What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

The title says it all, but recently there have been some discussions on CD about whether or not FIRST is doing enough to help existing 1-3 year old teams survive into coming seasons. They are putting a lot of effort into starting new teams but the amount of aid (not just financial aid, but also knowledge and support aid) those rookie teams get after their rookie season can make them unstable and drop out of FIRST after only one year.

So, let's garner up some ideas for how FIRST can help existing teams survive and be sustainable for years to come. Please don't just say "give them more money", as we all know that FIRST does work very hard to supply rookies with extra tools and resources to get them off their feet.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Eliminate bag day.

And with that I'm pretty sure some of you will have finished a bingo card. ;)

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Asking what FIRST can do is probably the wrong approach if you are asking what help can from the group in New Hampshire. Right away you would run into a problem of scalability. The things I do see them as being able to do is:

1. Drive down the cost of participating in FIRST. Reduce the cost of competitions. Increase the number of matches played. Work with vendors to improve supplies of COTS parts.

2. Provide resources that can be used by schools to increase the value of the FIRST program to the schools. Curriculum schools can use would help a lot.

There's probably more, but mainly I see FIRST providing strategic big picture changes that improve the value of the program, making teams more valuable to the organizations that support them, like schools and sponsors.

The FIRST community itself can help the most when it comes to team sustainability. The Gracious Profesionalism, Coopertition, and focus of the Chairman's Award already drive many teams to help other teams to survive. Workshops, training, mentoring all help the young teams survive.

Years 1-3 are particularly tough for FRC teams. This is the period when the entrepreneurs that had the dream and vision to get the team started are replaced by the team members who can organize and build a sustainable team (generalizing of course). The type of people needed to startup a team are not always the type of people that can build a strong, sustainable team. It's during this transition that teams are most vulnerable to failure and need the most support from nearby mentoring teams.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Doesn't make it untrue though.

It hits on the most obvious way to improve sustainability immediately, reduce the logistical and financial barriers to entry. Bag and tag creates artificially high barriers that are too much to overcome for many teams who operate near the margins.


Without it, we could achieve, IMO, the exact same level of inspiration and probably more technical knowledge due to the fact that the students spend more time in goal oriented activities with a high level of motivation as opposed to learning generalities that may or may not be useful in a given year.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I think team density is the only real way to drive down price. I feel like most of the price issues come from hotels and travel costs rather than registration fees. When looking at Michigan, most teams easily have 2 events (usually more) within driving distance (now registering for those 2 events is a completely different story). This would lower the cost of running a team by a big amount I feel.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Although that is a factor I don't think that's the issue. In lower NY we have two easily accessible regionals. Yet we still see tons of Long Island and NYC teams die.

The biggest reason I see teams die has nothing to do with funding. It's loss of their primary mentor. I don't think that's really something that can be easily fixed which is a shame.

Many teams do not even put travel towards team expenses. They are the individual expense of the students.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

If you solve this then you will solve most of the problems. I have seen many teams with little funding survive because their primary mentor went out of their way to do what ever they needed to keep the team running. You lose that mentor and the team disappears.

This is also a major reason why it is hard to start new teams. You need to find that mentor who is crazy enough to start a team.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Here in KC, KC STEM does a great jobs of offering their own build space (team 1775, world division finalist builds there), and trying to give great resources to keep teams running. While I do think that FIRST might be able to help in this way, having regional mentors and build spaces, that are given by the local FIRST chapter can go a long way. I don't know of any other FIRST area, and having them support it would go a long way.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

We have to keep in mind the place of the local FIRST chapter. I know KC FIRST already spends much more than they'll ever get back from FIRST on the KC regional. I'm not entirely sure where that $4,000 to the regional goes, but I'm sure not all of it goes to the regional. FIRST has dozens of employees dedicated just to FRC, and they have to get paid somehow. Even with all of their generous sponsors, they still need more money. While I think increasing the matches played is a good option, there's no real way of doing that on a regional model without adding more time, which is just more cost. If switching to a district model, then things get even more expensive, and I've heard from KC STEM that they are not in great support of this idea just because of cost.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

The strongest fortress will crumble in short order if it is built on sand.

Putting strong foundations in place *before* building FRC teams will probably increase the FRC teams' survivability.

Advising potential rookies to walk before running, or even making forming an FRC team the *second* step in a formal multi-season process might be an improvement.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

What years are FRC teams most likely to fail? I would guess something like years 2 & 5, but I'd love to know the actual answer. Can someone generate those numbers real quick?

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

This might be the most important step. VEX offers a curriculum that allows school districts to justify assigning a teacher to the program. If FIRST could offer a dual track then that allows the districts to start supporting the program. That's been a big help for us in the last couple of years.

As a friend who works in international development said, non profits can come up with innovations and pilots, but to scale up to widespread adoption requires embedding the program in an institution such as a school or a government. In the U.S. sports are in the schools with salaries for coaches paid by schools. In Europe, sports clubs are subsidized by governments. This is an educational program that benefits many more than just students participating.

It's time for FIRST to take the next step and offer a model that schools find useful for accomplishing their mission.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

This past season our team started an initiative called Project Alamo Robotics Rising to address this exact problem. Basically, every year we've seen many new teams get started in the Alamo/San Antonio area, but only a few of them stay around after 1-2 years. So we've started inviting the local teams and any teams willing to make the drive to our shop where we help them out with any problems they're having, let them use our tools and machine shop, and give them programming help, and let them use our practice field in our gym.

Basically every team that came to our shop showed up with something on their robot that would not pass inspection, mostly bumpers. We helped them correct things like this so that they didn't have to waste time at the competition doing this when they might have less access to tools and resources. This means that teams will pass inspection faster, get more practice time, and most importantly, make it to all of their matches which makes every happy, especially the teams that don't want to play 2v3s (all of them except 148 who will win the match anyways lol).

What this all comes down to, is just helping these teams get the most out of their regional as possible, because most, if not all of these teams only register for one regional. If you spend half of your regional rebuilding your robot instead of playing matches, then maybe you're not going to see FRC as a worthwhile investment of your time.

