To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

There is a lot of talk about the problems teams are faced with due to the weather. Some arguments are quite compelling in favor of extending the shipping date. FIRST is willfully set in not giving the extension for understandable reasons. Hence, the debate has started. Do we extend the shipping date or not?

Please share your thoughts! What is the best solution? Do we ask FIRST to reconsider their position on the extension, or is there another solution we might consider--maybe more time during the “Fix-It window” period would be a fair compromise?

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Maybe the best option is to enlarge pit access times for the regionals by a few hours.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Having had to cut Tuesday meeting short and then not being able to access the robot on Wednesday or Thursday kinda sucks. I would love an extension, but at the same time I enjoy the stress and real world application of having a deadline and sticking to it.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Deadlines are part of everyday life. If you were trying to win over a client would you like to ask for extentions? If you were the client would you give one?

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

There is no problems with weather stopping ship dates. Many teams have had problems that are far worse than weather (Flooding for example) The problem with extending the date is that the teams that did not have a problem with weather would have even more time. The weather has been unrully this year but FIRST'ers have the ability to overcome even mother nature. The teams should have their robot done before the 6 weeks (Even though most of us dont get it done until the overnight work-till-you-drop-athons on saturdays before shipdate). FIRST would understand if there was something that happened that would have caused destruction, but i dont think a few inches of snow would make them worry.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

the only reason for FIRST to extend the ship date is if the shipping companies cannot make pickups on the 20th due to bad weather.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

But isnt the slogan "Through rain, sleet, or snow".

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I think that is the US postal service....

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Well...then why dont we ship priority mail through them :yikes:

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

To add to everyone's weather comments, we have run a competiton in South Florida the last two years after the main playing field carpet was completely destroyed. We usually end up setting the offseason competiton field up at least twice. This year we will probablly have the luxury of having the competiton inside. Anyway the point I am trying to make here is FIRSTERS can make it thru anything and unless your shop is outside the weather shouldn't really be an issue. Pretty much unless there is so much snow you can't open your front door you can get to where you need to build a robot. Extending shipdate is definitely not an option though for obvious reasons. Extending the "fix-it" window sounds like a great idea though.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

That is the only reason we got an extension previously. I believe in 2003 a Nor'Easter shutdown most of the Northeast. I think the storm hit affected teams at least down to Virginia if not further South and rather far West as well. They gave us a 2 day extension I believe because we got hit Monday & Tuesday of ship week and the freight delays made it necessary.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I think the nature of competing in a deadline means teams will inherently have various advantages and disadvantageous some expected others surprises, like weather.

Just a note about "overcoming" weather sometimes its outside of the FIRSTERS control. I'm sure the entire team would have been there on Wednesday when it snowed. District policy however is very clear if school is closed, no clubs can meet. In this case its more of a liability issue.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Quoted for truth--I can say quite literally that Mission Mayhem played through hell and high water.

If the weather is bad enough to shut down FedEx, I can definitely understand an extension from Manchester. Unless and until that happens, however, I'd expect to ship on the 20th and adjust your plans accordingly. It's just one of the unpredictable things about FIRST--students might miss school, mentors are pulled away by work (or exams), half the team gets knocked out of commission by a virus at the regional, the laptop breaks, your $??,000 field floods...but at the end of the day, you've got to pull it off one way or the other.

Consider 1902 last year. They were planning to shoot, but their college mentors all got hammered with tests during the later part of build. There simply wasn't the brainpower to get it done effectively, so they switched to a dumper. They adapted to the resources available (or unavailable) to them and worked it out. As I recall, last season wasn't too terrible to them.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

We havent had many problems with weather. But, we had to go home many times because the school had to turn off the electricity to do some tests. And bad weather is expected this week. So, it will be tough finishing our robot.. I say that the shipping date should be extended.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I see both sides here... the teams that have no other choice but to give up the time to snow days, and the fact that it would just give more time to teams that didnt have that problem.

