a hard challenge, and not enough time to do it." What is enough time? What is definitely too little? Does your answer depend on if you feel that scaling back your design ambitions is a good or bad thing?

(I know some of this is in the "Is 6 weeks a perfect number" thread, but: a) I hate multiple threads discussing the same topic, and b) I'm looking for answers along the lines of how it pertains to mentor burnout. At this point, I'm up for hearing anything. A lot of people on this thread have stated, "if FIRST does XXX, then I'm going to think about limiting my involvement." Let me say that if FIRST doesn't do something, I'm thinking of limiting my involvement. Then again, I've been saying that every year for the last 12 years.

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

Matt and I are mentors on the same team, so our focus regarding this issue is similar. The general topic of this thread has been on changing the length of the season to reduce mentor burnout. What if we make the likely assumption that the rules are not going to change, and discuss ways teams can "work smarter, not harder" to reduce mentor burnout? Triple Helix is trying our utmost to get better without killing our mentors or going broke. I'll share some of the things we've done, or are working on doing.

- First, like a lot of teams, we don't meet every day. We meet three evenings during the week and all day Saturday. This allows both students and mentors time to breathe and handle non-robotics related life issues.

- A well run sports team would never show up to their first game without practicing first. In FRC, "game season" starts on kickoff day. We use the time between when school starts and kickoff day for robot building practice. The electronics team practices wiring. The software team writes the code to control a robot, from scratch. The mechanical team trains on the tools and machines in our shop, and works on pit and robot building projects. During the off season we meet one evening a week, and everyone can work on projects outside of meeting times. On kickoff day, the team is used to working together as a team, and has the skills necessary to build a robot.

- Be smart and pre-order as many COTS supplies as possible before the season even starts. If you neglect to do this, you are dooming yourself to parts shortages and high stress during the build season. During our summer development activities, we realized that hex bearings were critical to our drive train, and hard to come by. Also, the tolerances on the hexes vary enough that a good portion of an order don't fit the hex shafting. So we pre-ordered enough hex bearings for two robots and pre-sorted them into good and bad batches. The good ones fit unmodified shafting. The bad ones have to have the hex shafts hand worked to fit. We used the good batch on the competition drive train and set the others aside for the practice bot. When other teams started posting about shortages of hex bearings during the build season, we got to say, "Whew, that was close." rather than being stressed.

- Build your practice bot drive train as a training exercise in the fall. No, it probably won't be exactly what is perfect for the game. But if you design and build it smartly, it will be easy to modify. Even if you guess completely wrong, your team will have practiced their robot building skills, and you will have a working drivetrain which can be used for scoring device prototyping. Even better, find an area rookie team and help them get on their feet by letting them work with you while you build it. One caveat, be sure to be scrupulous to segregate any parts you might fabricate or COTS parts you modify, as these may not end up in a competition robot.

- Invest in a 3D printer. This is going to be one of the biggest time savers for us next year. We bought one right at the beginning of the build season, and it helped enough that we wouldn't want to go without it. Right now we are redesigning and rebuilding our pickup arm. Many of the secondary components and brackets are all designed in CAD and printed on the printer. This moves "fabrication" time outside of meeting time. Parts can be printing overnight, and during school/work hours, to be ready at meeting time.

- Recruit mentors! For the past three years we have had two primary mechanical mentors. It looks like this year we will have at least four. This will be a huge help in reducing our "burnout factor". Again, a caveat: be sure the people you bring on are compatible with the team. Bringing in an incompatible mentor creates stress rather than reducing it. Another again, working on projects during the off season is when you want to try out new mentors, not in the heat of build season.

Does anyone else have something to share about how your team does things, working within the existing rules, to reduce "mentor burnout"?

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

Would certainly exacerbate many of the previously listed problems - paying for expedited shipping, stress on sponsors to manufacture parts in a shorter timeframe, fewer days "off" for teams.

I would love to see an effort by FIRST (or the community) to compile some data on FIRST norms, so we can get a sense of where we stand as a community on some of these big issues. I have a feeling we're overestimating the "average" FIRST team.

Build Season Schedule/Time Commitment - our team meets from 6:30-9:30PM on weekdays and ~1PM-9PM on weekends, with that schedule expanding in the final weeks. Our team policy is to take Fridays off for as long as we can, this year we took Fridays off weeks 1-4. We use RFID tags to track attendance - in the end I spent 260+ hours working in the lab, we had 12 students exceed 180 hours (~30/hrs a week). We logged a little over 5,000 "person-hours" of work from ~45 students. The numbers might be a little low if anything (students forgetting to sign out, work done at home, etc). I figure we must be on the high end of the continuum, but I honestly have no idea what the average team looks like here.

Practice Bots - we were planning on building one for the 1st time this year - eventually made the conscious choice to abandon that after taking a realistic look at our build schedule. Being in MAR, we had the benefit of unbagging windows, so it wasn't a huge issue. Maybe 5% of teams (~125) are making these?

Withholding Allowance/Competition Season - Mainly used for spare parts that we don't have time to make during build season. 3D printed some hopper inserts to solve a jamming issue before world CMP. We're usually too burned out after 6 weeks to do any major changes within the 30 lbs, so it's minor iteration of exisiting systems.

I think if the goal is to bring up the bottom end, simply extending the build season isn't going to cut it. Those teams that are disadvantaged in mentor support or resources aren't going to be able to fix those issues with more time.