And we are doing all of this without help from FIRST, who we were surprised didn't already have a system for veteran teams helping out younger teams like this already in place.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I was curious about this too, so I pulled some data from TBA. A few teams show up a year or two before their rookie year because of off-seasons, but not enough to have a major effect on the numbers.

The last two tabs are the raw data I pulled from TBA and an expanded table showing which years each team was active in.

Team Survival

Sheet 1 (% of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the percent of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 45% of the teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.

Sheet 2 (# of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the number of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 75 of the 403 teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.

The other sheets are not particularly useful for looking at directly.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Without any hard numbers to back it up I would agree with your guess. I would also think that year 3 could be difficult. We just came off a pretty amazing first year and next year I feel we will be under pressure to "do it again". We managed to be alliance captains at both our regionals after seeding in the top 10-12 in quals. We worked hard to find all the sponsors we needed and they were impressed with the outcome (not that winning is THE outcome, but it's certainly a useful metric to show sponsors).

With next year will come the first loss of students who graduate out of the team, and an influx of fresh recruits who saw us last year. There will be more work to train these students up and make up for the knowledge transfer that will need to occur.

Then we will either "do it again", establishing our reputation as a team who can "perform", and put increasing pressure in year 3 to do it a third time, ...or not, and put increasing pressure in year 3 to "recover". I also suspect the push to fundraise, to find and renew sponsors will start to wear on people.

How can FIRST increase team sustainability? Honestly it may come down to "they can't do much without changing the culture". It's very competitive and we see that as a good thing. Every team wants to win. But how do you ensure more rookies succeed? Either you find ways for them to "win" more (more, cheaper, closer regionals/districts?) or ensure that they know that "a winning team" does not necessarily mean "blue banner".

Remove bag day? Sure, that increases the rookie team's chances of fielding something, but that also gives powerhouse teams more time to build something that will wipe the floor with everyone else. It will increase the perceived divide.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

This is great, thank you! (How do I read it?)

By the way, if I understood how to give the little green dots, I would give you some for this... :)

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

NASA has been supporting new teams for awhile with their grants. This is the type of large scale project that is not a waste of time for FIRST.

Maybe FIRST can garner similar support for 2nd, 3rd, 4th year teams. Like, let the a corporation grab that year and stick with supporting.

Imagine 3M or 3DSystems giving $3000 to 300 3rd year teams!

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I'm just Not seeing this helping at all. Bag day is when we stop spending money. During build, we have a burn-rate of hundreds-of-dollars a week. The day we bag is the day that stops. Bag day saves money.

Bag day is when I go home at night and see my family again. I can sustain not eating dinner at home for only so long before they forget my name. Bag day keeps mentors sustainable.

If we built a second-robot after bag day (we normally don't) we would keep designing, building parts and spending money--and building two copies of everything--that would actually cost more than not bagging. But I don't really want that.

If you don't have bag day, can you point to any team that would use that as a reason to Not build a second (or third or fourth) robot? No, those teams will still be doing that.

Also with no bag day, our drivers would practice, practice, practice and get much better than they are. But every hour the robot is moving, something is breaking and though that's going to allow us to improve the robot, it also will cost money.

I think Sperkowsky's comment here breaks into two catagories:

1. Many teams fold after just one or two years. I think money is a big factor for these--when they lose the rookie-team grants, finding money is a big shock. Usually mentors have to find that money.

2. Mentoring is usually fun, but every year there are huge headaches and conflicts between people (other mentors and students). If you have single mentors carrying too many headaches, it's very negative. The rewards of being a mentor have to exceed the negatives. I don't know how you can increase the reward. I think you have to decrease the negatives. Spread them between more people?

Sadly, a team has a life, just like a person and every team is on an arc to someday fold. Just like a company. Just like any organization. If you want to keep a team alive and vital, you just have to plan for the inevitabilities...losing funding, losing build space, losing people. And this planning is hard, sometimes insurmountable.

One solution to a mentor quitting killing a team is that mentors can recruit their replacement before they quit/retire. When I was recruited, it was made clear to me who I was replacing. Every mentor is on an arc to someday leave or retire too. Just like cells in a body, there has to be a plan to replace them.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I'm glad I can help!

Sheet 1 (% of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the percent of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 45% of the teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.

Sheet 2 (# of active teams by rookie year): Each row represents a rookie year (there were no 1993 rookies, so I left 1993 out). Each column is a year from 1992 through 2016. Each cell contains the number of teams from that rookie year that were active in the given year. For example: Cell V12 indicates that in 2011, 75 of the 403 teams that were founded in 2004 were still active.

The other sheets are not particularly useful for looking at directly.

Thank you! If you do want to, there is a scale icon next to the post number where you can do that. :]

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I will commit right now that 900 would stop building a copy of a robot and would instead use the resources to help create a second team if we no longer had bag day.

I'll also commit that without bag day we can help more existing teams to program their robots and make bumpers prior to the start of a competition.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

It takes a few years for a team to form reliable, on-going partnerships with corporate sponsors. It also takes about the same amount of time for teams to create their own structure for spending through the course of a competition year. Having a regional structure in place to work with teams as they develop their programs can be helpful with this whether it is a regional director, FIRST senior mentor, or team of volunteers.

The other side of this is team management and support. There are many ways to do this, but many teams do spend a lot of time in their second and third years thinking about how this should look. A similar support group can be a great deal of help for mentors, teachers, and students on young teams.

Basically, the rookie year isn't the only year a team needs assistance with its formation.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Thanks for the explanation on the google sheet. I hope you don't mind, but I created a copy of the sheet and added a column in the "raw data" tab with this formula:
What I wanted to see was, for teams that were not active in 2016, how many years were they active.

Here's the histogram of that:

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Srsly? 600 teams have dropped out after 2 years? :eek:

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

We would build 1 and only 1 robot in a heartbeat if they eliminated bag & tag. The only reason we do it today is to be competitive and give our drivers and operators additional practice time.

Eliminating bag & tag would save us a lot of money & time - no more buying 2 to 3 of everything. It would also reduce the overall number of parts we make during build season. The time we spend trying to get our competition robot to match the performance of our practice robot wouldn't be needed either. We could also spread our schedule a little bit and not have to meet every single day, reducing mentor and student burnout.

