New Idea- Freelance FIRST
 

WHAT IS FREELANCE FIRST?

Freelance FIRST is a new idea that came to me after M. Krass brought up the idea. Since M dosn't have a team, M wants to help others by using her skills on CAD. So this got me thinking: what if lots of people get together and pool their talents to create some original content for FIRST teams to use? This could be anything they could use, from CAD to non-copyrighted songs for their animations, this would encompass all aspects of FIRST.

'Freelance FIRST' would be a resource, or a library per say, of many resources FIRST teams could use. From open-source programs, to programming, to PR sheets with nice FIRST info, to help with CAD and Autodesk. The idea wouldn't be things teams would copy-and-paste necessarily, but more on the idea of starting blocks.

A good example would be the new autonomous codes. Many new and old teams didn't know what to do. But if Freelance FIRST was around last year, FF would supply some info and beta test code for line tracking, dead recog, etc.

What Can I Do To Help?

Freelance FIRST is just starting out, so I'll need lots of input. I'm still wondering how this will be all carried out, should it have it's own website? Newsletter? Will this be affiliated with a team website? If you have any offers or opinions, then post them here or PM me with them.

How will this info be accessed?

Don't know now. A newsletter, website, and other things are currently my ideas, your opinions are welcome.

When Will This Be Up?

As soon as all the bugs are worked out, people help with ideas and content, and people are ready to take in the info.

Thanks for reading my idea and hopefully you can submit some material. I hope this can become a new, huge, resource for teams.

It definitely needs it's own fully-featured website. I will help with any part of this deal in any way I can and my team will be glad to contribut any documnets or anything that might be helpful. Let me know if I can do anything.

I am currently working on a 5 min still photo documentary of the FIRST Robotics program that I will release to all teams to use for promotional purposes. Expect it to be out sometime in June.

Thanks for the support Sanddrag. Anyone else?

I'm in.

I realize that a lot of teams don't have the time or resources to devote to research and development, so I'd be happy to do whatever I could to augment their ability - even in some small way - by offering my ideas to everyone.

I can't think of a better way for mutual learning to take place than for there to be a repository to exchange tangible plans and ideas for components and designs. The people on the receiving end will be able to adapt full-featured robot elements to their needs, while the providers; people like me, will learn from the input and suggestions of anyone who looks at what we do -- how to make it easier to assemble, more reliable, smaller, faster, better, etc.

It'll be a lot of work, but I think the benefits could be outstanding.

So, in whatever capacity you'd like my help, I'll do it.

I will have access to state of the art MIDI equipment and music software in a couple of months through my job. I'll see if I can pester some of the music theory students into creating a batch of stuff to use for background music or quick intro tags. They like little projects like that to blow off steam.

I will gaddly help. If I ever get around to building some robots I will post information about them and how they work.

I'm in too, I can help with the site as well. On our site I made a small autonomous tutorial already, and over the summer I'm planning on having LOTS of tutorials made up encompassing autonomous, FLASH, Photoshop, Website Design, and a few other areas, and we'd be glad to contribute that.

I'm not sure if I'll be involved with a team next year or not, so I may get on board this... I'll have to think about what I can help with. Probably something in the programming area.

WOW! This is great guys! I'm talking to the parents about web space and a possable web site. If this goes, I'm thinking of an Ed Sparks AutoCAD Library on drugs. :D Imagine sample code for rookie teams. PR resources for teams.

i'm willing to help out. not quite sure with what, yet. but i'm willing! :D
this sounds really cool

I don't know how much spare time I will have, between FIRST itself, college, and work. Whatever I can contribute I will.

Hey, I'm always up for helping. Just let me know, Joseph!

I want a word of the day. Plus oddles and oddles of robotics related equations. I will gladdly help with that.

I'm in...Web work is kinda my thing, so once you get space secured, let me know and we can get things rolling...if you need a few suggestions as to where to host, let me know...

Willing to help
 

Willing to help....this sounds like a really good idea.

Lemme know what I can do to help......

Aaron Knight
Webmaster and Videographer
Team 891: Neverending Chaos....
http://first891.topcities.com

I'd love to help, but I'm not sure how much I can do. I am profecient in photoshop, and getting better in 3ds (I am also good at lightwave, for what its worth). I'll do what I can to help the cause.

either way, it sounds wicked cool.

email is origanal2@aol.com

I'd be willing to work on graphics design through stuff like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Fireworks, and Illustrator.

