Virtual Team Forum
 

Hey,
Since I'm unable to actually attend a team forum this year, I thought I'd post some ideas I had. Hopefully someone will read them, and bring them up at one of the actual team forums. I guess this is my virtual Team Forum.

1. FIRST's new thing seems to be "College Teams." At every event I've attended this season, the MC emphasized college FIRST, and the need to start new college teams. As many college participants know, this is easier said than done! College FIRST mentoring requires a great amount of maturity and commitment. It is only fitting, that FIRST find some way to recognize the college students who work so hard, in the same way it recognizes "adult" mentors. Perhaps an award, possibly with a scholarship attached should be created to honor a college mentor from the competition. Like the woodie flowers award, only for college students. Many college students do great things for this competition, and the teams within it without actually being a part of a "college team" (like Purdue 461, WPI 190, Clarkson 229, NEU 125, etc). Some of these "loner" college students deserve recognition too.

2. There are a LOT of great mentors in this competition. Many of them sacrifice themselves year after year to help this program, and to benefit their students. I personally have met many people worthy of mention. FIRST publicly honors one of these mentors each year with the Woodie Flowers award. Why not more? What if there was a regional Woodie Flowers award? This would allow for more people to be honored, while making it easier to judge. The regionals winners could then go on to compete for the national title.

Just 2 quick ideas that might merit some consideration.


Thanks,
John

3. The Website competition rules need to be clarified & expanded. There are a lot of fuzzy areas that can be interpreted many different ways. Some situations:

a) What happens if Suzy Senior makes a nice website, and then graduates, without winning the website award her senior year. But, the team wins the website award the year after, without changing Suzy's design. (possibly not changing anything) Does that count, because technically Suzy Senior wasn't on the team that year, so it wasn't created by a high school student that year.

b) What kind of pre-made open source / purchased software is allowed to be used? vBulletin, phpNuke, phpBB, vbPortal, etc. A team could install a pre-made system in 20 minutes which could look better than another team's website who spent hours more working on their site.

c) Just curious as to how many teams voted for the website competition at each regional. Was there alot of participation, or was it very sparse? I suggest using the team population to narrow the sites down to top 5, and then having FIRST judges look at the final ones to make a final decision. It was also suggested in another thread to have Yahoo.com or Amazon.com executive/designers judge the websites.

That's all I can think of right now.

This award is needed, because there are many great student designed websites out there. It worked out well this year, but I think it really needs some updating in order to continue to work in the future & be fair to everybody.

I agree with John that a College Mentor award would be an excellent addition, and it disserves to be in a category of it's own.

College students are a minority and a different kind of mentor... we may never be able to win Woodie Flowers right away because most of us will only have loyalties to our college team for the duration of our education. And many don't understand the difficulty of transitioning from High School Student to Mentor in less than a year.

There are many additional challenges associated with being a college mentor that need to be recognized. For instance, the close age difference with the students present a few problems with discipline, there is a lot to learn in a short amount of time about running a team, a lot of sacrifices to be made to get to meetings, and we always have to go bug our college administrations to keep the team going. I know there's more... everybody has their own story.

I might try to suggest this next week...


ByE

erin

....perhaps it might be wiser to have any issues regarding the recognition of the participation of college students be addressed by someone who isn't a student themselves?

Otherwise, it just appears as we're clamoring for attention and recognition of all the good things we do.

It's always better to sing the praises of someone else rather than you're own. I think this might be a circumstance where that's an applicable attitude.

Indeed.

Any "adult" enginerds willing to champion this cause? ;) :D

John

Re: Virtual Team Forum
 

GOOD IDEA WITH THE VIRTUAL TEAM FORUM...

.... MORE SUGGESTIONS AND IDEAS!

I know everyone is burnt out from their finals, senior trips and some are still O.D. from the Nationals... but grab another can DEW the

THINK!

:D

lol John did you mean to call them enginerds or was that a typo for engineers?
Back to the topic... I think that having an online type of forum where suggestions could be made would be very useful for people who arent a part of a tean and have ideas, as well as teams that cannot make it to the actual team forum in their region.

Cory

Heh..
It's a term my father (Mech Engr, RPI) uses that I started saying too. ;)

"Just remember, before I went to college I couldn't even spell "engineer" now I are one!"

John

I think FIRST should require all referees and other volunteers that could alter gameplay take a test on the rules of the game, and be forced to pass. Passing would be an 80%. Less than that would be failing, and would mean rejection.

Definitions need to be clear cut, so all the team lawyers can't whine about things, and what exactly rules mean.

Things like "intentional damage" need to be clarified. (cough mid-atlantic regional cough)

If refs do not apply the same version of the rules to all teams, they should be called on it. Personally, I think it's lame that "intentional damage" at one regional translates to "hitting a robot that is disabled, even if no damage is done" or "having the 'intent' to do damage" while at another regional, it is only called if real damage is done. The refs should be penalized for blatantly bad calls.

FIRST officials should read this forum and take some of our advise - it would spare them a lot of grief.

There goes my job :(

Actually...
 

Actually.... a lot of them DO read the CD posting religiously. And some are mentors for active teams so they do know the game. But every year the game has loopholes. Maybe the game should be approved by lawyers first before the kickoff release to close the loopholes... but it would be tied up for years!!!!!

:D:D :D

Great idea Ben i can see it now


Letter from Dean Kamen:

Dear FIRST participants... I greatly regret to inform you that the whole first national comepetition is canceled for 2004... the reason, is that no one who was supposed to be a ref, passed the test.. oh well better luck next year (add biggerwords and some filler and you got the letter... i have the writing ability of a 9 year old)


John: today i spoke to the other adult advisor attending the Fourm, and he is gonna bring it up for me/you/all of first:p

Intentional damage deff. needs better clarification; especially with a large object on the field, blocking drivers' vision, and not knowing that the robot was even there, let alone dead.

AND, if two teams are warned about a device on their robot, and another team has the identical device...... team A is called on 'endangerment' after their first incident... however, team B was not...... :mad:

..... I know it is impossible for all of the refs to be identical at all Regionals, (it's life, these are dedicated volunteers, and there is human error), but, it would be nice for all refs at the same Regional to agree on their calls.

John I think your ideas for recognizing college FIRST mentors and other adults via award or scholarship is an excellent idea. I've been thinking about that for a while now (for not all unselfish reasons :)) but never pursued it. Alas in a couple of months I will be graduating.

Along with everyone else reading this thread that is attending the Forum I will try to present these ideas and others up in SC.

On another note, I have not met many of the other college FIRST mentors involved on other teams (didnt make it to the webhug at Nats). I did say at Nats., "Hey isn't that Ken Leung." but that was about it. Hopefully I'll see some of you around next year.