There are SO many benefits to eliminating bag & tag. It's just a remnant of the old ship date when we used to have to crate up the robot and I think it needs to go.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

The number was 599, but when you add in the 169 that dropped after 1 year, then you have 768 teams that lasted 2 years or less. When you add in years three (459) and four (304) dropouts, you have 1531 teams that have lasted only through one cycle of high school kids. That's roughly a quarter of all teams ever created.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

While I fully support eliminating bag day, I don't think that's why teams don't survive.

Eliminating Bag Day levels the playing field a bit more. Teams that have the resources to build a practice robot won't have a leg up on the teams without those resources through extra driver practice, software integration, and a platform to test new features.

I doubt there are teams out there that say "well, we can't build a second robot, so let's just give up on FRC"

And yes, that's definitely very noble of you, but how many other teams are thinking like that?

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

It's not really about the practice robots. It's about burnout.

If you have to build the whole robot in 6 weeks, no more no less, you feel compelled to meet very often. Lots of work is done in very little time. This makes it very hard to retain mentors year to year.

If you spread that out a few more weeks, yes work will expand to fill the time allotted, but you can meet with a more relaxed schedule if you want and still be reasonably competitive. The burden is spread out over a longer period.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

My thought process is thus:

Eliminate bag day and the teams with less resources can get more help with their robots. This makes them more competitive. Being more competitive helps them to win awards and boosts inspiration and confidence. Boosting those in turn enables them to survive for longer.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

We actually talked about this on the first episode of F4. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/41J-ZPWeQjE.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

This and...

(I can list several ways this can save money and mentor burnout but we've already been over it before... Just think about it seriously please) And of course registration costs in general need to come down.

And


One other thing that absolutely needs to happen is just getting a higher percentage of the engineering population involved in the first place. For as much as we talk about getting new people interested in STEM I still run in to countless engineers who don't know about what we do. I think we would be well served by getting more of these people involved.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

No, they say "Well, we built something that looks like a robot, then watched it do nothing in a bag for 4 weeks, and couldn't get it to work in 10 stressful hours on Thursday at the event away from our shop in a cramped 10x10 space, so let's just give up on FRC"

FIRST can say it's not about the robot all they want, but when you are rookies, it is exactly all about the robot. If you have a robot that never moves in your first year, it is hard to justify the time and money you spent on the program. A few teams experience that but become inspired by the rest of the teams and continue on, but that is by far the exception. It doesn't have to do well...it just has to do SOMETHING.

The first team I started while in college only lasted two years. Our first year had a robot that moved in 1 match at our first event and didn't do much better in our second event (we got a NASA grant and were able to go to 2 events). The second year, new kids were not interested in joining the team that seeded last (or nearly) at both events the previous year and we took 3 students to Midwest and once again had a robot that barely moved in any of our matches. The team died out due to a lack of interest. I am happy to say that several years later a new team formed at that school and the program is running very well these days, and the team I moved on to will be starting its 13th year next year.

Re: Bag Day, sure a few teams would still build 2 or 3 robots, but not all would, which also means many of those parts shortages would (hopefully) go away too. And you wouldn't have to pay for overnight shipping anymore!

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Throw 2826 into the pool of teams that would only build 1 robot if bag day were removed. Our practice bOt is always better thay our comp bot because we get so much more test and run time on it. If we didn't have to redo everything that we changed on the practice bot on the comp bot talk about a financial and time save.

However bag day is not a leading factor in teams folding.

Team support is #1 I would say. Both from mentors but from FIRST HQ as a whole.
#2 is money, no way around it. There is 0 reason that the registration fee still needs to be as high as it is.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Teams with the resources and dedication to build practice bots don't tend to be the ones that fold. Chipping in your $0.02 about practice bots probably doesn't mean much in this thread. With regards to mentor burnout and bag day, there are two competing schools of thought on that issue, and it likely wouldn't impact all individuals the same way. Let's save the bag day talk for the threads about bag day.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

This. Show us where our $5000 goes and why it needs to be that high still, especially since none of our registration fee goes to our local regional.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

You know what? I hadn't thought about it that way and what you (and others) are saying makes a lot of sense. I was purely thinking from a monetary point-of-view.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I think a little CD searching will answer this question well for everyone who is interested.

Posting a few links to any especially good explanations could be useful.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

This post by Jim Zondag summarizes the history of bag day and why it's obsolete.

Continue reading down that thread for more relevant posts by Jim.

EDIT:
Also the obligatory:

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Actually, there is an organization to help with team management and support: FIRST NEMO, the Non-Engineering Mentor Organization for FIRST teams.

FRC teams certainly have business-like components: staffing (students and mentors), finance (fundraising and expenses), facilities (build site, tools, IT, etc.), marketing (PR), and other logistics (transportation, communications, etc.). NEMO's purpose is to provide team with resources to do these things without having to re-invent the wheel.

I strongly recommend teams intending to sustain (or grow) their operations check out NEMO!

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Allow regionals to run their own lights and sound, and find a way to pass that savings on to teams. This doesn't have to be in terms of reduced registration for all, but could in grants, etc...

Considering most of CA is running regionals in district venues, it's a bummer that they are forced to raise the additional funds required to pay Show Ready Productions to run the event.

The savings could also be used to build up the fund for the eventual switch to districts (which I would assume is years off due to the difficulty the houston champs date puts on a District champs).

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

But Adam, we want FRC to be like all the other local high school sports that pay $40k to bring in 30 union workers to run unnecessary lighting and sound for 2 day tournament! Wait...

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

While the point has most certainly been beaten to death, I think there are a lot of us that feel it is relevant to the sustainability of FRC teams and that is what this thread is about.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Honestly, the powerhouse teams all build two robots anyway, so they're already spending the time building more. As it is, I don't think the 30lb withholding allowance is really much of a hindrance to them. I think giving rookie teams a better shot at fielding something (and the rest of us a break on our budget) is more than reason enough to drop bag day.

The other thing FRC needs more of is off-season competitions, and practice fields. Robotics will never be sustainable unless we can have the equivalent of "pick-up" games. Our team is hoping to host more of these next year.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

You can't solve a problem you don't understand. Before you can address the issue of sustainability, we need to figure out (in more certain terms than just a logical debate) why teams are folding.