But looking at the threads here, I've seen many photos (and our video!) that indicate teams are finding a way to make it work regardless of the weather. We had a feeling we were going to have an issue so we packed up and made way for Harris, and even let another area team work with us in our facility as all Rochester schools were closed. Other teams set up shop in basements. Usually Rookies may not know better, but veteran teams should learn to plan. From work I take my laptop and any important papers home with me at night. If I get sick or my car doesnt work, I can still work from home. Yes a robot is more difficult, but with good project management, teams can plan for snowstorms. Hurricanes, tornadoes & flooding are much worse... but a little snow never shuts down the northeast :)

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Personally I think that a ship date extension should be dependent on the team, there are teams that get away without any weather/flooding etc. problems, for them, the ship date is the ship date. However there are other teams that lose a week every year to weather. If you are that team that lost 10 days of school thus couldn't work at all on your bot (or any number), FIRST should be able to extend your ship date by that amount. Saying they shouldn't simply because in the "business world" you can't get out of deadlines that easy is silly. FIRST isn't trying to emulate the business world, they are trying to inspire young kids, if they were going to emulate the business world, we would see many more awards for things like teams that can make the most duplicate robots, or one for the highest ratio of effectiveness to cost (yes they give awards for effectiveness, but never relate it to the cost to produce). Is that FIRSTs goal? no, yes they have a few business awards, but its not their goal, their goal is to inspire kids, and to allow a level playing field for them all, which in part is why there are rules like the deadline and FIX it window.
Every year we attend the debriefing for Ontario, and well tell everyone we lose a week every year. There are two reactions, the skeptical reaction we get from FIRST and 80% of those there thinking we are either exaggerating and it isn't possible to miss this much, then there is the second reaction of how do you do it of about 10% of those there. We do it, and have learned to do it every year, yes it makes things like autonomous hard to work on, and rarely do we ever have a mechanically fully refined robot, but we still can play the game to our best and we don't get stressed out over not placing overly well, because thats not the point, the point is to inspire, and we are able to do that. To date we have missed 9 days(this includes today), because of weather, we live in a rural area, 90% of our students and 100% of the mentors live outside of the town, and when the roads are closed there just isn't a way in to work. Comparing us to every other Ontario team doesn't do justice to the situation, our team (and three others) live in the worst part of southern Ontario with all the snow and wind coming off Lake Huron. See link for a typical February day in our area (we are north of Goderich, in the customize window you can add "minor cities" to see Kincardine).

I do realize my thoughts on the subject may be a bit biased only because we miss a week a year, we have learned to deal with it, but a week missed is a week missed.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

How about there are less than 7 days between ship and when robots have to arrive at the drayage facility for first week regionals. This side of the story has been ignored in this thread. To meet the existing timeline for regionals getting more than a day simply doesn't work logistically.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I think it is unfair that FIRST is refusing to extend the ship date, even if it was by 2 or 3 days, it would help a great amount. everyone should be about done with the major construction of the robot, but the time we are losing now, is the time to work out all the small kinks. My school change locations this year and the building is nowhere near our old school. So it is hard to get to our school, even if we wanted to come in. Not only did it effect the building but our fundraising has been cut short and fundraising is the biggest income because we don' have many sponosors.

But the Tigers still are clawing our way to the top.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

There are a few ways around this, a) every existing team knows generally how much time they lose to weather each year if your team is like ours, you don't sign up for the first two regionals (if such a rule were to be placed), b)FIRST gives us another week in between the first regional and ship.

This is not something I see FIRST implementing this year, and I am going to be skeptical and say they never will implement it.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

FIRST did extend the deadline in 2003 after a major blizzard, but this is nothing compared to what hit in 2003. Many places are already back in school, or will be tomorrow.
Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Fix it windows, if i recall, are the time you can work on parts in between ship and regional. If so, that time isnt of much help to people how dont have a prototype bot or anything to test on.


There are alot of logistics involved with an extension. We wouldnt mind driving our bot to Richmond, as it is less than an hour away. But many teams arent local, and so there isnt an easy way to ship a bot from California to Virginia, in a short time.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Blizzards, Nor'easters, and ice storms for the most part just don't spring out of thin air (no pun intended); usually you have at least a few days notice that these storms are coming. If you know a storm is coming, then don't just sit there and hope it misses you, act and prepare accordingly! (Especially if you know you won't be able to meet at your school/primary build location.)

If you won't be able to meet at your school on a snow day, then the night before take any and everything you can and work at a mentor's house/garage/basement the next day. If none of the mentors on your team have any sort of tools at their house, take the robot home and practice driving or coding. I'm sure your team's programmers would love to have an entire day with the robot all to themselves. ;)

Yesterday schools across New England were closed due to the snow and ice storm. But rather sit back and hope that the ship date will be extended to accommodate for the bad weather, we went ahead with out meetings regardless of the Nor'easter. We drove through the snow and ice, and met anyway all day long, taking advantage of the fact that school was closed.

