Chief Delphi - What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

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Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanddrag (Post 1576430)

Reduce the focus on growing FIRST nationally as an organization, and increase the focus on each team growing themselves an organization

I think this was a big part of why 597 was awarded their CCA. The message I got was that CA is all about "sustained meaningful impact on your community" It's not about starting 150 FLL teams or working in other countries; it's about STEM in your community.

I admit, it took me a LONG time to understand this message. I can be a lot dense at times.

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber (Post 1576515)

There needs to be balance.
The longer the reach of generosity generally the more sparse the realistic supply line is for that generosity.

I was asked recently if my goal to provide resources to my region was in some way 'selfish' to which I responded: this is where I am and this is the good I can afford to do. The further I am away - the smaller the help I can provide because of logistics.

In a global community sense I think it is vital we recognize our impact on the larger community, but when we ignore our own backyard for everyone else's we eventually pay a price. A situation to which I can literally relate because I have been known to ignore home maintenance literally in my backyard in exchange to help other people. Sooner or later - you have to take care of yourself to continue to help others.

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber (Post 1576515)

The message I got was that CA is all about "sustained meaningful impact on your community" It's not about starting 150 FLL teams or working in other countries; it's about STEM in your community.

I've always been wondering about this. Does Chairman's have to be for STEM, or can it be from other impacts of the team as an organization?

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by qscgy (Post 1576650)

I've always been wondering about this. Does Chairman's have to be for STEM, or can it be from other impacts of the team as an organization?

I'd refer you to the award description in the manual ;)

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Hmmm, for starters....

Reduce the costs involved in creating a competitive robot (reduce entrance fees as much as possible; make real field elements cheaper/easier to produce AND STORE; I hate to say this but probably remove stop build day)
Create guidelines to deal with mentor and student burnout (not sure how that would work--sanddrag's idea about capping the number of hours per year and/or week, perhaps)
Maximize games per entrance fee dollar, and keep teams with drastically different games per entrance fee dollar from competing against each other (because let's face it, that's fundamentally unfair--which is why either everyone should be on the district model, or no one should be)
Shift focus to team sustainability and improvement rather than program growth
Rubrics for all awards should be created, made public six months in advance, and strictly adhered to when judging (with the exception of the Judge's Award). Teams should receive scored rubrics for each award.
Make the Chairman's Award presentation and essays blindly judged--no team numbers, no team T-shirts, no identifiers on anything until after the winner has been chosen

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog (Post 1576426)

... FIRST, VEX, and BEST ... we should be working towards the same goals ...

I agree.

To the extent FIRSTers and members of those other programs can cooperate to reach and change as many communities as possible, by catalyzing and nurturing a diverse ecosystem of STEM programs (FIRST, BEST, VEX, CyberPatriot, SeaPerch, ...) in all communities, the "FIRST experience" of everyone involved will be improved.

Blake
PS: If we don't do this Dean will sue those programs and us for non-infringement on the cooperation part of his coopertition patent ;)

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

A mentor on FRC 1923 came up with a Queing system called the GMS that I think had the potential to be even more.It was tied directly to the FMS and allowed to track teams to Que up for matches. I think it could have been used as an app to give information to teams from schedules to statistics. I also think it could be used to send different levels of messages to teams when it times for them to Que up for matches (kind of like a buzzer you use at restaurants when your food is ready). Alas it never has been used beyond Midknight Mayhem.

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

I coach an FRC team and an FTC team. I'm new to FIRST (and teaching)!

We have a great time running an FRC team in a high school with 86 students in four grades. Are we at a disadvantage? Sure. Do our students get a great experience? Absolutely.

So what do I do with my junior high kids? FLL (4th-8th) where they play with legos or FTC (7-12th) where they compete with high schoolers? FIRST needs to tighten this up. I would like one high school program and one junior high program and one elementary program.

The nearest big city (Midland TX) has seven FTC teams, all in high school. All at much bigger schools than ours. Our junior high FTC team competes against high school teams. Take a look at this photo to see what I mean:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9E...ew?usp=sharing

We would not do this in athletics and should not do it in robotics.

I understand that FTC is more affordable and is a smart choice for lots of high schools. I just think that FIRST needs to admit that they have an expensive high school program and own it. Leave FTC to junior high kids and stop running parallel high school programs.

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koko Ed (Post 1576942)

Quick note - Raj is not affiliated with 1923. We do enjoy working with him for GMS at MidKnight Mayhem, though!

FIRST Mid-Atlantic uses GMS for inspection & queueing at events. I love the inspection implementation - all inspectors can see where each team is through the process. Red for no-inspection, Yellow for Size/Weight, Green for complete, IIRC. (I'm sure someone who has inspected at official events can clarify.) Plus the ability for pictures right there in the system of what's been changed for each re-inspection. Pretty cool to work with!

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Libby K (Post 1577290)

I worked with GMS for the first time at the Sacramento Regional. I was inspecting, and everything went smoothly once it all got set up. I had a few small points of improvement which I communicated through the LRI. Really cool system!

-Mike

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Obviously I'm biased, but I think FIRST should focus on making minority groups feel accepted, especially WOC and the LGBT community.

Along with everyone else, the cost needs to go down. Even if hotels gave a discount for FIRSTers that could make a large difference for teams.

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace (Post 1575779)

Improve the website.

Well, if you mean get it back to what it was circa November, no question about it!

Many of the other issues raised seem to be team-specific rather than endemic.

Though perhaps this many specific issues constitutes a greater problem.

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

I think the awards should be separated from the robotics competition. Both are so important, that they deserve that division.

Re: What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

Answering a question in another CD thread gave me a reason to hunt down some of the schedules I created (see the quoted text below) years ago. They can be found attached to a post in this VEX Forum thread VEX Forum Thread

The FRC match scheduling algorithm/process was one topic discussed in this CD thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gblake (Post 1575567)

After dabbling with creating a scheduler a few years ago (I still have the code), I believe that there is a huge unnecessary burden in the methods I *think* are still being used to create schedules for both FIRST and VEX tournaments.

Think about this.

It is possible to create and store, in advance of any tournament, for any/all possible numbers of participants, "canned" match schedules that satisfy any constraints desired, and that include N matches (where N is much larger than the number matches expected in any reasonable tournament).
The number of schedules to be created and the storage space they would consume are both more than zero, but both are trivial in modern computers.

On the day of a tournament:
If T teams are participating, the canned schedule designed for T teams is used.

The actual teams participating can be randomly assigned to the T placeholder teams used to generate that canned schedule (Real team X becomes team 1 in the canned schedule, real team Y, becomes team 2 in the canned schedule, etc.).

The actual match schedule to be used is then produced by picking a random starting point with the N sets of matches in the canned schedule, and simply using the next M sets of matches for the tournament.

Even a slow, modern computer could accomplish (or repeat) the day-of-the-tournament part of the process in a trivial amount of time.

Furthermore, I can't think of any reason not to publish the pre-computed, canned schedules.

If the canned schedules were published in advance, then, on the day of a tournament (or well before?), tournament organizers could publish that event's random real-to-placeholder team assignments, and the event's randomly chosen starting point within the N matches of the canned schedule being used.

Once that info (above) is published - voila! - scouts/anyone could easily produce a perfect copy of the entire event's schedule, without having to retype it, scan it, web scrape it, etc.

I believe that adopting this approach to creating match schedules would improve the FIRST/VEX/whatever experience.

Blake

PS: Also, just think how much fun people could have debating the "fairness" of pre-computed schedules (the entire thing, or selected stretches). If the practice was adopted, someone could start a thread on both evaluating that, and determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Many hours of popcorn-munching entertainment would follow.