I know IndianaFIRST surveyed teams that have folded over the past few years. The results were presented at a statewide mentor meeting, and can be found below. I hope that other regions within FRC can implement a similar survey.

Attachment 20793

Now two of the top three reasons have been discussed here. The one that hasn't, which seems to be the most prevalent among teams in Indiana, is lack of school support.

What can we do to make FRC more appealing for schools to integrate into their programs? There has been talk recently of forming an FRC curriculum; based on this data that would go a long way in improving sustainability.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Ditto, so much money wasted. Plus it would be much easier to add more regionals. There are so many venues that can't host regionals because the lighting exceeds the building safety standards in cali.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Do you have a more detailed breakdown of the numbers that would show if the teams were 10-year veterans that hit a major rough patch, or were 2-year hot-house orchids that wilted on the first sunny day because they didn't have a good root system?

There is a heck of a big difference in those two extremes of that spectrum (and I realize that the crudely defined spectrum I have in mind is only one method among the many ways to categorize teams).

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I pulled how long each of the listed teams were active off TBA, along with any rookie awards or championship attendances they might have had.

Interestingly enough, two of the listed teams returned for the 2016 season. One was a 6 year veteran team that only took the 2015 season off, another was a one-and-done 2013 rookie that resurrected.

I don't have the data to match which factors affected which teams.

Attachment 20794

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

FIRST needs to start showing data that actually mean something outside of the FIRST scene. Compiling hard data and showing that these programs actually mean something and have a positive impact would be far more beneficial then a team coming home with a blue banner when it comes to winning over school boards and sponsors.
I'd ask FIRST to leverage the connections they have to help teams contact sponsors at higher points instead of trying to get a message from the clerk at gas station up to the appropriate people.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

You mean like the Brandeis University studies?
http://www.firstinspires.org/about/impact
http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/d...ngs-year-3.pdf

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

While I do understand this makes sense, why did we pay $5000 to do Inland Empire last year in a high school gym?:confused:

As much as I like many of the Show Ready event personnel and the job they do, if its the choice between that and substantial reduced registration fees (as demonstrated by district events), I'd take the latter.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Yeah except as someone who is casually into FIRST and mentors I don't like the odds of expecting a sponsor or a school board to keep up with them.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that teams shouldn't have to reach out to sponsors and school boards to sell them on the merit of FIRST?

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Yes.

Anything that helps teams get more competitive and advanced helps the sustainability of the team and the program.

One other point on curriculum...

Even before a full classroom ready curriculum is developed, the control system and programming documentation needs to be more robust and include more complete examples. Even something as simple as team 358's LabView example page which was maybe the single most useful document I've used for programming. What I would like to see is an example robot code for each language based on what a mid level team would actually field. Basically like when a team releases their code but with more polish. it's very frustrating as a new programmer to not know how all the examples you see for how to run a motor or how to initialize a sensor are supposed to work together. For a team that may not have access to an optimal programming mentor base you need more than a list of functions and a basic example often. Meanwhile looking at the software produced can be somewhat daunting. That I think would go a ways to improving morale and helping teams become more competitive early on.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Hope no one minds, but I took the liberty of making a copy of that spreadsheet and adding a few more tabs to compare rates of team loss, as well as some graphs for showing team retention by team age. Thought the results were interesting, so I figured I'd share it...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15ys5j6c2QXwaIhTeKTSLQ5TfnfIJy1ee-8FHf0RXUS4/edit?usp=sharing

Sheet Tabs underlined in Green are either new or have new content in them. ;)

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

This x1000. The fact that many FIRST teams don't get enough support from their schools to sustain for more than a few years, while these same schools give enough support to sustain other forms of sports and education for many years, all while FIRST markets itself as combining the best parts of sports and education, should tell us we're doing something wrong.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I still think that bag day is really relevant to team retention, but the reason why has little to do with practice bots. Many/most teams need the handicap of being able to change their robot after experiencing the game for the first time in order to have a rewarding season on the field. Rewarding experiences help "pay for" the difficulty of running and sustaining an FRC team.

Sustaining an FRC team is really hard! It requires raising money; gathering interest and support from students, parents, administrators, and sponsors; managing a project involving a large group of students of varying abilities, interest levels, motivations, and distractions; managing a group of volunteer mentors with different abilities, interest levels, motivations, and distractions; running a 6 week engineering design crash course; and orchestrating all of the logistics necessary to sustain a team through a build and competition season. I have never been on a team where any of these tasks were easy and without lots of frustration and many headaches. You'd have to be crazy to do this year after year without some sort of rewarding experience.

There are many types of rewarding experiences in FRC, but many of them are predicated on achieving some sort of basic engineering success. Not necessarily winning, but "the robot I toiled and built to accomplish some function has actually succeeded in doing so!", at least.

I can't say that all of the teams that fold would not have folded if only they had an open bag and could improve their robot...but I strongly suspect that some could have.

I do know that once you've experienced a handful of rewarding FRC moments, leaving the program becomes really difficult, even when life is calling.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

If anything, simplifying the build goals, the build expenses, and the time spent attempting to carry them out is what a struggling team needs; not a double dose of each.

The first FRC seasons are big meals to eat in one gulp if you are a young/rookie team that didn't first cut your teeth on an simpler challenge.

Simplify and constrain, instead of pushing in the direction of increased complexity (veterans will use time to create complexity and consistency - rookies will have even more problems than they do now if they want to keep up - time won't solve those problems).

I know there is a strong community that wants to push FRC as far as possible in the Formula One direction (and use more build time to do it), but if rookies and veterans are on the same field, that's not the way to avoid overloading, overworking, and overwhelming the rookies.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

The argument isn't that removing bag time will level the playing field, or reduce the disparity between rookie and veteran teams.

The argument is that, with the current system, too many rookie teams build robots that simply don't function or accomplish any basic gameplay related task. These teams then get discouraged because they couldn't build a robot that positively contributed to the any of the alliances they were a part of, and decide that the time and effort they put into this program wasn't worth the disappointment at the end. Theoretically, moving to an open build schedule would give these rookie teams more time to reach this bar of performance, where they would have the rewarding experience that Jared's post talks about.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I don't think lack of motivation or inspiration is why we see high 2nd/3rd year attrition rates.

