Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

I guess waiting to get feedback from mentors busy building and programming the robot until after the robot was bagged turned out not to be a good thing. They could have just shut it down on Kickoff Day and said "you had since November."

Sad. Very sad.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

Sorry, but this is totally unacceptable and completely unprofessional. This sort of response makes the organization look like it is being run by a bunch of clowns. I am extremely angry about how FIRST handled this situation. Imagine if they told teams "Sorry, but only robots bagged before week six may compete, you had from the beginning of build to make robots, and those who did not submit early can't submit at all." It would not work out.

FIRST was unable to run their website, which can be an understandable problem, but was just too darn lazy to address the problem.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

As a west-coast team, I know that our team missed the deadline because of the networking issues and TIMS. It made a lot of people very upset (myself being one of them). I do hope they reverse the decision on not having an extension.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

This is not the first time that servers have crashed around Awards time. FIRST has sent out multiple reminders about when Dean's List projects are due. In college, most of us are taught that deadlines mean hard deadlines. It's real life. There was plenty of time to submit early. I expect my students to submit essays before the deadline (goal is a week before, though this year one team did them the day before and another team did them 12 hours before).

If I had not gotten my Dean's List submissions in on time because of server issues, I would have to go to my team and say, "I had time to write these essays early and submit early, and I failed to do that. I'm sorry, but it is my fault that these did not get submitted." It would be embarrassing to do this, but it would also show students the right way to apologize for something, instead of blaming something/someone else. It's frustrating, yes, but the servers crashing are ALWAYS a possibility around awards submission times.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

I'm sorry... Sorry that I trusted FIRST to be the gracious professionals they ask everyone else to be. When the government shut down, NASA graciously extended their deadline to submit for their grant even though there was time prior to submit. When snow storms affected numerous teams, FIRST graciously upped the withholding allowance even though, apparently, you can build a whole robot in three days.

If I told my students they had a deadline to turn something in and then I had a substitute on the day it was due who, for some reason, wouldn't collect their assignments, I would graciously accept their work the following day to accommodate for the unexpected circumstance rather than tell them too bad.

Yes, this is the real world. Graciousness abounds in the real world. I'd expect FIRST, of all organizations, to live up to those ideals in this situation, and I'm sorry that in this case they are not.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

The difference in your scenario is that the substitute refused on the SINGLE day the students were told to turn in an assignment.

The site has been open to accept essays for MONTHS now, giving us mentors plenty of days to submit before the 18 hours it was due. PLUS, the site came back up with at least 3 hours to spare.

I've had many teachers, professors and bosses tell me, "This is the deadline. Get it done early and turn it in, and that's fine, but I will not accept it after the deadline, no matter what," and they stick to that.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

Three hours to spare in Indiana, no problem. Three hours to spare in Hawaii? The site was closed before I was even able to wake up.

Kudos to you and all those who submitted early. However, you dismiss cold heartedly a number of extremely worthy students that are being denied an opportunity for recognition that they deserve. If it wasn't about the students, I, and I'm sure many others, wouldn't be so upset.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

I'm thoroughly confused by all of this. We know that FIRST has trouble handling big server loads. Game Manual on kickoff day. FIRST Choice. Chairman's due date. It's been well-documented that these are common problems, and we need to be proactive to mitigate the repercussions.
Besides, it's like Carolyn_Grace said, the site was up and running and accessible at the time of the deadline. So, no, it's not analogous to the government shutdown or a sub who wouldn't accept work. Because when FIRST said it was due, they took it.

Having said this, I agree the system needs work. It's not acceptable. But it happens.

Logistically, let's look at the situation. If FIRST had given an extension, they likely would not have had time to properly process the Dean's List nominations before Week 1 events. So even if they really really wanted to, I suspect in this case, their hands were tied.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

Thank you for volunteering to review Deans List essays for week 1 events. Your volunteer coordinator will be contacting you shortly.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

The system definitely needs work. That's undeniable. I agree.