One suggestion is that a web template should be made for teams who need them. This would entail a SIMPLE layout without all the glamour but a good layout for posting news, dates/events, team only info, pictures, and perhaps a forum.

There is a system I started on last summer that I'll probably finish up this summer for teams. It's a members area system easily configurable, I wrote all of it and it's good for planning events and outputting to the main page and all. Once I finish it I'd be more than glad to contribute it.

love this idea. :D

let me know if you need my help in any way

Albert Wu
PR/Media Design on HRT (1072)
http://www.harker-robotics.org/ - not done, but i'm workin on it!

THANKS FOR THE REPLIES! I'm thrilled about how many people want to help! The beauty of Freelance FIRST is that, no matter how small it is, you CAN help the FIRST community! Even if it's just some pre-made buttons on Photoshop that teams could use on their website, it's all good!

I'm talking with some people around me now about logistics and creating a business plan. My think it's a great idea and they might let me buy some webspace.

I'm thinking about having this a lot like Chiefdephi, have it hosted by one team, but everyone can submit ideas.

Look for more info as the week progresses. I WANT to have this up before this comming XMas at the latest.

I'd love to help...

Amanda from 1020 and i have been discussing starting something similar yet a little different for the state of indiana... Keep me updated and i'd love to help!

I think the ubergeeks have something like this .. someone does.

I was thinking php nuke but then again there has to be something better and easier to use.

To keep up to date on all the new info, just keep reading this thread whenever a new post pops up. I might start a newsletter just to get this thing started, but that's not high on the prioity list.

Not to double post, but this is a little more important.

I have set up an e-mail address for Feelance FIRST, freelance_first@yahoo.com. HOW ORIGIONAL! ;) :rolleyes:

Send an e-mail to there if you are intrested. I'll then add you to the budy list and I'll send out our FIRST e-mai tonight!

[edit]Email addres was edited to add an "_" to it[/edit]

While there are obvious logistical advantages to giving control over this to one team, in that it may be easier to take care of administrative overhead (i.e., paying the bills), I'd rather that such an effort remain without an affiliation to any team.

Among my concerns is that the fate of the effort lie with the people the people that are giving their time to make it work. I wouldn't want a member of a specific team who may be "hosting" this effort to feel they have any input solely because of their membership on that team. I'm not sure if this would be a problem or not.

However, beyond that, I think it's important that the concept of 'freelance' but kept in mind as the effort develops. If it's associated with a single team, or even a group, it is no longer 'freelance.'

Now, that's not to suggest that people who're participating on teams can't contribute. Quite the contrary, really. . . my goal would be to see this exist as a forum where anyone can come and contribute the ideas they and their team used -- and more valuably, the ideas they didn't use.

We've all seen the amazing robots and circuits and code that some of FIRST's best teams have entered into these events, year after year. Imagine the stuff that didn't get that far!

With all of that said, I think finding a web hosting service should be among the last priorities. What, so far, does anyone have that they can host, anyway?

There's no use in investing anyone's money into a hosting plan, domain name, etc., when there's still lots and lots of work to be done building the infrastructure of such a system. I wouldn't want to let that money go to waste on a "Coming Soon" page when it could be better spent later.

Instead, we should create an outline of this effort. What is being proposed will take enormous effort to catalog and organize while keeping everyone sane in the process. There is a lot to be decided - from website design philosophy and programming to content hierarchy to feedback methods and everything in between.

I have my own ideas about what could be done, but they're a bit nebulous in some aspects. I'll write them down and post them if anyone's interested.

While the infrastructure is being developed, it's also important that we begin to accumulate content to place within that infrastructure. Again, opening a site with no content is pretty useless and the easiest way to kill something right off the bat.

When Freelance FIRST debuts, it should, for all purposes, be a fully functional, self-sustaining website with a lot of pre-existing content.

This isn't going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but the potential is enormous. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Everything starts as a sketch on paper first, this included.

You know I'd be happy to help
 

I'd be thrilled to help out. I can't code the way I used to, but I am good at teaching the basics to people. I could assemble some powerpoints, spreadsheets, things like that... I could even finish up my gear calculator to spit out gear ratios and tooth ratios for FIRST robots.

Let me know what you need! I'll email that address.