I think we see them because running an FRC team takes an inordinate amount of resources, both human and financial, and most teams that start really don't have any plan for acquiring those resources in a sustainable fashion. You can get by for a year or two with a couple of people overworking themselves to keep things afloat, but eventually people burn out and you're left without any real way to run the team. That timescale coincides neatly with teams no longer being eligible for the 1st-year/2nd-year NASA grants, too, so for a team that wasn't sustainably built the funding dries up at about the same time that the people holding the team together tend to burn out.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I agree with you. I didn't mean to imply that lack of inspiration or motivation were directly responsible, but that the discouragement of building a non-functional robot is a contributing factor to those key people involved in running a team "burning out".

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Also those of us already overworked with our own teams can find more time to help rookie teams along during the build season.

It would also provide a longer period in which a potential sponsor or mentor may be able to visit and actually see the team working which can be as compelling as seeing a competition for the first time.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Perhaps, but maybe not as much as you'd think.

A perhaps representative anecdote, from my own experience: Team 4464 very nearly folded in their third year (perhaps, in all truth, it should have). We attended championships in both of our first two years, but it was on the back of an overworked mentor base that shrunk each year. There was no plan for replacing human resources as they left. After the second year, our lead nontechnical mentor (the mother of the team captain) departed, as her son had graduated and quite honestly she had been handling a quantity of work that ought to have been done by at least three people. The resulting third season was, simply put, a mess. Had one or two more people decided to move on, it probably would not have happened at all. And this was a team that won RAS - a team that, from the outside, one would think was having a great deal of success. I think it's important to keep this in mind, when thinking about young teams: success can happen on the very brink of failure, often at the expense of abusing an insufficient pool of resources in ways that will eventually come back to bite you. On top of this, of course, were problems with funding (I loaned the team somewhere north of $2000 out-of-pocket to keep it afloat until we finally had funding come in, and I was not the only one) and issues with creating a sustainable base of student knowledge (which is a thing that's much easier to keep going once started than it is to get up and running). I think this is the type of situation one should have in mind when they consider the attrition rates.

I think it's hard to communicate to people who are considering starting an FRC team just how hard it is to run a team. Even 449, which is a fairly well-established team, scrambles to find year-to-year funding. FRC is difficult, expensive, and has a massive barrier to entry; and most of the difficulty is not in putting a robot together and getting it to competition for the first year - most of the difficulty is not even seen until the student base starts to churn and mentors start to leave. I honestly do not know how FRC can prepare teams for that.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I understand the argument. I simply disagree with it. Struggling teams have plenty of time to build a modest, but useable robot already. That tells me more time isn't what they need. YMMV.

How can time be their biggest problem? A ready-for-inspection kit bot, basic software, and driver controls can easily be built in a weekend, *if* you know what you are doing.

Building the FRC equivalent of a Formula One car, or anything close to it, is not a job for any struggling team. However, the more time healthy teams are given for building, the more their robots become like Formula One cars. As those robots get more sophisticated, the challenge becomes even more difficult for the struggling or new teams who try to keep up.

If you want more teams to survive, make all the robots simpler, cheaper, and less time-consuming.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

To sort off peel of the longer build season discussion. I find it hard to help teams outside the build season but find hard to have time to help teams during the build season. There just so many learning opportunities during the build season, often too many. Outside of the build season, some team meet very little or have a tough time getting ready for the build season.

I did notice that in California, the formula for successful rookie teams appears to be starting teams with prior FRC experience. 3476 is an offshoot of 2493 and features mentors from 696, 980 and 3309. 5810 and 5805 have 3476 alumni and mentors leading those teams. Many successful teams in California are founded by mentors with more than 1 year of FRC experience. It seems to be a good formula for success and sustainability.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Ahem...

Well that's where we come in right? Oh wait...

This.

Also back to the point of curriculum, a longer build season would make it easier to apply the curriculum because you're not is as much of a rush to get things finished. You can put more energy in to training and teaching with the motivation that comes with the build season.

And if you aren't as concerned with those aspects you can put more energy in to raising funds and other resources during the season.

There are an infinite number of ways eliminating bag and tag could be used to help improve and sustain a team.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Great point!
All this talk about how hard it is to stay in FRC. Leaving it after experiencing personal and team successes is much harder!

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Just click on the "balance" icon in the top right corner of the post.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

here is some data that may be useful

Why teams are successful http://team1389.com/why-do-teams-succeed/

Why teams fold http://team1389.com/why-do-frc-teams-fold/

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

My view of high school student behavior is that many students are motivated by deadlines.
We meet year round and only a hand full of students show up.
We get a big turnout on kickoff weekend and the last week of the build season.

On a side note, we only have a 5 week build season, because we take off the 3rd week to allow students to study for finals.
Do other teams have this constraint?

Dave
Mentor in the Pacific North West

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

In my early years as a coach, I also did not schedule meetings during finals week. Later on, I was asked by the seniors to not dictate that. They said I should schedule the optional meetings and whoever wanted to come can come. Many seniors who applied early decisions or early actions already knew where they were going before build season starts. It was their last year on the team. This is another example that mentors/coaches should check with students before implementing rules thinking they were doing the right thing.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

While I agree with this and I think it will help most teams. Every team is different.

I want really badly to suggest that FIRST create a example "team handbook" to send out and help teams with but I honestly don't know if it will help or hurt the majority of rookie teams. I do feel that most teams would benefit from a handbook but that a lot of teams initially miss the point of them (writing down esoteric rules rather than trying to codify what their team is about). Not to mention that every team is different (Maybe a team is about esoteric rules?). I know plenty of teams that function without them but I am so VERY VERY happy that my team has one now and that my students want to continue to improve it. I think it aids in our long term sustainability.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Exactly. I don't schedule meetings, I just list my availability.
If the students want to meet during finals week, it's fine with me.

Dave

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I would like to chime in as a mentor of an older weak team. We (2544) have been in the game since 2008 and on the edge of survival since then. Had there been an active FTC base in the area we would have moved to that I am sure.