Where there is a will to get the robot done, there is a way. :p

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

What FIRST needs is a system that allows everyone 6 weeks, not 6 weeks of fine weather at FIRST HQ, but 6 weeks where you live... just because for you this is better then the one time FIRST did give a two day extension doesn't mean its better for all, for us this is our worst year yet for weather, but simply because FIRST doesn't get a 1/10 of the snow we get doesn't mean we can get safely to build.
I have had one American FIRST member tell me we should be able to do just as well as a team without snow days, as we Canadians should be used to the snow. Unfortunately thats how I feel FIRST thinks about the issue, unless the US is hit hard by snow who cares?
I am not putting my two sense into this issue because I believe we should get an extension this year, because its not a problem that can be solved this year. It is however something that they need to take note and need to change in coming years, how simple is having a clause on the shipping date saying that it can be extended with proof showing the school/roads were closed in your area signed by your administration?
I don't know anyone that would have a problem with some team that lost 5 days of build getting those tacked on the end to fulfill their own 6 week build. To me it seems like a graciously professional thing FIRST could do in a situation where that happens.

Our school administration wont let us work anywhere but at the school, and although I would love a day with the robot and bringing it home with us, again school rules won't let it be worked on anywhere but at school before competitions. It isn't so simple to just say you can still work on it, there are liability issues with the school, and simply the safety of getting into town. I would never put our team at risk of being stopped, or my life in danger on the roads, to get an extra day of work on it during bad weather.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

You are lucky, many schools won’t allow students to do what you did yesterday.

No amount of will will change that.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

As said before, I would agree that the only time FIRST should extend is when the shipping company can not pick up the crate on the 20th (this year anyway) and then that should only be for the affected areas. We here in West Michigan are not permitted to meet when the school cancels activites. We even had several days where we had school, but after school activites were canceled, go figure. Anyway, we have lost seven or eight days so far during the last three and 1/2 weeks of the build. Everyone works a little harder and we should be able to ship OK. The electrical/mechanical teams hope to wrap up Saturday AM giving the programers and drivers the weekend and monday to tweek and practice. We have been know to ship a box of parts to our first regional and have actually still done quite well. The biggest slow down we had this week was trying to get overnight parts out of Indiana, hopefully FEDex will be good to us today or tommorrow.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I think a extension of the ship date is a fair decision. The school district I am in does not let us come into the the school on snow days and when they cancel the after school activities, and those of you that said to take things home and work on them are assuming all thats left is assembly, programming, and adjustments. We personally have some machining that needs done before we can proceed in the build, and I dont think anyone on our team has a mill sitting in their basement. In order to assemble you need the parts, in order to program you need a running assembled robot, and in order to make adjustments you have to have something running to know it needs adjusted. Those of you that work out of a sponsors shop that is fortunate for you but we work out of our school and its impossible to get in when school is cancelled, which means we have had 5 weeks to build our robot. Whatever FIRST decides to do, as far as the ship deadline, will be in their opinion fair to all teams, so we are at the mercy of their decision. I just hope they review their decision again before the 20th.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

ok ppl are saying that it shouldn't of been extended because its a deadline and thats the rules but if Fed-X couldn't deliver yesterday and the postal services couldn't deliver mail then how can we work on our bot. The mayor of cleveland told clevelanders to say inside and not to come out because it was a weather emergency. I personally have missed 5 days of school and what should of been six today. There were teachers getting stuck in our parking lots and six foot mounds of snow on the sides of the street. If First goes and extends the date it is good for everyone. We just want to get our time in too.

http://www.myfoxcleveland.com/myfox/...Y&pageId=9.1.1

this is what we have been dealing with

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Well,what you are talking about is true when it comes to the weather, but that doesn’t stop some people from finishing their Robots. We in Cleveland had a bad snowstorm and all the schools, roads, FedEx companies were closed and we are having a hard time completing our robot.:ahh:

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Well we have not been able to work on are robot because there was no school so I think that we should have extended time! I don’t think that it is fair that some teams had 6 weeks and we only had 5 weeks.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Even NASA will postpone a flight when the weather is bad. Airlines will even change their schedule because of the weather. That’s the real world!

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Speaking as the president of a team who lost both Tuesday and Wednesday due to inclement weather, I still think that the official ship date should not be extended. Not every team has been affected by this very strange blast of arctic weather, so not all teams should benefit from an extension in their deadline. HOWEVER, FIRST might consider extending the ship dates of teams who were affected. Either that, or allow specific teams at regionals an extension in their pit times, depending on their situation, because not all teams at a regional will have been affected. Regardless, teams, like mine, should put in some overtime hours in order to get their robot done by the 20th. I doubt FIRST will do anything (except extend times for the teams that might work under 12' of snow) about the weather, so STICK WITH IT TEAMS!!