A bunch of pages back everyone was talking about the 2nd event being a big equalizer for lower-tier teams. From looking at the MAR data this season (OPR), that's doesn't seem to be the case. For all MAR teams the 1st event average was 15.5, which increased to 22.9 at their 2nd event (7.4 pt average increase). Here is the average increase in OPR based on OPR after their 1st event.

Rank 01-20: 7.33 points (OPR range from 67 to 25.5)
Rank 21-40: 8.21 points (OPR range from 25.3 to 17.7)
Rank 41-60: 7.45 points (OPR range from 17.3 to 10.7)
Rank 61-109: 7.24 points (OPR range from 9.6 to -3.5)

The good but not great teams had the biggest gains - likely teams that have adequate mentorship and resources, had lots of headroom to improve, and were able to make tweaks and changes to improve their performance. Overall though, not a significant difference, and the worst teams failed to make up any ground on the rest of the field.

Taking a closer look at the teams ranked 61-109, their average OPR at their first event was 4.0, which improved to 11.25 at their second event. At that point, I don't think more time is the answer - in performance after 6 weeks of build, or after 1 week of competition and 12 hours of unbag time.

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

A few questions:

1) Do you really believe that we could "all" have designs to score 15 discs in auto from the top? Who is "all"? (I find it uncompelling to attribute on-field success solely to money and time, and I'm not sure that's what you intended.)

2) I don't understand the assertion that we all have the same amount of time. In addition to practice bots, we can glance back at Jim's awesome charts. One of the biggest benefits that would come out of a more open build season is the removal of this disparity, even if it just meant everyone could unbag on competition weekends (e.g. for scrimmages). It's never been about time per say, it's about time to bring resources to bear. The more time we all have, the more resources we can all share. Yes these lower teams could raise more money and travel more, but if they haven't been inspired yet, is it really a realistic expectation?

3) I agree with Jared on your last statement. Virtually every team I know already limits themselves to prevent burnout during the season. They may not succeed in avoidance, but how many teams actually work every day of build? The same long hours every night and weekend? How many work every day of those 4 months? Do you? To be honest, if someone doesn't limit themselves or their students, that their own problem, and I hope they learn quickly. We've all learned, most of us the hard way, that working harder/longer after a point quickly leads to diminishing returns. That's why we call it burnout in the first place. I stop because I know I'm not supposed to burn myself or my students out. Because I know it has negative consequences on everything we're trying to do. Self control. Honestly, the applies in now just as much as in open season.


I'm fired up on this, but I've waited and come back to it, and I'm ready for the consequences.
This will anger a lot of people, but I cannot abide by the idea that a season designed to protect the top/middle for ourselves is somehow more important than a season that allows us to bring the bottom up: hold scrimmages, save money for rookie workshops, consistently cross-mentor more teams, etc. Self-discipline. VEX manages it. FTC manages it. FLL manages it. We manage in our work lives, and we expect students to manage in their own. Don't cram for your exams, work on the long term schedule even when there's nothing breathing down your neck, be responsible for your own health. I can understand other reasons behind the 6 week bag, if you want to talk about teaching quick deadlines (disagree, but ok), international logistics, etc, but not that one.


Chris, good question. I don't have a definite opinion besides the fact that shortening would result in the same problems that not lengthening it does (no scrimmaging, etc...unless you left the off weeks there as ran more events, which is intriguing). Ignoring 4 weeks vs. open and concentrating on 4 weeks vs. 6, the issues I see are this:
- Even assuming the game is correctly designed for 4 weeks, I stand by the assertion that inspiration is not solely relative to competitive performance. Some absolute things are simply inspiring and an of themselves, based on the work put in rather than how many other people do it. With less time, there's less opportunity to do things like this.
- It burdens sponsors (and shipping costs) more. This can be avoided in design, but it then also avoids giving students the opportunity to work with such things, and teams the opportunity to build as strong sponsor relationships.
- In some ways, less time inherently means fewer students and mentors can come. Whether or not teams meet more often, it's simply a smaller target: if you're traveling, catch another bad blizzard, or get sick, it's basically over. Already true in a 6 week season, just made worse.

There are probably some others. I don't know that I would walk out if it happened, but I don't see what problems it solves. I like design tradeoff debates as much as the next person, but I think it's possible to work them into the game--this year did well.

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

Our team is not one of those that anyone would ever consider "elite." But we strive to improve. The "Firebird," for us, is fitting, as we constantly strive to improve our team from the ashes of the previous season. It started when the team went 0-7 at Chesapeake as rookies in 2006. Indeed, you would be stretching things a bit to call our 2006-2011 robots anything other than the "Brave Little Toasters."

But in 2012, we actually managed to score at everything. Not well, but we could shoot and actually score. But with a few strategic robot changes, enabled by the 30 pound allowance, between Chesapeake in week 2 and DC in Week 5, we could hit 10 points with layups in teleop and balance very well, indeed. The students felt that they were active participants in the matches. We still did not do well in the standings. That was not too important, from students' viewpoint. They were quite psyched up, that they had moved on from the Brave Little Toaster category. Maybe even to the Small Toasters That Maybe Could category. And we did off season events last autumn. We were an alliance captain at Battle of Baltimore, and, as alliance captains at IROC, actually won the event. In 2013, after a disasterous showing at Palmetto, with us not scoring at all, we put on a shooter and a lifter, that, at the DC regional, could give us 12 points in auto and hang for 10. (Provided that we had our network cable plugged in properly, of course. Doh.) At the end of DC, with us having a robot that could reliably score some, the students were asking to go to Baltimore in two weeks. Sure, we were now in our eighth year of not being even seriously considered for an elimination pick, but the students were seriously inspired to work even more in this off season to improve the team.