1. I completely agree with the elimination of bag day for the reasons given above. We have never been rich enough to produce a 2nd robot. We MIGHT do it this year because we were trying to have enough money to go to a second event and failed.

2. There were a couple of years where I was it. I was THE mentor for the entire team along with trying to hold down a full time job. I was super lucky as my job duties at the time allowed me time during the work day to spend time on robotics. When I was put back in a classroom as a teacher I strongly considered folding the team. A couple of engineering mentors came along and that was enough to keep the team afloat. Not running well, just afloat. I don't know how some of the mentors do it but if you are on a team hug your mentors, really. I have read some stories on here about students and mentors clashing and as a stressed out mentor I can read the stress between the lines. Mentoring is a hard thankless job as there are SO many things that have nothing to do with building robots. Ask me about the time the superintendent called me because I forgot to forward the list of students to the attendance secretary... It's all those tiny tasks that need to be done. I think the six week build season is really hard on mentors. My point is that anything can be the last straw for a mentor. A couple of bad parents, students, an administration that becomes unsupportive. A purchasing system that moves at glacial speeds. I know a mentor from another team that ended up in trouble over lesson planning because he was mentoring and didn't have the time to plan for school. With the new teacher evaluation system the paperwork has increased substantially. Look for more teams folding in the future over this one. Solution- Promote mentor teams and provide training for teams of mentors.

3. Funding- Thank god for GE. I know they get a bad rap in the press for being the equivalent to the empire but for us they are an amazing sponsor. We have Mike Hayes (and yes I am calling him out by name because he is amazing) inside GE working tirelessly for us. Mike has been a Woodie Flowers award winner and deservedly so. He is the mentor that isn't for us. His work has meant that the base funding is a non issue for us. I look at other teams and have no idea how they do it. We would have folded long ago without Mike or GE. See number 2. Funding might be that straw as mentor time is chewed up chasing down dollars. Solution- divert the FIRST stream of funding to individual teams. Teams should GET $5,000 from FIRST to go to a competition not give $5,000 TO FIRST.

4. The curriculum issue is real people. Most of us are school based and schools want to see value. Explaining the reality of robotics is very difficult. Only half of students in the program learn about robotics. The other half are designing t-shirts, setting up hotel reservations, sending out sponsor letters and thank you letters, etc. On the robot side we are set up in a programming group, build group, etc. So the build group has only a passing knowledge of the programming and vice versa. We try to cross train and do training in the fall but it has varying levels of success. During build only so many students can fit around the robot. Rarely do we have students with the talent to machine parts so those go off site based on our drawings and specs. Students have to be self motivated to find a place. I see many students that don't have that drive to make themselves useful. They get frustrated and stop showing up. We try to find things for them to do but then these same students don't like being assigned to "menial" tasks. During build there is very little time to train students. It is go time and there is no time. Solution- Provide more off season opportunities as well as some sort of mini bot that can be programmed in the same way as the larger bots. I know FTC was supposed to fill this role but the timing is off. FTC should happen in December when FLL is happening, maybe at the same event as FLL or the next day. Make FTC use the same 4 x 8 field as FLL so event tables can be dual purposed. This might provide a way to train people and have students work in smaller teams on more inexpensive robots.

5. Sport maturity- This happens in motorsports all the time. Look at trans-am in the 1970's if you want to see an analogy to FRC or look to formula 1 now. A few teams dominate the season and seem to do so year over year. And every year it gets a little harder to compete with those teams. A couple of posters eluded to this in the posts. The advice was that rookie teams shouldn't build a sophisticated robot. I agree, but you aren't going to go up against a sophisticated team and win or get selected for an alliance. Personally, I had to make a decision that FRC was only going to take up x number of hours in my life. We are never going to be a powerhouse team with me as lead mentor. I just don't have the time or expertise. I am totally willing to step aside into a support role if someone wanted to step in and lead the team to greatness. So far that person hasn't shown up. Solution- Elimination of bag day, Divisions system like Formula 1,2,3 or SCCA car classes. Or any dirt track that has semi late and late model races. Teams have different focus. Maybe there is a "super stock" class that requires a kit frame, kit motors, etc. And an open class that allows more sophisticated builds. Waterjet frames, unobtanium bearings, etc. Maybe allow teams to field robots in EACH class if they want. It sets up a bit of a jv and varsity system. I know FTC is supposed to provide this jv system but it doesn't now. FTC should overlap on the field that is FLL or FRC. It shouldn't be it's own thing.

5. School support- I don't know about your team but my students want to be recognized for what they do but they aren't the type of students that seek out public recognition. As a matter of fact most turn a bit pale at the thought of speaking in front to their peers. We usually have one or two students that are really good at that PR piece to put out front but sometimes we don't. We also are in our robot hole for six weeks and then we go to 1 hard to explain competition. It is hard to explain ranking, alliance selection and eliminations to someone that asks "How did you do?" Solution- More events in a "season" Your $5,000 should buy you into 2 events at least if not more. Maybe 2 smaller events and then a regional. If there was no bag day, maybe more off season events could happen in the weeks leading up to a regional.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Not sure why I had the years 1-3 as the toughest for a team, I meant to say years 2-4.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Having just come off our rookie season, THIS. We get great documentation about the game and the rules, but not a lot about what happens (when and why) at a competition, how much scaffolding (money, mostly) we may get (and how) in our 2nd and later years, and example ideas / timelines on how to recruit sponsors and find funds.

Sadly, If it weren't for CD....

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

1. Some how prevent main one mentor teams from burning out.
2. Teams having trouble in there school system, a escape route to any kind
of building. With money or without money given to secure building. Like 4
months rent, if not free.
3. 10 or more central locations having a full size field set up on day one of
build season. Minus electronics.
4. 10 or less equipment hubs open to any an all teams. Good for that snowy
week to bring your robot into.
5. Allow some events to in whole or in part keep same 3 teams on same
alliance side. Put these 3 teams together in pit area. If this would be to
big a can of worms for all my friends here. You tell them, that they can
do it for one season only. Then they must get a divorce. At a later time
they could get remarried. We would not want to create any more power
house alliances around the neighbor hood.
6. FIRST website you can navigate in 2.5 seconds.
7. Allow that 12 year old motors to pass inspection. Oh that's right it happen
to us on a Friday night after passing inspection. Lead Inspector comes
around. What you got there boys. I won't mention any names.
I could think of more later. Thomas (just give me crabcake) McCubbin

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Can you elaborate more on what you'd like to see in such a manual? This might become a project for our team.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Sure.