That said, if I was in a position where I needed to post essays by a certain time, I would set five different alarms to make sure that I woke up an hour before the deadline to try at least one more time. I'd do everything in my power to make it happen, and THEN if it still didn't work I would complain about the system. In fact, I've done this with online university classes more than a couple times.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

I work as a government contractor. Now that most proposals are submitted through web sites or email the government puts all kinds of notices in the RFPs that contractors need to submit early and that the government is not responsible for delays caused by technology.

That said, I have seen them waive or extend dealines when the technical issue was clearly on their side and something they could have addressed.

What this tells me is get a decent draft submitted early and update the submission often.

Although in this case, I think FIRST either needs to have 24x7 IT support for those servers (so the problems can be fixed quickly) or be prepared to extend what is in effect and artificial deadline.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

Submitting a draft early is certainly something that could be done but it was plainly stated on the website that your submission would not be evaluated until the submission was finalized. So doing a draft is nice but it would not have counted.

I am also an educator and I would find it totally unacceptable REGARDLESS of statements made previously if as a professor, I would not have been in my office the day something was done or had arranged to have someone there to accept those assignments.

I think it goes both ways...

I don't think anyone was asking for a week extension or anything.... just enough time yesterday... say until the end of the day... to be able to turn in the document.

Mentors and coaches were all under the gun to get a robot in the bag the night before this.... so on the West Coast we had exactly one night to finish up the Dean's List nominations and get them in because some of us have day jobs.

Granted we might have done it early but the fact remains that we all plan our time out and schedule activities....

It was unfortunate that it happened....but it could have been fixed...

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

This is precisely what we wanted. Even just a couple of hours open to give teams that missed it enough time to turn in their final submissions would be greatly appreciated.

It seems that the topic is incredibly divided between opinions of the East-coast robotics teams and the west-coast robotics teams. I just want to remind people that, with the deadline that currently exists for Dean's list, teams that are incapable of determining team members to be nominated for Dean's list until near the deadline find the time a lot harder to turn in essays at 9 AM in the morning, as opposed to noon on the east coast.

I know our team missed the deadline, and our Dean's list nominees (I myself, a junior and one of our team's nominees), parents, and coach are upset, but I can't help but feel even worse for the likelihood that some rookie team on the west-coast had been denied the opportunity because of issues with TIMS.

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

All I want is time to make up for what was lost due to being locked out of my team's shop due to uncontrollable weather issues. 7 days of Build Season lost. I don't want 7 days time worth, just enough to test our chassis. Sure, we can withhold 45 lbs, but we didn't have time to test our drive-train before bagging it. And the west-coast teams got at least 3 extra hours during Build Season. With those three hours we may have been able to test the programming.

How about people who couldn't submit Dean's List get an extra three hours to submit their essays, and people who lost valuable time on their robot because of snow days get an extra three hours to work on their robots?

Re: TIMS Down - 2/19/14
 

I think the comparisons to the end of build season are not really fair. This problem is more akin to the old days when weather or some other issue would prevent FedEx from getting to a build site to pick up the robot. I guess the part I really do not like is the glibness of saying "Submission has been open since November..." We never decide for sure on our nominees until toward the end of the build season. If we are nominating our best two candidates, we want to include what they did this year. Both of our candidates had things we included in the essay that they did in the latter part of this season. We did have both essays uploaded ahead of time. But when we were ready submit the system was down. And it didn't get back up until after both of the mentors who can submit were busy with work. Yes it is our fault, in that we could have done it a couple of days ahead of time. But we would not have had nearly as good a submission. In the grand scheme of things, this might make us decide on candidates earlier in order to make sure that this doesn't happen again.

I would love for FIRST to pursue some simple technical solutions. Perhaps you can save and if the system is down the saved essay would be submitted. This would make me feel a lot better about starting ahead of time, as it would be possible to update with good things without running the risk of timing out in submission.