Our ability to improve out of the Brave Little Toaster category in both of the last two years has been directly attributable to the 30 lb allowance. The (self-perceived) move out of the Brave Little Toaster category has had a HUGE impact on the inspiration impacting our team members. They have more confidence, they want to do more off season activities, including training. We have no delusions that we can build Super Shiny Hot Rods or even Cool Golf Carts. Yet.

If we had the ability to work on the robot some, after the end of Build Season, it would have a positive impact on our team and a reduction in Mentor load. If we were authorized to work on the robot, outside of the bag, in our shop, for about 12 hours a week, with a ~30 lb limit for improvable components/assemblies, the following would change for us:
1) We would no longer attempt to build robot two. We tried to build robot two in 2010 and 2012, and it was a huge waste of resources and time, as we did not get it finished in time for us to do any good.
2) We would reduce the need to build prototyping stands. We built prototyping stands for our 2012 shooter and 2013 shooter and lifter. All three stands were a waste of time, in my book, that did little to directly inspire the students. These stands were only necessary due to the bag restrictions. Yes, engineers do this sort of thing all the time, when access to the real thing is limited. But FIRST should be in the business of reducing mentor work load to get more inspiration into the students. I hate busy work. For me or anyone else.
3) Our students could practice driving and playing the game at home. Invaluable. Test, break, repair, practice.
4) As we would have a more complete robot on Thursday morning, we would have a better chance to do practice rounds before the field closed at 4 PM.

The students on my team have been more inspired the past 15 months than the previous 6 years combined. It has had little to do with the capabilities of other teams, even the elite teams. In my opinion, the inspiration of our students has everything to do with how well our own team achieves the game objectives. As simple as they may be, it is our robot's ability to do score some that inspires our students.

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

I find this slightly upsetting that you would believe 40% of the teams have no ambition to strive for the excellence you compete at. As a member of said 40%, despite not reaching greatness so easily, we still have an ultimate goal of reaching it at some point. It can be extremely difficult to believe in when year after year you don't reach simple goals like eliminations, but that doesn't take us away from striving to compete with every team including the top tier ones.

As a mentor on a lower tier team, I assume that removing a 6 week barrier would basically spread our current schedule over a greater time period rather than increasing the total time spent significantly. Although, considering mid-tier teams would choose to use their extra time to be better, I can see creating a massive gap between those teams that choose to milk the extra time for everything its worth and those that choose to spread it out and take more breaks.

I realize that its a choice a team has to make, but it creates a situation where a team somewhat has to choose between burning their mentors out and having a chance at winning or taking breaks and settling for a sub-average robot.

I think your proposal would raise half of the teams and entrench the other half even further in a position where its extremely difficult to break out of.

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

He didn't say that 40% of teams have no desire to be excellent -- he said 40% will not achieve excellence. If excellence is defined as playing in elimination rounds, in a field of 50 teams, more than 50% won't achieve excellence. At a Championship with 100 teams in a division, 75% won't achieve excellence. Winning the championship? 6 each year do that; 1.5% of teams at the event.

This is reality and I don't think it's meant as a dig against anyone. In this case, I think Jim Zondag's metric -- a team contributing positively to the outcome of each of its matches -- is a good judge of how excellent a team is on the field. Giving teams more time should, in nearly every universe, allow them to produce something that is more effective at achieving that than if they had less time.

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

Chris,
we could do it and usually do anyways, due to other logistical factors being from Hawaii. Can we build a top teen robot? I think we have the past few years.
But top 10? Probably never in a shortened season.

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

This is a choice already being made by every single team. Removing the 'stop build date' doesn't change the fact that a choice still needs to be made by everyone's own team on how much time should be committed to the build.

Teams that do not build practice robots or use the withholding allowance are already choosing not to work past the deadline. Granted, some of these choices are made for financial reasons, others are made for 'burnout' reasons and I'm sure there are plenty more reasons teams do or do not do it.

The fact remains that this choice is actively happening every single season.

-Brando

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

But with a longer season, the consequences of choosing the less burnout-inducing option become much more harmful. A team choosing to not withhold right now has their competitors working on a 30lb subset of their robot (or having to build a practice robot, then work on that). The still-working competitors get a boost relatively, but not an insurmountable one.

A team choosing to stop at 6 weeks (or to only do 6 team-weeks of work) in an open build season has its competitors working on their entire robot without restriction. That's a much bigger opportunity cost for choosing to avoid burnout, and so it is a stronger pressure to continue working.

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

I would argue that you need a "Stop Build Day" for a reason slightly different han what most are calling for. I have been involved in a lot of project related actitivites, and a lot of project related teams. Almost to a rule, there is a "last minute push" on the projects to meet deadlines. Sometimes the project is small, and the last minute push is a long day of effort. Sometimes an all-nighter. Sometimes a hard week. Sometimes a long tiring month.
Currently Build season is a 6 week push, and at the end of 6 weeks, msot teams have a fairly reasonable prototype that generally has some functionality. Giving them additional access points and time will imrpove the quality useability of that prototype, to an extent. If the access is too universal, and if the access is too open, then there will be a shift towards teams "changing the due date". While many argue this would be better, I actually think for a large portion of teams, this would be significantly worse.