Speaking from my team's experience, we got into it knowing the goal was "build a bot", and we received copious amounts of grant money to start up and compete - to the point we didn't need to worry about sponsors or funding (to a level). The game manuals gave us a good idea how the game and competition worked at a technical level, but...

At our first event:

* Food - We knew we could order from the venue (expensive) but we weren't prepared for how hard it would be to get food in (and have a place to eat).
* Judging - How to interact with the judges, our first pair of judges looked to us like just another team scouting (what can your robot do?). The second pair asked more questions, but both times were were under the gun coming off the field and due to queue up almost immediately. (Our student that was to be our PR face was in the stands to make room in the pit for an urgent repair.)
* Pit - We had a few folding tables, a tool box, a 3D printer, and some pare COTS stuff. No banners, "tent", and our robot cart was... well.. rookie. Some cheap and basic ideas on what *AND HOW* to bring stuff to the venue would have helped. (Taking a step further - the "basic rookie team pit kit")

* If we qualified for worlds we were terrified. We didn't know if we'd get the rookie award, or if we'd be able to go, what it meant, how many could go, how much it would cost, or when FIRST would need the money. (FIRST Team emails were going into SPAM folders, we found later) In short, if it happened, we were massively unprepared. (Thankfully it was a week 3 event, so there may have been hope.)


After the competition (we did well by our standards, but didn't get any Worlds-qualifying awards)....

* Now what? - Between April - January what do we need to do?
* Financials - Being so financially supported as a rookie team, we have little understanding of what level of support a 2nd year (or later) team could expect. Do we need to chase down local companies now? A lot? A little? What might a 2nd year team budget look like?
* Engagement - Keeping in mind end of year testing (AP / NYS Regents / Finals, etc) what should we do to keep our students engaged, and to what level? And starting in September?
* Goal Ideas - Some rookie teams are happy they got a bot on the field, others had higher starting goals, but what would some 2nd year goals be for a "typical" team?
* Off Season Events - I know about them because of CD, and some interaction with other local teams (not a lot of off-season discussion in week 3, but...)

Beyond the bot:

As a rookie, until we hit competition and started seeing the Chairman's Award presentations and really started interacting with other teams, everything beyond the bot was pretty well lost on us. (And to be honest, rightfully so for our team our first year). As we look to years 2+ even just a bulleted list of "inspiring" ideas that other teams have done, outreach, etc, to give teams something to look to and build off of.

Granted, this was just our experience, but if you decide to take this on and want more info or to discuss, let let me know. Thank you!

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

After performing some analysis of the data shared earlier by a poster, I think that rather than asking what can FIRST do, we should be talking to the teams which have been able to sustain their participation for the past five years to discover what they are doing.

Looking at the data, it appears that sustainability is improving.

You can download the file and graphs from the media section.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

I hope my post is not redundant, but there were few graphs posted recently (probably as a result of this thread):
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43846
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43845
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43844
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43843

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

A lot of this should be done and discussed by your mentor team. When we started the team back in 2000, our mentor team #60 offered support with students and mentors always willing to help. (they were about 50 miles away)

Can FIRST do more? Yes to what scope that is idk. I think it falls more on the support from surrounding teams, maybe a better local network of teams?

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

This assumes they even have a mentor team though. I would suspect many rookies do not, and some that do may not comunicate with them much.

I think it's important to remember that many new teams may start out with an us vs them mentality common to high school sports. Before teams get an understanding of FIRST culture, many collaborative aspects of FRC may be ignored by new teams.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Yes that is true. Maybe part of the role of the local FIRST level should be to assign a buddy team to rookies?

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

As far as eliminating Bag day goes....I'm sure there are a few benefits that will allow some teams to perform better. Eliminating a hard deadline that the students/mentors have to adhere to would be extremely detrimental and would outweigh the aforementioned benefits. Part of the lessons we teach these students is that they will have to deal with deadlines and restrictions in the real world, eliminating bag and tag is counterproductive to that lesson. I've been with Team 34 for about six years now and we've had to re-vamp our team because one of our key mentors left to pursue other endeavors. So rookie teams (or teams with just 2-3 years) aren't the only ones vulnerable. Funding and mentor burnout has to be addressed by every team. I'm glad this thread was started, its good to know that others are thinking about the same issues that most of us are dealing with.
I don't know what FRC could do to alleviate some of these issues, but maybe trying to recruit more mentors nationwide... I know CD has helped me so much by being a sounding board for so many FRC issues, maybe if there were more networking possibilities between teams/mentors, help could be given to these struggling teams.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

We have CSA.
We have Lead Mentors outside of teams.

We should have more training for team mentors.
Perhaps a pool of resources to help specifically support key mentors that are drowning.
It is far too easy to get into something far larger than you think it is.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

We hold a Rookie Kit Build after kickoff and I personally stay in touch with local rookie teams.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to get some of them to communicate. Maybe they are overwhelmed, often they don't even know they need help.

There is a large of amount of data/communication sent to new teams and often they don't know what to listen to.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

You'd still have a hard deadline - your first regional event. Many teams don't have a functioning robot by that truly important deadline.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Those teams had plenty of calendar time to create a functioning robot.

What do you think was the problem?

• Time management?
• Not having the full range of tech skills needed?
• Not appreciating the number of hours required?
• No adult or student able to focus a core set of students on getting the basics accomplished?
• Being hesitant to get help (for one or more of several possible reasons)?
• Simply needing to start in a less complex program (FTC, VRC, FLL) in order to build up some general-purpose expertise before diving headfirst into FRC (walk before run)?
• Something else?

Does anyone have a long list of anecdotes about this subject that is dominated by examples of teams that were making 5-6 weeks of steady progress toward success, but who didn't get finished before the current build season deadline (They had a complete plan that included some margin for surprises; every week they were making consistent, substantial, progress executing that plan; and something out-of-their-control surprised them, and used up their margin and put them behind schedule)?