I'd hate to tell you but I have a rough draft of something I want to submit and quite and few tutrorials that need to go from my mind to paper. After this week I may have a nice project on getting started in electronics done. All I would need to do is write about it.

You just basicly descibed the whole phisosophy behind this M. I agree that no team should single handedly back-it, but this was something raised by the hand, my parents. I don't want this to become a problem where the dog bites the hand.

As for that business play, I'll post it and send it out tonight.

I fully support the idea, though I wonder....isn't this what CD pretty much is already? We have places to talk, places to put examples (white papers).

Anyway, I can help out. I'm proficient in graphic design and web design. Check the links in my sig for examples.

Well, the White Papers section here features a number of tested solutions, how-to's, and reference documents.

This is a great resource for that information. But, what if a team wanted to get a look at some new ideas, some new interpretations of old ideas, or, maybe, they just don't have the time or resources to devote to creating prototype code, designs, or systems.

This effort will give those teams a stepping stone toward achieving something larger than the sum of its parts. While with a whitepaper, the transfer of knowledge is largerly in one direction, making unproven designs available gives both a parties a chance to take a chances; and both a chance to learn.

I can help with certain things. I know photoshop, but I don't have 700 dollars to spend buying it. I am also semi-proficiant with Autodesk, but mostly I do building. Let me know if there is anything I can do!

Now I understand what you want to do. It was totally differnt from what I was thinking. And yet this still is not a problem. Ill will be building some unproven designs durning the summer that hopefully will work. Of course if they do work doesn't that make them proven designs that do work. :confused:

Their still ideas other teams can improve upon and/or use in existing ideas they are using.

And post them if they don't work. Mabey someone will find a way for them to work!

Lol I was just kidding. I will find some way for it to work. Then again I will have absolutely have no idea how to make it legal for a First competition. Ill leave that up to someone else on how to figure out how it to work:D.

I'm starting a perliminary 'Freelance FIRST' newsletter with new info and other things. Sign up by sending an e-mail to freelance_first@yahoo.com .

I would be glad to render assistance however I may

I'm 7 weeks out from having a CNC mill in my garage, so if someone wanna pay for materials and cutters (and I can get aircraft aluminum surplus fairly cheap), I'll contribute shop time.

-=- Terence

It might be a plan to just start out with a geocities web site. They don't give you that much space but between 10 people linking up to each other you should have enough to post a reasonable amount of documents and "unproven" pictures. It's quite easy to start up. I built my home page off microsoft frontpage and it turned out to look pretty good for something I did in high school. :) I posted quite a few of my old teams pictures on there back in the day.

www.geocities.com

There has to be something better than geocities. Even lycos uk would be better.

Another great thing to look at for Freelance FIRSTers -

Look at organizations like the WRRF and see what you can do to help your local FIRST community!

Lycos had a HUGE banner from what I remember, but that was 2 years ago so I don't know anymore. Anyways, that's not important. Not spending money prematurely is important. You don't even know if this will get off the ground yet. I mean if I had to choose between a proven or unproven idea, I'd choose the proven.

The absolute best thing to do is to wait until we all have something worth posting to the internet, and then doing it all the right way.

Starting off with a muddled website on a free server, or worse, scattered across a free server, will only lead to a more muddled website in the future.

Yeah, my server doesn't really have right now. I'm not updating my website anymore so I basically have 400mb free and around 4gb bandwidth free each month... if you want to use it, I could create a ~firstrobotics account or something.

Mentor Mark Miller suggested finding a university willing to host it cuz they'd have dirtcheap price on bandwith, and would probably do this for free.

I know lycos has a huge banner. Somehow when I installed php-nuke the banner adds actually disappered.:rolleyes: Anyway I think the idea would to be and try the unproven ideas so then people would know they work.

hey joseph im in, you know from pit news,i'll help with what ever you need, right now im working on PR stuff and also on some draft letters.

~Dez

Try http://www.netfirms.com
They have pretty good service, only problem is the max file size is 273kb or sometihng like that.

If you have signed up for the FREELANCE FIRST news letter (send an e-mail to freelance_first@yahoo.com) there will be info comming out tonight around 8pm est.

I'll be asking for help.

I've spent much of the day creating an outline of the effort as I see it. It includes Effort Organization, Site Organization, and Page Organization.