There is a ton of proof in FRC that going to additional events and having more time post "stop build" will improve virtually every teams competitive performance. Many will argue (and have excellent proof) that more is better. I agree, but to an extent. My argument that the more is only better because you are leveraging a "stop build" to ensure a certain level of completion at that particluar date. While many would improve from an open season, I actually think an even larger chunk would do wo0rse at their first event. My proof of this are a lot of other design/build competitions that do not have such deadlines that just don't get done in time for the first event. I see this in OCCRRA, I see it in Vex. I see it at work. I saw it in solarcar. I saw it (and still do) in FSAE*. I think have an initial hard deadline, with some limited time afterwards actually improves the overall quality of submission and competition. I would like to see some improvements to the B&T system however.

I would personally keep the deadline as is, and do a "hands off week". Hug you family, feed the dog, ... hands off the robot in the bag. If you make a practice bot, go crazy, but for everyone else, get some rest.

I would then allow for 6 hours each week of unbag time weeks 1-7. This time can be used for practice, test and tune, fix what got broekn in the finals at the last event.. Whatever you choose. It is just that the robot can only be out of the bag 6 hours (or 4 or 78 or 12 or...), and no blocks shorter than 1 hour. FiM uses 2 hours, and it is a bit of a pain. 1 hour minimum would be more flexible and allow for practice.

In short, keep the "Stop Build", but allow for more test and tune windows. Test and tune windows should make it very hard to decide whether or not to do a practice bot. I personally believe 6 hours each week would be right around the level necessary to make it a hard decision.



*Less than 41/104 finsihed the endurance event. 15 did not compete in any of the dynamic events. There have been years with a much lower completion rate than those listed above.

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

How do you think open season would effect the competition season? Would we see an increase in teams scrambling for week 4-6 events? How do you think week 1 would change? Would we see more copy cats? Do you think we might have teams hold out on really building their robots until the elite teams come out to play? I think back on 469 in 2010 and how many of us wished we could redesign our robot in an open build season you can. Would this play a role in how elite teams build and compete with their machines to come out late and not show all of their cards to avoid copies?

These are just some of the questions I see swirling around in the scenarios that play out if an open build season started. To a degree we do have clones like the minibots and ramp style deployment that swept 2011 but the minibots did have an open season policy on them and the witholding allowed for the cloning of the effective device. I would hate to see this spread to entire robots.

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

You put this far better than I ever could. Changing the build season length will just "change the due date." I really like the unbag period idea, it lets people take a step back, breathe a bit, and then improve. The problem isn't that teams don't have enough time, it's that they usually finish the robot on the last day and have no time to iterate when their design goes south, as it enviably always does.

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

Adding cannon fodder without a direction...

http://web.archive.org/web/200009191...p/minutes.html

There is a section titled "Stress/Burnout" - all from around 15 years ago. All in all, this document is actually an interesting read.

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

I don't think I would enjoy that at all.

It would probably be an insane sprint to the finish line with little room for errors, setbacks, iteration and prototyping, weather delays, or non Next Day Air shipping. It would probably involve the same amount of man hours of work, just compressed into the shorter time frame, thus ending up with more all-nighters, which would thus cause more physical health issues and burnout.

You'd be pretty much forced to randomly take a shot in the dark as to what the best design would be, and if you choose wrong you'd be screwed for the rest of the season. You can't prototype for 2-3 weeks in a 4 week build season. Thus, the general quality of robots at the competition would plummet. Autonomous would be nearly non-existent.

You can also pretty much write off any outside machine shop/powder-coating/anodizing sponsor unless they REALLY love helping your team. The only teams with more than a handful of CNC parts will be ones that own their own CNC mill.

Mother nature and blizzards may be a huge problem now, but imagine with a 4 week build season would be catastrophic to loose a week with no withholding. Catastrophic as in throwing in the towel, cutting your losses, and making a super drivetrain defense robot weighted down with cinder blocks because you'll have no hope of honestly fixing or completing any scoring mechanisms.

If a situation arose such as what occurred to me this past build season (I was in China for business for the first three weeks), I'd have no real impact in a 4 week build season.

You can probably forget going through a comprehensive engineering design process in a 4 week build season. Forget iteration and fully CADding everything, just grab random scrap, bolt it together, and hope it works. Think Junkyard Wars. While it may have been fun to watch on television, the less time you have to build, the less time you have to teach and inspire.




// Side comment:
One interesting idea to reduce how much teams could scrap and rebuild from scratch a new robot with an eliminated ship date and bag-n-tag is to use a non-resetting BOM for the entire season. E.g. if you show up to a Week 1 event with a BOM totalling $2500 of parts, you only have $1500 left over for new parts for the remainder of the season unless you reuse parts from your original robot. If the BOMs have to be submitted to TIMS and are locked into a read-only status after a regional (with only the ability to add new items, not delete any old ones), then this effectively limits the scope of how much you can scrap and start over.

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

What if all teams had to attend a mandatory* "Week Zero" event to go through initial inspection and to do a "functional test" on a real field with maybe a few practice matches to help teams sort out their bugs?