May the force, and lots of food, be with you.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I have to agree with many of the posts before me about deadlines are deadlines.Things like this happen many times in the real world. Everyday people have to deal with issues like these.

On a side note delaying ship time would be good for my team right now because we have some gears and shafts out to the guys who do our heat treating and depending on shipping and/or the fix it window we may or may not be assembling our transmissions at Pittsburgh :ahh: Thank goodness for our practice transmissions. In the end I know the kids on our team are learning a thing or two about logistics and FIRST is all about learning. :cool:

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Maybe you're talking about in your area. In West Lafayette/Lafayette, Indiana, however, it's a different story. It was reported that this was the worst blizzard since the late 1970s. Purdue even canceled classes and all operations for 1.5 days, which is EXTREMELY rare.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Ship dates, rules and deadlines all share one thing in common, they are your friend. :confused:

If that doesn't make sense to you, consider this, without them, you would have no direction. Consider them the same as Design Criteria. Without Design Criteria you would have no way to know what to build.

Honestly, we would love to have extra time to build, but that's because we drag our feet. No one else is to blame, not even the weather. So, how do we meet the deadline? We bust our hump for the next 5 nights. (Actually, we need ours finished for a practice session at St. Francis HS, home of the FemBots, this Saturday.) So, we bust our hump tonight and tomorrow and work with what we have Saturday, then finish everything Sunday and Monday.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

No, but a little creative thinking can at least make something out of nothing.

• If everyone is stuck at home, open up an AIM Chat room with all your team members and discuss strategy (or anything) for your upcoming regional(s).
• If your team owns some Vex robots, make a "programming platform". Put some sensors on it, and let the programmers bring it home. Several hours with a gyro or accelerometer on a Vex robot and they could have the basis for advanced sensor feedback well underway.
• If your school won't let you even work on the robot outside of school, you can always work in Inventor or 3DSMax.
• You can work on your Chairman's and Woodie Flower awards at home.
• You can work on your team's website at home.
• You could go to your sponsor's shop (if possible), and work there.
• You can work on pep club/team spirit buttons, banners, etc. from anywhere.
• If your team does any sort of video production during the competition season, you can work on capturing and beginning to edit video at home.
• If any of the students on your team have Vex robots, have them build 1/3 scale Mini FRC robot. Once the ship date is over, you can build a 1/3 scale rack and ringers and have a cheap practice robot.

While this may not be as good as actually working on the robot, at the very least you can accomplish something useful. ;) I understand many team's frustrations with the weather, as New England has about every weather extremity imaginable except earthquakes and tsunamis. There's not much you can do about the weather, except try to make the most out of the situation.
And if it comes down to it, all-nighters are your friend. :)

If on Tuesday, FedEx is still closed or cannot access a large portion of the country, then FIRST may decide to extend the ship date by a day or two. But not any longer than that. FedEx still has all the logistics of sorting out 1300 crates and getting them to their destinations in time for Week 1 Regionals, and that is no small feat! ;)

With NASA and the Space Shuttle, billions of dollars worth of equipment and seven lives are on stake. With the airlines, there are a lot of assets (such as the planes themselves), employees, and passengers that they do not want to put at stake. But think of the ship date in another way:

Your boss/client expects a major presentation to be done by set date, but the weather is so bad that you cannot get to work to finish it up. If your client is in China, they don't know of or care about your bad weather, they want their presentation done to meet their deadline. So to meet your deadline, you Remote Desktop into your work computer to finish it up from home.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

all i have to say is

keep in mind the term gracious professionalism in your arguments

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I don't think FIRST is "requiring" anyone to put their lives in danger, nor do I believe that they are showing a lack of "gracious professionalism". They showed plenty of sympathy in the response sent to Tonya here, and I do believe that they understand the difficult situation that many teams are in. You are not being forced by FIRST to drive in bad weather. That is your choice and yours alone. I think it's pretty unfair to judge FIRST negatively and blame them for a situation which they really have no control over.It's true that weather is a highly influential factor in the "real world". However, if FIRST were to extend the deadline because of the weather, why shouldn't they then extend deadlines for teams who don't have as much money, who have lost mentors, or who have problems with team organization?