It's exhaustive, but by no means is it complete. I'd like to get others' feelings on it when it's done; particularly its scope, feasability, and structure. Ideally, I'd like to pare it down some as well, as its nearly overwhelming.

Like I've said before, the potential is enormous. Half of this battle may be finding the resources and dedication to realize that potential.

When I've completed my work, I'll attach it to this thread.

You can count me in if you're looking for programming/control system stuff.

Also, for the short-term, I can create a sub-folder of robbayer.com if you want to put stuff there for testing, etc. Just let me know and I'll see what I can do...

Hey M, if you could send it to me at the given e-mail, that would be great. I'll send out some things tonight too. They can be changed and altered, but they are my ideas.

FreelanceFIRST Outline
 

Okay, I pared down my own expectations for this outline slightly, eliminating a detailed description of the layout of each page. That's something that will probably become evident as the rest of the features are implemented.

As described, this project is a monster, but it follows the philosophy I adopted when I first made my offer to help whichever team needed my help. The attached Microsoft Word document outlines the infrastructure and organization necessary to implement a service-based effort that caters to the FIRST community. It presents a proposal that would create a website as a showcase for FIRST design-components, but the real potential is behind-the-scenes. It also calls for the creation of a network of volunteers with varying expertise and experience to take on team-specific projects, truly realizing the concept of FreelanceFIRST.

By this proposal, a team that doesn't have the time or resources to take on a certain project or design feature can approach FreelanceFIRST with their ideas or needs. From there, the FreelanceFIRST staff will claim this request and begin correspondence with the team. The end result may be something as simple as an answered question, or as complex as having a part or system built and mailed to the team. After a team's project has been completed, the entirety of our design process archive for that project will be made available to the public.

The outline is 8 pages, but I'd really appreciate it if everyone who is interested in being a part of this read it and offer feedback. It seems overwhelming at the start, but with proper implementation and dedication, it's definitely possible.

I say, go with a system that you and some of your trusted helpers setup to start with. Then as you find out who tries to do as much as they can to become part of a head group of administrators, then multiple teams are contributing and the people doing the most get the most say, and as others contribute they can be brought up as administrators and then the rest is for anyone to contribute. It would make things fair and not a single person could say they did it all. Then to make things truly fair, you can put a side-note on every bit on the site with the name and team number, just so people see who is really helping out, then everyone gets credit for their share of work and everyone is happy without any classification system dividing people in a sense that you can't become an administrator, you can work and become part of that group, so everyone gets the oppurtunity.

Just to get everyone up-to-date....

M. has created a business plan.

I also want to add that her and my ideas are different but compatable. Hers will get done first and I will bow down to her. She created and thought of this concept first. I'll bow down to her and she will get her ideas done before mine.

Hers will be a place for people to help teams via the internet on small and large projects of varying sizes.

Mine is a place of concepts, proven ideas, and non-copy righted items for use on robot, animation, and PR.

Hers will be dynamic and flowing, while mine will be static and user submitted.

Freelance FIRST will start out as M's idea. Mine will come second.

I am extreme excited about all of this. This is exactly what i had been talking about starting atleast localy in th state of indiana for awhile but hadn't had the time until recently. I would love to help in any way i can and however my skills can be applied!

wooo excitment!

For all interested, I started a yahoo group to make it easier to tie everyone in. You can sign-up to it by e-mailing freelancefirstgroup-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. To send messages to it the e-mail will be freelancefirstgroup@yahoogroups.com. So everyone try to add yourself so we can make it so everyone can contact everybody. Thanks.

Since there is a new newsletter system up, I will stop the freelance_first address. You can reach me at JosephM1314@yahoo.com instead for info.

Thanks

I can provide server space on my home computer, the upload speed is 256 kbps (32 kilobytes per second,) so it's not stellar, but you can take up as much space as you need (150 gigs)

Also, with the permission of the team, i might be able to set up a freelanceFIRST mailing list on our team's server, where people could sign up and email stuff to it.

Wow, I definately want to be a part of this program!

count me in. i generally come up with lots of concepts i can submit. but i'm not much of a help when it comes to orgainzing stuff

I'm not going to be a very big help, but I'd be willing to donate time and effort into this program.

Unfortunately, I'm one of the (un)lucky ones that is involved with FIRST and somehow still manages to scrape by on PR skills alone. I can't be of much technical help, but I'm willing to do anything I can.