Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I have to admit that when I received this survey, I was concerned that some hidden negative effects might outweigh the obvious positives of eliminating the Stop Bag Day. HOWEVER, after reading through all these arguments and Jim's excellent paper, I'm feeling pretty well convinced that an elimination of SBD would be net positive for FRC.

That being said, it seems like a lot of the potential positives of #banthebag rely heavily on the well-resourced and experienced teams reaching out to the lower-resourced teams in their communities and making sure that all are able to fully realize the benefits of eliminating SBD. The good news is that FRC teams already have that mentality in place. Wouldn't it be great, though, to have a #banthebag activities guide to give folks a good baseline?

So, I'd like to take a moment to spur a brainstorming of what events/activities teams could host if SBD is no more. Here are things I've read so far:

- Scrimmages
- Bumper builds
- Pre-inspections
- In-season demos with competition machines to "Make it Loud"
- In-season workshops

If you're a team that's already working past SBD, surely not having your competition machine in a bag will free up some time and resources. How can you leverage those for your community?

-Andy

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I guess at the end of the day I find myself still incredibly puzzled by your plea to keep stop build day in place. You discuss how the potential removal of it could negatively affect your team. However, none of the issues you state are necessarily involuntarily out of your control as a mentor.

The current rules package for FRC robot fabrication causes my team, and many others, to have to adjust way out of our comfort zone to to meet everything from routine schedules up to overarching goals. Have to shut down fabrication for almost 1 out of 6 weeks during build season for midterm exams? "Sorry, that's out of your control as a team, but you have to work around it." We do. Live in a place where they shut down schools and virtually padlock the doors to keep you out over the threat of snow? "You'll come up with something! It's all part of THE PROCESS™." However, these problems are out of our control and as team leadership, we have made it a priority to not let problems out of our control define how we achieve success as an organization.

When it comes to potential removal of stop build day, your core fear seems to be that you and the rest of your team leadership will fail to adjust for, finalize, and maintain objectives and expectations that could affect the sustainability of your program. Does the mentorship of the team have no say in how often meetings are held? Do students hold your family members hostage with guns pointed to their heads until the student leadership feels like they have had sufficient meeting time?

No one on this board is going to make the decision to keep or end stop build day but each of us has the opportunity to set the guidelines for our teams concerning how we handle either approach.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Furthermore, he's on a team that competes in a district and thus enjoyed substantial unbagging time this season.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

And has made the argument that his kids end up working past SBD anyway. He only wants SBD so he can trick people into thinking that the season ends after 6 weeks.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

The average regional event (I cannot speak to district events) featuring a random sampling of 6 teams on the field varies between "unwatchably bad" to "struggles to complete the game objectives consistently", to "good". In no case would it be considered elite or even really good on average. The bar is currently set MUCH lower than it seems you consider it to be. That on field quality would be very bad if rules changed to make the robots actually be built in 6 weeks.

FIRST wants FRC to be the vehicle that leads to culture change. You cannot change the culture with a science fair. I don't think that can even be up for debate. It just won't happen. Competition is what makes this cool for kids that don't self select as science geeks. Competition is literally in the name, so clearly FIRST does think competition is crucial to achieving their goals.

Could you elaborate on what your competition season looks like? You are from Indiana and 868 seems to be an upper tier Indiana team. Are you not taking advantage of unbagging windows? Do you not plan any upgrades for your robot? Do you just unbag to practice/test software? Do you iterate on mechanisms? What are you working on (or not working on) each week between the last week of February and CMP?

Not trying to be obstinate, just trying to understand your very strong pro SBD stance while you currently exist in a district environment which is the closest thing we have to eliminating SBD.

Jim's paper had a very reasonable intermediate step of giving everyone FRC wide 8 hours a week (every week, not just weeks you're competing) unbag time. I've seen almost no discussion of this, just the posts about how the sky will fall if we eliminate SBD and the opposite posts that it's insane we continue to have SBD. This intermediate step is unbelievably easy to implement, saves those who need saving from themselves, and gives huge benefits to all teams at very little cost.