FIRST does make an effort to level the playing field for all teams, but they can only do this WITHIN REASON. It would be logistically impossible for FIRST to make things 100% fair for everyone, all of the time. Can you imagine being a FIRST official, trying to judge how much extra time each team should receive on a case by case basis? It would truly be an organizational nightmare for FIRST. And if exceptions must be made for bad weather, than exceptions must be made for EVERY OTHER handicapping factor a FIRST team might experience - which definitely would not represent the real world.

So please - try to step into FIRST's shoes for a minute. It would be unreasonable to expect them to be able to place everyone on a level playing field. FIRST isn't all about being fair - instead, it's all about overcoming real-world engineering difficulties. Do the best you can to get as much work done as possible. If you are unable to complete your robot, believe me - there will be plenty of teams willing to help you get back on your feet at the competition. If anyone can overcome a challenge like this, a FIRST team can! :)

-- Jaine

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I was on a team that could only work on the robot from 3 - 8 weekdays and from 8 - 3 on saturdays. We could not work on Sundays or Holidays. We build it out of a storage closet in a teachers classroom. Should we be given an extension because our school does not allow 24/7 access. We made it both years. Oh and by the way any metal work had to be done with hand tools only.

It's a deadline. Meet it or not, but do not expect it to move.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I dunno if this was just our schedule, but we moved our wednesday meeting to today, and that's the only meeting that was affected. Granted, we also have no tuesday meetings and a four day weekend this week:D I think they shouldn't move ship date. THere's plenty of arguments for both sides, but there are dozens of teams that weren't even anywhere near the storm, and so that woulod provide an unfair advantage. They have a bit of an advantage, but we shouldn't increase it. the build season is cut short for good reason, and we shouldn't let weather change it.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I would like to echo the comments about keeping the tone gracious and professional, which has been the case so far. It is easy to come across as whining and angry or sanctimonious and smug without really meaning to.

As for the ship date, as many people have said, the practicality of extending the date more than a day or two is not high. They have to get the crates out to the early regionals and there is not a lot of time for that. So I completely understand the argument of not extending the deadline. (Though looking at the long range forecasts for the midwest, FedEx may not be able to do pickups in a lot of places next Tuesday.)

That said, I also don't think it would be a tremendous hardship to extend the ship deadline by one or two days. It is true that deadlines are important, but in the "real world" they are missed nearly as much as they are made. We might even get a lesson in gracious professionalism out of it by asking teams who have not missed any time to ship Tuesday and letting other teams ship Wednesday or Thursday, all on the honor system. The idea of giving teams who had undergone hardships with the weather (or the team that had their work space flooded by sprinklers) some extra time to work on the robots at the regional competitions has merit too. After all, the problem with the carrier plates for the BaneBots transmissions caused FIRST to change the rules, which I think was a good decision.

Above all, everyone have fun these last couple of days. Remember we do this for a lot of reasons, but one is that it is a LOT of fun!

Good Luck from the Bad Robots!

PS- Team 963, I know you guys have had problems with the temporary change in buildings, the cold days, the snow days, the too few bus driver days...my wife teaches in CPS and my kids attend CPS. I actually live just a couple of blocks from the old (and future) East HS. If there is anything 1014 can do to help this weekend send me a message and we'll try.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I would like to make a few comments regarding this issue.

1. FIRST has extended the date before for weather... in that case it was primarily a big Eastern storm... We were given 2 extra days to ship.
This was about 3 years ago as I recall. I seem to remember it happening twice as a matter of fact.... so for those that seem to think that it can't happen because FIRST will not do it... they already have done it..

2. Other teams are still effected by the eastern weather. Parts I had ordered from MSC which were coming from Harrisburg are delayed for weather reasons...they will not arrive until at least Monday... they should have been here Wednesday of this week...

3. This year we have had problems (not anyone's fault in particular...) but nontheless problems with materials from the kit. I have never had to wait so long to get the entire kit... we had parts getting to us 3 weeks into the build..this is unprecedented... especially the amount of parts...
the pneumatics bag, the lights, the gyro sensors... and now the issue with the BaneBot transmissions... I have ordered my plates from Banebot but they seem to be backordered... or at least not ready

I am not complaining about any of the fine people that help out FIRST or the FIRST staff or anyone... I am just pointing out that this year we have an unprecedented amount of issues...

We are in Seattle and even we had snow days during the build.... totally wierd for our city...



Therefore... yes having deadlines are good things.... but we have precedence for past shipping deadline changes... don't be surprised if FIRST decides to do it again... my guess would be 2 days.... Thursday ship instead of Tuesday...