Real world projects have intermediate deadlines with through aspects like design reviews or engineering prototypes. And with large areas looking to expand to Districts, keeping nearly all teams within reasonable driving distance of a "week zero" event is fairly reasonable.

Or what if there was a "Blackout date" from the current ship date extending for one week, after which you could unbag your robot again?

* Unless explicitly waivered as being too difficult to attend due to travel distances.

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

I really like this idea. However I don't think it should become a hard decision whether to build a practice robot or not. It should be a easy decision for most teams but for the super competitive people, they will decide to build one anyway. I would like to modify a little. After the stop build date, have the one week of hand off time for everybody on the competition robot. Then if a team has no event in a given week, they will be given 9 hours in one hour increment. If a team has an event to attend, they will be given 6 hours because they will be able to access their robot during competition. This will even the playing field a little for teams who does not have the resources to attend multiple events and registered for a late week event. If I have 9 hours a week, I will not build a practice robot which as I said before will allow me to reduce the number of meetings from 5 to 4 per week. Putting some limit will prevent people from building a brand new robot for championship after watching week 1 or 2 events. There should still be a 30 pound limit or higher to prevent completely new robot.

Let me expand on the reason behind this proposal.
1) There is no change in the deadline, 6 1/2 weeks. FIRST can continue to advertise that this is a 6 1/2 week program. People who like a deadline because it is how it works in the real world and they want students to learn that will get what they want.
2) One week of hands off time will force everybody to take a break from the competition robot and rest. This will also allow international and teams that have to ship their robot to register for a week 1 event with no disadvantage. Supercompetitive teams and individuals can continue to work on their practice robots. Some teams can concentrate on their awards submission and preparation during this week.
3) 9 hours of access in weeks that teams do not have events will give them enough time to not have to build a practice robot. This saves time and money and makes some people happy. This gives teams more time during build season. Some will choose to meet less and some will choose to do more with that extra time. It also allows room to use those extra time to catch up due to snow days for some unfortunate people. This 9 hours access time will also help rookie teams and less resourceful teams to get help from other veteran teams to get their robot to work as it was designed to. This will raise the bottom like Jim said earlier.
4) 6 hours of access in weeks that teams have events is the same as what we do in Michigan and MAR. It works well and reduce stress because it is more efficient use of time when you are at your own shop and practice facility. This increases the number of teams ready for inspection on the first day.
5) Keeping withholding allowance and maximum access time per week will prevent teams to copy other designs and build a completely new robot. That will alleviate some people's concern.
6) For those people who do not want an extended build season. They can register for a week 1 or 2 event and finish their season early. If they qualify for world championship, it is up to them whether they want to continue to improve their robot or not. If they want to improve their robot, they can only work 9 hours a week on the robot. That will keep them from working on the robot nonstop for those who do not have self control. If they don't qualify which most teams don't, their season will be over and they can go back to doing other things.

Feel free to propose anything and modify these if this proposal does not make you happy. If you are neutral about it, please support it so other people can be happy, okay?

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

This is the best proposal I've seen yet. Sign me up.

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

I really like this proposal. It gives everyone a chance to access their robots later in the season on a uniform basis and can give lower resource teams who can't build a practice robot the time they need to practice/tune code and make any necessary changes.

It steps toward an open style season while still keeping the 6 week project like deadline but doesn't keep every team pressured to stay working constantly like an open season would.

I wouldn't mind seeing this in 2014!

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

I'm with Ed (and anybody else who has proposed a similar "limited access" period).

It gives teams a reason not to build a practice robot (saving money/time) while not restricting the use thereof (you want to use extra time to build an extra robot, that's your call).

It gives a hard deadline, while still allowing for "warranty support".


Now, will the burnout continue? If teams let it (see my note about the practice robot), yes. However, I hope that such a schedule will help teams learn self-discipline. You get 6-9 hours of time with the robot each week, schedule wisely and maybe do some work ahead of time to prep (say, tune the 30-point climber again).

My one issue is the 30-lb withholding (no battery or bumpers) remaining at that level. As teams will have a minimum of 6 hours with their competition robot before their first event, I would propose decreasing the withholding to 15 lb, plus whatever happens to be in the bag as far as parts that you didn't quite have time to put on the robot. (Shipping teams get 30 lb plus crate contents, to make up for the 6 hours.)

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

I see your reasoning to reduce from 30 pounds since you have more access. I can go with that unless there is a big snow storm. Isn't that why they increased it to 30 pounds that year?

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

Actually... They didn't. I looked it up; it went from 40 to 65 in 2010 due to the storm. 2009, 40. There is no CD discussion that I can find from before 2009; I believe the 30 lb was a response to the large amounts teams brought in in 2010. (I don't quite remember, but wasn't 2011 the first year of Bag-and-Tag for non-MI teams? If so, that would also explain some of the drop.)

I suggest that if there's a snow storm and teams can't get to their robots, they get all the out-of-bag time that they missed "credited" so that they don't miss any out-of bag. Whether they take the time before or after the initial bagging is up to them.

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

Ed,
Very nice. I like where you are going wtih that. I have been holding up writing a recommendation to FRC waiting for the add on ideas you put in. I will probably wait another week to see if any other powerful ideas come out in this discussion.

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

I think this is a pretty cool idea.