Blake

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

After seeing the game played, it is easy to know how your team shoulda built their robot. It is much harder to figure that out beforehand. Many teams put insufficient time and thought into deciding what robot to build. This is not laziness -- it is failure to recognize soon enough that thinking is the hard part.

Jared said it well earlier in this thread:

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

We're trying to talk about how to keep FRC teams and make them sustainable, correct? How does bag & tag help in that goal? Blaming the teams 100% instead of thinking about maybe how we could make things a little easier on them isn't all that helpful.

After seeing hundreds of teams over the years field robot that struggle to move and don't play the game at all, I'd argue that they didn't have plenty of time.

Of course all of your points are a factor - time management being a huge one. We need to find a way to help teams to manage their time better.

If FIRST could do one thing that wouldn't impact them at all financially or logistically and would help a significant number of teams, it would be to end bag & tag.

From my team's standpoint, suddenly we don't have to meet every single night to field a competitive robot. Now we don't have to build two robots for practice and autonomous mode development. Mentors and students aren't getting burned out because we're able to manage our time better and still build the robot we know we're capable of building.

For teams that only meet a few times a week, now they get a few more meetings. They get more hands on time with their robots. How on Earth is that a bad thing? How would that detract from the mission of FIRST, the inspiration these students receive by working towards a common goal on a team?

I still haven't read one statement on how bag day enhances the FIRST experience. Bag Day is an archaic remnant of Ship Day and it doesn't make sense if we want to truly grow FIRST and make it sustainable for all teams.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

QFT

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

There are two parts to the bag and tag debate.

Access to the robot before competing, and access to the robot between events.

Give teams more time before their first event, and I bet they nominally show up just as unprepared (with some variance).

The real magic is giving teams time AFTER the compete so they can iterate and get ready for their 2nd show with all the inspiration and lessons from competing once (and webcasts, etc.).

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Well, JJ already posted the sustainability model I've been tinkering with on and off for a year or so [1] I'll just talk a little about the thinking behind it.

A team needs 4 things to compete.
- A competition
- Money
- Mentors
- Manpower (students, but I wanted to be able to refer to these as the three Ms)


The competition is, for the most part, outside of the team's control but having competitions more local does seem to help. But, I kinda ignored this one tbh.

Remove any one of the 3 Ms and the team folds. Or reduce the sum total of them beyond a certain point and the team folds. This gives us a wonderful way to actually discuss what is going to have in impact on sustainability that's not just anecdotes about how much the upper half teams spend on practice bots [2] or some name calling about districts in certain states [3].


So, the question I want to ask is - How does removing bag day impact the 3 Ms of sustainability?


And then I have to add a follow on question to this thread:

Is team sustainability the metric we want to focus on? It's easy to say we want 100% retention [4] but the important question before setting any goal is Does this further the goals of the program? [5] Instead of focusing on how every single team started can continue can we focus on how do we start teams that will be inherently sustainable?


I think the answer is yes, but it requires really evaluating something more than retention numbers. It forces us to start asking really awkward questions about things. Team 1337 may a hundred students and loads of money, but no mentor involvement. Is that team REALLY furthering FIRST's goals? What if it was the other way around and was the proverbial mentor built team? What if it was a team with mentors and students but no money? Or if it only had 3 students?

My point is, if the team isn't furthering the mission of FIRST year in and year out, is that a bigger issue? Can we focus on quality of impact rather than simply existence?




[1] Available here if folks missed it https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...xeo/edit#gid=0

[2] We get it, it's a lot

[3] Everyone getting their bingo on?

[4] Or 98% or whatever metric you want to pick

[5] This is the part where folks start doing a double take considering how vocal I usually am about sustainability. I have a point, trust me.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

"It's not about the robot"

What if there are 5 mentors and 2 students by the bag&tag:
Still don't want the mentors to work on that robot?

As a CSA I've helped a few teams build a KOPbot at a competition (there are some rare cases you can get away with this).
They literally came with the crates still packed.
Is it mentor built or CSA built ;)?

What if your team had a lot of mentor built stuff to give it legs then switched to more student built?
What if your team has more mentor hands on in one part and less in another?

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Post


Your Head?

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

My head is bald :p and as my Father was also one of my mentors - yes my head is mentor built.

On topic: as long as some kid benefits, even a little, it's an exercise somewhat worth doing but will it make anyone sustainable?
It is a huge red flag to me when robots show up needing major CSA help to be nearly operational.
That means something went very wrong somewhere, but I have no place to alert anyone to give them help next season as CSA.
I might get a team on the field for that game but that's addressing the symptom.

(Sorry had to update this a lot due to a nasty migraine.)

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Nah, the mentor built/student built comment was just so I didn't come across as biased. I agree there's a fairly large goldilocks zone of mentor involvement, It was more a rhetorical question.

I also feel that coming to an event with a non functional (non driving) robot is a symptom of exactly the problem I'm pointing out. We have a bunch of teams, rookie or otherwise, that for some reason or another are failing at the core challenge of FRC.


In healthcare there's a growing focus on quality of life rather than quantity. I don't want to see us focus on quantity of teams and neglect if teams are achieving FIRST's goals.

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Please refer them to a Senior Mentor in the area. This is very much where we can help

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Ditto

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

In this thread and others two enabling contributors to sustainability emerge. My team has beat this topic up this spring and it comes down to the same two goals - increasing the numbers of dedicated mentors and fundraising. You can't use tools you can't afford and without mentors to train. You can't retain all students without engaging teachers/mentors and the money to compete. And so on...

Re: What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?
 

Before I say anything let me preface this by saying I like some parts of this idea.

The issue I see with this is that many teams only do a single regional. Especially when we are talking about the teams that may drop out. This problem is alleviated with the district system however it already does something similar to what you proposed. If your proposition happens the gap at a week 4 or 5 regional between the single regional teams and multi regional teams is going to widen significantly simultaneously probably raising the drop off rate.

There is hope to this system however. What if teams got to keep their bags open after the first regional of the season. This would give everyone a week or two break and a time to watch other robots compete.

Although I still think the playing field would be more level without it at all.