It would simply mean that FIRST has listened to all of us and decided to extend based on highly unusual circumstances...
its been done before...

thanks

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Truth.

We had to push really hard on the school administration for a week beforehand to get access to the school on Wednesday.
In addition,the three-quarters of our team who couldn't make it before 10:30AM couldn't get there until about 6:30PM. This wasn't a major problem since the very most committed did get there, but if the storm started an hour earlier no one would have been there.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

The reality is that each year several teams will lose days each year because of snow, cold, and bad weather. This year was actually one of the better years as far as snow days are concerned, however we lost days for the cold here in Michigan. I see that many of the posts are coming from areas that don't normally get a ton of snow, making it a problem. Teams in the east and midwest have been dealing with these problems throughout the years and will continue to. In short, better luck next time, the ship date should stay the same to keep a level playing field for all teams.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

i'd give anything for another week, but c'est la vie, ladies and gentlemen. of course, many members of team 1757 are already displaying signs of insanity, so i'm not sure if we'd even notice.:confused:

quick counterpoint: impossible deadlines are actually part of the fun in my opinion. the all-nighters, the collapses into manic laughter over holes drilled 1/38575" away from where they absolutely need to be, the elation when little things go right for a change, that's what makes the last few weeks of the season the rollercoaster of fun that they are. the season is like some kind of twisted rollercoaster, and the end is like a terrifying drop that scares you witless, but exhilarates you beyond belief.

or maybe i'm one of the crazy ones; who knows at this point?:D :D

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

It's part of the challenge. Sure, we all could use a couple extra days, but as many said before, deadlines are deadlines.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

geeez....and i was going to say they should knock a week off the build season. less thinking, more building. :)

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

With this, at least, I disagree strongly. For several years in a row, we've had usable software ready well before the robot was assembled. A lot of the "fancy" programming can be written and debugged using a simulator or testbed. For tweaking PID constants and presets you do need an actual robot, but much programming is possible without one. For some problems, all you need is time.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Thanks everyone for responding to this post.

Let me summarize the results of this post. The problem presented here is real. Some teams get 6 full weeks to build their robot and some don’t. Some teams live in beautiful climates and some don’t. Some teams have more resources than they know what to do with and some have very few resources.

Overall, FIRST is a reflection of the real world. There are companies that have resources: money, great facilities, and a pool of engineering talent available to jump in and tackle any challenge. At the same time, some companies are limited to the resources and talent available in their immediate family. They are the Mom and Pop operations that make up the backbone of our socio-economic culture!

So, what does all this mean? It means that we have an uneven playing field. This is not going to change, and it is something we have to get used to. After all, we live in a competitive world, and the strongest make it to the top. That’s what makes FIRST such a great operation. With FIRST, everyone gets a chance to participate in a wonderful experience that encourages young people to get involved in technology, regardless of their level of experience. FIRST is a learning tool for all.

Now, here is the real dilemma with this weather issue: Some teams are faced with it and others are not. It would be very hard for a Florida team to understand how important a snow plow is during a blizzard. It would be very difficult for a California team to visualize a car hung up on a 3 foot snow drift. I might add that it would be difficult for someone in Ohio to explain what living through a hurricane and flooding is like. We live in different parts of the country and do not face the same weather conditions.

Something else we need to keep in mind is that not all teams are equally blessed with resources. Many of the smaller teams (most FIRST teams) have to rely on the schools to be open in order to get anything done. If the schools are closed, nothing gets worked on. No matter how much you plan for the weather, many students from an urban/rural setting do not have a way to communicate with other team members nor do they have a place to meet outside of school.

So, what do we do to make it fair?

FIRST is not about winning. It’s about transforming a culture, it’s about Gracious Professionalism. According to Woodie Flowers, “In the long run, Gracious Professionalism is part of pursuing a meaningful life. One can add to society and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing one has acted with integrity and sensitivity.” If this is the case, then what do we do for the teams that have lost 5-10 build days? How do we act with “integrity and sensitivity” toward this issue?