It would be SO much better than the current system for teams like us and teams who can't afford a practice robot. There are so many things teams like ours could do to help those with less resources if such a plan were implemented. We could host scrimmages, we could help teams fabricate upgrade parts, we could do pre-inspections and help teams correct issues with their robots in our shop with the benefit of all our raw materials, components, and tools. The list goes on and on.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

This is how your team runs during the build season. I know of teams who have daily or weekly requirements for participating on the team and how that impacts if they can attend events/travel but that doesn't apply to most teams.

Come up with a new solution for how your team views those six weeks? Take two or three days off in the first few weeks of build to properly digest the game and develop concepts offsite and remove "groupthink" which often hurts teams.

Advocating that no stop build day automatically increases or doubles your team's work hours is ridiculous. Only you have control over when you meet as a team and no one is forcing you to meet more or less.

If you don't want to get "burned out more" the solution is easy... don't. There were a few seasons I got severely burned out as a mentor along with the team. We made decisions as a team to reduce our hours and I learned too take it a step further by taking my own time off.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Did I not already address this?

[emphasis added]

I don't want a 12 week build season. Removing the stop build day automatically creates a 12 week build season. I want the FRC available to new or casual participants, and a 6 week build season makes it easier for new or casual participants to get involved.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

But...stop build day means nothing if you are allowed to have the robot out of the bag 24/7 after stop build day. I really don't get how you see that as a solution that's different than eliminating stop build day.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I have found exactly the opposite to be true. Condensing the build into six weeks creates such an intense schedule that it is very difficult to convince the marginal mentors to dive in and participate. If we had the option of spreading the work out over a longer period of time we could create a more flexible schedule for those who aren't willing to completely devote their life to the team for six straight weeks.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

To be perfectly honest, having a completely arbitrary and meaningless day called "stop build day" that you're allowed to ignore one way or another might actually placate people on both sides of this one. People on teams that they want to make stop building can follow it and people who don't want to can choose to keep working. The official-ness of this arbitrary day lets everyone keep their favorite 6 week build season lie going if they want, and lets any individual team do what they want.

The issue is that it would be a meaningless term that would confuse less aware FRC teams who would think you would be required to totally stop working then. I would hope we could all move to a system where we don't have to do anything as silly and nonsensical as making a "stop build day" that means nothing, but come to think of it, it isn't substantially different than the current system other than avoiding resource duplication.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Sorry, have to argue this one. We do Week 1 events and we barely have enough time to get our robot and our team prepared to the event. Some of us still have to fly to events, including our robot.
Normally our robot is shipped out either on the last day of build season or the next.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Carmel High School has about 5200 students. Approximately 120-160 students will show up to the call out. We require students during build season to meet every day after school, meetings usually last 3 hours (last season MWF was 3:30-6:30PM, TTh 6:00-9:00PM, this is for the teacher that sponsors the team). Sometimes we will have meetings Saturday, late in the build season we may meet Sunday as well. These weekend meetings don't count for attendance.
We require attendance to let students miss school for competitions. You can understand what would happen if there was no time commitment required to be "on the team," especially with a school of that size.

After stop build day, student and mentor participation is reduced significantly, and those that do meet it's voluntary and not counted on attendance.

Managing a team our size is no small feat, and an official "SBD" makes the team draw down very easy. I understand and appreciate wanting to work on the robot during competition season, but without an official end of the build season would strain our mentors, particularly the teachers. It's not hard to imagine it's the same elsewhere.


I've posted 3 times on CD that I support this, and entirely separately (before all the discussion or Jim's white paper) I gave that as my feedback to FIRST.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

The thing people aren't getting is how you can't set this same schedule for yourself without it being mandatory for everyone.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Oh, I'm not defending that as a viable option, at all - the logistical problems are likely insurmountable.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I appreciate the response, but I was hoping you could give some insight into what you're doing between the end of the 6 weeks and CMP. Are you saying you do not utilize unbagging windows prior to your events? You cease all robot related work?