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

I like this. A lot. Exact numbers (hours, increments, limits, etc) are details that could be adjusted year to year. I suggest that there be total limit(s) with respect to how much you can modify the -as bagged- robot during the competition season. These limits could be in terms of money/BOM and/or weight. For instance, with a 30 lb limit, if you started with a 20 lb shooter, removed it, and replaced it with a 10 lb shooter you could alter it multiple times, and that would still only be counted as a 10 lb change. And you could add 10 lbs of climber, to give a total change of 20 lbs. But you could not also make 25 lbs of changes to a drive train or add 25 lbs of disc vacuum.

When you submit that proposal to FIRST, if you need anecdotes, etc., feel free to include me/us in a petition.

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

Any circumstance that limits our access to a robot to some period less than what we have now with our practice robot will cause us to build a practice robot.

The limited access means we'd have some time to work on our competitive machine simultaneously, so that'd be helpful and means we'd be more prepared to compete on competition days, but I don't anticipate it doing anything to save cost for us.

For me -- for my team -- I don't anticipate it doing anything to fundamentally change how we operate or how exhausted I am at the end. I spend about 10% of my time working on manufacturing and assembly of real robots. The rest of the time is spent working in CAD, handling administrative tasks, awards, etc.; hands-off time doesn't do anything for me.

It's pretty clear that we all approach FRC differently and are exhausted for different reasons. I'd like to see something that allows me to more meaningfully include mentors that cannot provide the same level of commitment as I currently do. It'd allow me to spread the burdens I currently carry around a bit, build experience and knowledge among other people on my team, and maybe not be a raving, crazy person by the time competitions roll around. 9 hours a week isn't going to do that. Two days a week isn't going to do that. In my case, really, any limit that requires me to spend additional time outside of meetings creates an additional burden on me.

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

I would welcome the changes outlined by IKE and Ed. I agree that it preserves the value of a defined build season while also offering the opportunity to pursue continual improvement (or, in some cases, completion :) ). It provides everybody with an opportunity to become more competitive at a lower overall cost while preserving the ability of teams to choose to invest as much or as little as suits their program and goals.

Having continued to listen to the arguments and think about my personal objectives for our program, this would be my preferred outcome. This process more accurately models my "reality". We deliver a manufacturing process; it starts up and produces product. We use virtual models, prototypes and pilot facilities to solve issues and make improvements. We strive to minimize the time we need to install these improvements on the "real" process so that we minimize our lost production time.

To me, this is a very accurate representation of how it works in real life and is worthy of serious consideration by FIRST.

Well done, IKE and Ed.

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

I must say that Ed's proposal is definitely better than what is in place now and I will be all for it.

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

[quote=Doug G;1275357]I must say that Ed's proposal is definitely better than what is in place now and I will be all for it.[/QUOTE

Include me in Ed's camp too:D

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

I am on board for these proposals. I inclined to have Ed's variation of Ike's idea. Both are really good. 9 hours is great, 6 hours would still work. I think if I had 6 hours in between LA and LV this year, the competition robot kinks could have been worked out.

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

I've read quite a bit of this thread, and off the top of my head there are several issues that have come up with respect to mentor burnout and student inspiration. The variables we've talked about thus far which change the FRC Student Inspiration to Mentor-Burnout ratio (SI:MB)

1. Witholding Allowance, 10 <= ALLOWANCE <= 60, avg=30
   - MB Inverse Proportional to ALLOWANCE ?
   - SI = Direct Proportional to ALLOWANCE ?
2. Deadline Adjustments, DEADLINE = 45 + N, 0 <= N <= 42
   - MB proportionality mixed --some think MB increases, yet some think MB is the same or less
   - SI Unaffected
3. Post-Bag Access Hours, 0 <= ACCESS <= 9 * # of weeks to competition
   - MB Inversely Proportional to ACCESS
   - SI Proportional to ACCESS
4. # of events attended, EVENTS = 1 + M, 0 <= M <= 3 (teams attending 5 events don't seem to do it multiple seasons)
   - MB proportional to EVENTS
   - SI proportional to EVENTS
5. Number of mentors, 1 <= MENTORS <= 20-ish? Anyone know the average?
   - MB Inverse Proportional to MENTORS
   - SI Proportional to MENTORS ?
6. Number of Students, 3 <= STUDENTS <= 100-ish?
   - MB Proportional to # of students, or unaffected
   - SI affected?
7. Cost per Match, $667 (1st Regional, no elims) <= CPM <= $267 (MSC/MAR, with elims)
   - MB Proportional to CPM
   - SI Unaffected ?
8. Cost of Sponsorship Stress (e.g. 341's sheetmetal sponsor), quantified by how much the employee will not get a end-of-year raise by? Or % chance to lose the sponsor the following year?
9. Cost of Shipping? % of costs reduced?

MB = (Time Under Stress - Time Under Eustress) divided by Time Invested? This nullifies the 'save me from myself' argument. What is max(MB)? How many hours did mentors put in this year? My personal was 40-hrs in weeks 1-4, 30 in 5-7, then 20-ish 8-17 except for 3 competition weeks which were 50-ish.
SI = [some calculation of]
- Team student population
- % of students who go to college
- % of 1-year students who change to doing any STEM field because of FRC

In formulating a model, we'd try to maximize SI:MB subject to these and other conditions. If we forget about what the top 1% are going to do (let the Poofs, Simbots and OP go nuts -- they already do) what does the rest of FRC stand to gain from making adjustments?