Several solutions to this problem have been offered. Any one of them will help level the playing field to some degree. Of course, nothing will be perfect, but at least it is an attempt at doing the right thing. Here is a summary of some interesting thoughts and possible solutions that have been posted on this thread:

1. I would love an extension… (chris31)
2. work-till-you-drop-athons on saturdays before shipdate (65 Xero Huskie)
3. Pretty much unless there is so much snow you can't open your front door you can get to where you need to build a robot. Extending shipdate is definitely not an option though for obvious reasons. Extending the "fix-it" window sounds like a great idea though. (techtiger1)
4. If the weather is bad enough to shut down FedEx, I can definitely understand an extension from Manchester. (Billfred)
5. I say that the shipping date should be extended. (rohit)
6. …with good project management, teams can plan for snowstorms. Hurricanes, tornadoes & flooding are much worse... but a little snow never shuts down the northeast. (Kims Robot)
7. If you are that team that lost 10 days of school thus couldn't work at all on your bot (or any number), FIRST should be able to extend your ship date by that amount. (d.courtney)
8. To meet the existing timeline for regionals getting more than a day simply doesn't work logistically. (Peter Matteson)
9. I think it is unfair that FIRST is refusing to extend the ship date, even if it was by 2 or 3 days, it would help a great amount. (Tiger963)
10. Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline. (Lil’ Lavery)
11. What FIRST needs is a system that allows everyone 6 weeks, not 6 weeks of fine weather at FIRST HQ, but 6 weeks where you live...(d.courtney)
12. …the only time FIRST should extend is when the shipping company can not pick up the crate on the 20th…(ALIBI)
13. I think a extension of the ship date is a fair decision. (redbarron)
14. The mayor of Cleveland told Clevelanders to say inside and not to come out because it was a weather emergency. (Wickedclown1)
15. …FIRST might consider extending the ship dates of teams who were affected. Either that, or allow specific teams at regionals an extension in their pit times,…(Vashts6583)
16. It was reported that this was the worst blizzard since the late 1970s. Purdue even canceled classes and all operations for 1.5 days, which is EXTREMELY rare. (Michael Hill)
17. Honestly, we would love to have extra time to build, but that's because we drag our feet. No one else is to blame, not even the weather. (billbo911)
18. Should we be given an extension because our school does not allow 24/7 access. We made it both years. Oh and by the way any metal work had to be done with hand tools only. (kawelch)
19. I am not complaining about any of the fine people that help out FIRST or the FIRST staff or anyone... I am just pointing out that this year we have an unprecedented amount of issues...(Bob Steele)
20. geeez....and i was going to say they should knock a week off the build season. less thinking, more building. (johnr)

In summary, most agree that there is a problem. The solution is not an easy one. All we can hope for is FIRST to make the right decision and truly make this a great experience for all!

We are not asking for the playing field to be completely level. We simply want to be able to get to the game!

Thanks!

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

It did happen twice, in fact. In 2004, teams were given two extra days because of all of the KOP packing snafus. It certainly helped 1293 out, although we weren't affected.

One thing that should probably be noted is that robots have come together under far worse conditions. Might I note, for the record, then-rookies 1396 at the Championship in 2004? They came to Atlanta on Thursday morning to find an empty pit--no crate. By the time the pits closed that night, they had a box on wheels in motion. I should further emphasize that this was pre-Kitbot FIRST. What's more, they finished around the middle of the Archimedes division, which was pretty stacked that year (including stacked with the eventual world champions). If it can be done under those conditions in 12 hours, it can be done in most any situation.

You build the best robot you can with your resources, time included.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

and just out from the email blast --

Greetings Team Shipping Contacts:

We want to remind you all again that Robot Ship Deadline is: Tuesday, February 20th, 2007.

FIRST requires verification of the shipment of each team’s robot crate for the initial shipment only. Teams are required to adhere to the rules and the robot shipping deadline. All teams are responsible for tracking their robot crate(s) to ensure that it has arrived at its destination on time.

Please follow the instructions below for your chosen initial shipment method:.......

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

While this is impressive, it was by no means accomplished alone. I can't find the original account, but many many teams turned out to help with the "One Day Wonder." So take comfort in that if you must ship a box of parts, every team with man power to spare (and some who don't have manpower to spare) will be there to help you out. :)

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I remember when FIRST extended the ship date back in 2004 due to poor weather back east. Even though we are a SoCal team (50 degree weather is considered freezing cold:D ), the 2 extra days helped us out a lot. They postponed the date not because the eastcoast teams weren't able to finish, but because the shipping company was unable to pick up the crates in time. So the only way they will posepone it this year is if the weather is too bad for the shipping company to do their work.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I have to disagree here... I wasnt talking about business like financial institutions, I meant like an engineering business. If Harris is late on a shipment because we closed the plant on a snowday, our customer doesnt care. We have a contract with them, and we will likely incur penalties. Part of FIRST is learning to deal with LIFE. LIFE has snowstorms, ice storms, hurricanes, etc. Think back to Katrina, there were teams that just couldnt compete because they had no school left. Now think of your snow day... does it compare?