In formulating this model, we don't have to get the exact numbers right -- just whether something increases or decreases with respect to a constraint. Then we can see how to maximize Inspiration while decreasing Burnout (maybe).

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

Love the idea. This helps level the playing field for those who cannot afford extra tournaments to improve their robots. It also recognizes the advantageous district teams now enjoy (of working in their own shops and practice areas during the week) and provides that for all teams.

Might consider adding the ideas:

• No witholding allowance. Put the changes on the robot at home before you come to the tournament during an unbag window. Come to the tournament ready to inspect! (Do allow identical spares, and on-site modifications.)
  
  
• Don't start the tournament until 4:00 in the afternoon on Thursdays. (Maybe allow load-in after 2:00 on Thursday for a skeleton crew.) Allows local teams to go to school on Thursday before the tournament and possibly allows a cheaper venue rental with a little less time. (Plus non-local teams can sample some of the local culture on a Thursday morning, or save a nights stay by traveling Thursday morning.)

Neither one of those are deal breakers for me. I love the idea just as presented.

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

I think the ideas presented by Ed and Isaac are awesome compromises.

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

I like Ed's plan but I would like to see a bit more than 9 hours. I think at 9 hours we would have to be conscious of exactly what we did out of the bag. Something like 12 or 15 would seem better to me, that way we would probably not build a practice bot. About an 1 hour each weekday than 5 hours, Saturday and Sunday.

The week break at the end of build season would that be Tuesday to Tuesday? I think that hurts week 1 teams. What about just Tuesday to Friday so we could have pre-inspection events the Saturday before week 1 events?

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

I like Ed Law's Proposal. Our team would love rule changes like that.

Admittedly, 9 hours is a lot of time to play with. The one hour increments would make it possible to unbag the robot every day of the week, which is at odds with the goal of reducing the incentive to work to death.

Two hour minimum increments might be part of a more agreeable compromise for people who don't want to be in the shop every day. The number of hours per week is an important variable in a system like this, too.

I don't think this type of rule change would have a huge impact on the amount of time our team meets after the build season. But it would have some very attractive benefits.

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

So you're suggesting that teams work 7 days a week throughout the entire season? With the robot out of the bag every day? With a total break of 4 days? Sorry, how exactly are we reducing burnout again?

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

I'm not, we're solving different problems now. Teams that aren't burned out can work when they want. I'm trying to reduce practice robots. Spectrum won't build a practice robot at 12 or 15 hours at 9 we still might.

Not everyone has a problem with burnout. I might at some point in my life but right now I have the opposite problem, and am going through a bit of withdrawal from the season being over.

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

I like Ed's idea. The only 'tweak' I'd like to see would be for teams with a long ship time. Perhaps the total hours could be shifted from week to week (like 'rollover minutes')? So if you have 5 weeks from bag day until your competition, you could unbag for a total of 45 hours - but if you had to ship 3 weeks before the competition, you could use those 45 hours all in the first two weeks.

This would still be a problem for teams shipping to early events. Perhaps the "pit access time" at early events could be longer for those teams? I'm thinking of 359, if they have to ship right after bag day for a week 2 event, the 6 or 9 hours per week won't be available to them at all - but it would be for the other teams at their event, who drive their robots to the competition.

I know our robot was bagged several weeks before they came to pick up our crate to ship it to Oahu. Having time during those weeks to work on the bot, instead of building a practice bot, would have been much more efficient, and great for us. But others at our competition - the international teams from Australia and China - probably had to ship their bots weeks earlier. There should be some way to equalize the 'hands on' time for such teams. I would not mind if they had an extra few hours of pit time, based on when they had to 'bag'. Or a slightly larger withholding allowance. (Say, give us 20 lbs. and them 30; there could be a sliding allowance scale, based on how many total hours of 'out of bag' time you have had from bag day to your competition. Maybe you lose a few pounds for every 10 hours of time. Then, you could choose whether to take the time or the higher allowance. Just another idea...)

We have built a practice bot each year for the past few years. It would certainly be more efficient and a great savings of cost and time to not have to do that. We (and other teams) could decide between building a full practice bot (probably not), building just a copy of the basic drive "mule" for driver practice (possibly - the drivers would like this), or simply planning to share the "out of bag time" between the builders, programmers and drivers (also possible).

C.

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

One team's burnout is another teams normal. There is no option that perfectly suits everyone's needs.

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

We'd probably use it 6 hours each weekend day. No practice bot, but probably some subsystem analogs. To each their own.


67 built a 30 point climbing FCS on a schedule some teams use in off-season. If you think those <=20 hours spread over 2 months will make a net positive impact on your team, it's there. Otherwise, we're probably not falling too much farther behind.


Glad to see this has come full-circle back to the unbagged sessions. I think it's really a very elegant way to achieve a lot of the floor-raising aims we have here. So who's up for an on-season scrimmage? ;)

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

No, and please do not put words in my mouth. I'll rephrase.

On one hand, my team would operate fine under Ed's proposal. We would not choose to work 7 days per week (more like 3-4 after bag, as we do now).

On the other hand, some people aren't going to like the fact that it's possible to unbag the robot every day with 9 hrs/week and 1 hour increments. Therefore, maybe two hour increments would be better since that would not allow a 7 day schedule.

Edit: Sorry, my mistake. My addled mind thought you were quoting me.

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

I think he was talking to me and that was definitely what I was suggesting. We work with our practice bot 7 days a week, I would like to do the same with the competition robot.

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

If you include the ability for teams to work on their robot throughout competition season, then a withholding allowance of additional fabricated parts is necessary. Otherwise you'd have to put everything onto your robot after the 9 hours is up for bagging and have no additional time to tweak that part if you wanted to the night before you leave for the event. For fairness sake, a withholding allowance of some kind makes more sense for that scenario than it even does now.

I will echo bduddy's comment that this really doesn't have anything to do with mentor burnout and for some teams (read: the team I mentor) could make it worse. Not saying it will, but it can.

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

Good point about the withholding allowance. But I'd change the nature of how we regulate robot changes altogether. Right now, you could swap out 30 pounds of shop-built/assembled mechanisms, plus COTS parts, plus event-built parts, at every event. (Bumpers are not included in the 30 lbs.) (Theoretically, you could change out the whole robot in 4 events.... practically impossible, for sure.)

I recommend that the new bag rules limit the total of the items added to the robot since the robot was initially bagged. If the total changes (by weight and/or cost) were limited, a withholding allowance, as we know it now, would be irrelevant and unnecessary. Bring as many spare parts/improved parts as you wanted to the event. Make the changes in the pits. But the overall changes to the robot would have to be within the limit in the rules.

As far as burnout is concerned, personally, a factor in burnout is the frustration of having to do busy work (build robot two and/or test stands) to work around the bag restrictions. For me, less frustration == less burnout. If the students are working with the robot, practicing, testing, getting enthused, I feel much better. The burnout is less to do with time than frustration, for me. And a big factor in this proposal has to do with getting marginal teams better able to achieve the game objectives. The proposal put forward by Ike and modified by Ed preserves the imperative of getting things done by the end of build season, yet allows teams to get their designs better refined to get things done on the field, without having to do multiple events.

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

This is such a hard thing for me to decide on. I love the challenge of the six week build season and I learn so much real life engineering skills from this. Though it also puts a massive strain on my team and really makes it hard for us to compete against better funded teams with more mentors and money. Our team does not have near the amount of funding or people to build a practice bot and this makes it hard to compete against teams that do. Then again that is part of FIRST and that is what has driven me to look into fundraisers and recruitment that way we may one day become an "ELITE" team. Bottom line though FIRST is just way to expensive. FIRST for sure needs to do something about cost that way lower funded teams can be more competitive. Though again this is what drives under funded teams to do fundraising. I think that instead of having a year round build season or a six week build season FIRST should have a twelve week build season! This would allow more time to build for the lower funded teams; though honestly I think we will always feel the need for more time. Tough Choices :ahh:

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

You can sign me up for Ed/Ike's proposals. I've been campaigning a similar type of proposal for a while now to friends in FIRST.

I think (in this theoretical world we've started debating in) this a fair compromise for teams who say additional access will less then load, as well as teams who say any more will push them over the edge.

-Brando

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

Lots of good points, let me add a different tangent

Elite teams are in the upper 5%. In the early days that was 10 teams, now to be in the top 5%, you are the upper 170 teams.

Elite teams don't work harder, they think harder. Karthik tells FRC that year after year after year. FRC robot construction is THINK, PLAN, BUILD, COMPETE. I watch Team 1640 from my VEX loft (we are on the second floor). They have gone from a bottom 10% team (no formal design, no CAD, nearest 1/2" on construction, minimal scouting, etc) to a top team (pre-kickoff simulation, kickoff with a plan (read the rules!, think about design, etc), nothing built that's not in CAD, nearest 0.001 construction (Yay Ben!), scouting team, checklists, etc.) They build a second robot (called Duex) because if you CAD it, you can build 2 with minimal second effort. And frankly that rocks since there are roboteers that may not work on Prime, but do work on Duex) its a win for lots of people.

People have issues. Mentors have issues. My name is Foster, I'm a 100%holic. Things that I'm passionate about I put 100% effort in. If you are not all in why do it. Force me onto a 1 week break, fine, I'll work on stuff at home. It's not a conscious choice "Hey lets go burn out over here", but it's who I am. Others have learned other methods and they now eat, drink water, don't fall asleep on the drill press table, etc. You are not going to change me by a small rule change.

FRC isn't about the robot. Look at HOF. Look at the resume. We did x, y, z, q, p, t and oh yea we built a nice robot. I'm convinced you can be a Chairman's award winner and not build a robot. I'm convinced Woody and Dean went "Our goals are to .... whats the cheese?" "Yea, Build a robot is the cheese."

Too late to make a long post short:

FRC, VEX, and all the other programs are about inspiration and some really core life skills. I want that. Mentors that are going to burn out are going to burn out. I can only fix that by making them work smarter not harder. The champion / elite teams have figured that out.

So the rule change I propose is: "If you are a regional winner in a year then in the next year you must work with a rookie team. At least 50% of your student roboteer and mentor time from last season must be spent on the efforts of the rookie team. " Finances are hard, so that's not part of this.

Pick up the bottom. Mentors will cope, roboteers will cope. Be the start of a new vanguard of teams.

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

Every area within 50 miles of us is already saturated with teams. What would we do for a rookie there?