Let me remind you of one of my favorite quotes by Woodie...

I really dont get why a few days of snow is such a big deal... Are we all losing our thick skins? Does everything in life have to be fair? I for one am looking forward to ship date being ship date... sure we could use a few extra days, but everyone always could. Lets do the best with what we have and get to the fun part! :)

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Team 418 missed several days in the 3rd week of build (I think it was).

I know that if we were to extend the ship date even 2 more days, exhaustion would be taking a very heavy toll on the team. Likely more time would be spent contending with that than making good progress/headway. We have spent time over the past few days discussing how to handle the final days before ship, ship, and what our options are at LSR. We will continue to think, discuss, plan. It is part of the process as always.

On a personal note, I'm very sorry all of the weather has impacted so many teams and I am hoping that everyone has been safe. This 6 weeks has been quite an adventure.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Bold mine.
This is true, if you have the access to and expertise required to use said simulator and/or testbed. This makes it difficult to impossible for younger teams to try anything complicated programming-wise.
This is not so much an issue with games like Aim High. Our team went for the low goal, lined up the robot with dead reckoning, and were fairly successful. This year, in Rack n' Roll, if we're lucky we'll get our code to work in the time we have. There's no "easy route" other than sitting out autonomous entirely.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Just this evening I was wondering aloud when we went from "doing pretty well" to "too far behind." One of the mentors reminded me that if it were Monday (the 4 days we missed) we'd think we were good to go. Then we laughed and noted that many of the best memories I have from FIRST were scrambling to get something done. So we'll make the best of it and have fun.

Just for the record, people in Ohio may not know hurricanes, but we know flooding. Too well.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Extending the ship date is a cop out. In the business world you have deadlines and there are penalties for missing your deadline.
I also feel FIRST should hold the shipper's feet to the fire as hard as they hold the teams. Extending for any reason is unacceptable.
If you live in an area where bad weather can be expected then maybe you should have put forth the intense effort at the beginning of the build season as you do towards the last few days. Something to think about next year... do as much as you can as soon as you can... getting done early is aways a good thing.

Now as for this year... I totally agree that the time at the events should be extended so teams that shipped less than complete robots will have a chance to finish their robot. This sort of thing also happens often especially in auto racing.

Teams working around the clock in shifts is the best way I see as making productive use of limit time. One or two people trying to stay awake for 24 plus hrs only ask for mistakes and accidents. Break the work needed up... make work crews and work shifts then go to it.

Good luck to the teams that will be shipping robots in need of a few last bolts and congrats to the teams that have been practicing with their robots for the last few days.
I hope all remember the lessons learned.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I do understand why it would be nice to to rescheldule the due date but like other members have said deadlines are part of our lives and we cant just change them because some things have come up it is a big pain to deal with some stressful teammates so it would be nice to have a few extra days. :)


*To the teams that are set back because of the weather...maybe its a good time to stay the night at the school(if allowed)...creating more time for the team to work on the robot and for teamates to bond with other teammates.*

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

How many teams are effected by the weather....??? i know new york and indiana had snow...and Cyberblue234 cancelled one meeting because of weather..

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

A wise person once told me that quality work is done under pressure!:p

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I guess I am getting a bit amused by the "you have deadlines in business" argument. In an earlier life, I used to do organizational process management modelling. So I know that deadlines are extended all the time. (How many due dates did Vista have?) Furthermore, I can dredge up several examples from memory of businesses working with other businesses around extending deadlines because of snow, flooding or other bad weather. Even people in the business world can be gracious and professional when things are screwed up because of weather and other unavoidable/unpredictable events.

That said, there are real practical reasons for not extending the deadline, at least beyond a day or two. The chief of which is the time it takes to ship things to the first regional. As for FIRST "holding the shippers feet to the fire", that is a little ungracious considering how much shipping is donated to FIRST.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Yes some deadlines can be extended, some can be missed with only a one of two thousand a day fine.
And some like the one I'm dealing with now are hard and fast.
Be done by the 28th or find new job, cost company hundreds of millions, and flush a million dolors down the tubes.


And yes maybe holding the shippers feet is a little hard but, if you going hold deadline for one then you should for all ....
btw, back when I drove for SDS hauling nuclear medicines... we had to make our deliveries no and ifs or buts about it. Bad things happen if the stuff we hauled was late.
Anyhow picks ups can be made... they just might take longer. So you plan for it.