Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Quick story at how important scouting is...

We (503) seeded 4th in curie division at the championship last year(2006). My friend was out talking with woodie flowers, so I got to go out for alliance selection. I get a clipboard with the scouting list top ranked teams. I thought a mentor who loves to scout put it together and everything was perfect. I take 451 as my first pick...great choice they are awesome we won a regional with them earlier that year, sweet. 2nd pick rolls around, I look at my list, and I have no idea who this team is that I'm gonna pick, no offence but I don't even remember who they are to this day. But 222 tigertrons were next on the list, and I thought they were pretty good. I picked the team thinking well my scouting team ussually knows what's going on... BAD IDEA. I find out that just a bunch of under classmen were screwing around scouting play gameboy half the time. If my scouting team had been paying attention they would have not made such a mistake and ranked 222 a little higher. I can't complain, we some how won the division off a little bit of luck, some ref mistakes, etc. and that no name team was sooooooooo happy. It was their first time in a tourny and first time winning anything. I guess it all worked out, but we could have went a little further on einstein if we had 222. SCOUTING TEAMS PAY ATTENTION!

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Scouting is so important; it very often means the difference between winning and losing. I just don't understand why people don't pay attention to it. It is actually kind of fun. There is a real challenge to it. One needs to figure out what aspects are important and then rate the other teams on the field with respect to these. You need to consider the strengths and weaknesses of your robot and develop statagies that will be effective. The big payoff comes when (if) you get to select you teammates. Then doing your homework can pay off big time. When one does this well, there is a true sense of accomplishment.

Scouting in the pits is for the birds. Who cares about how a robot looks? What matters is how a robot performs.

If you want to be successful at scouting, you need to set your scouts up so they have a chance to succeed. You need to come up with an approach, and all the scouts must be versed in it. Since schools are supposed to be about intellectual development, it should encourage thinking, and changing aspects on the fly as new information comes to light. Many times it seems that scouts are set up to fail. And who really can get enthusiastic about doing that?

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I wouldn't be so quick to say that. One can often determine many strengths or weaknesses just by asking what kind of drivetrain a robot has, or what kind of motors are running the arm (which ultimately determine how fast it goes, how much load it can take, etc.). I know that my scouts and I often referred to some of the pit scouting to determine our strategies...

Which brings me to reiterate something that's been mentioned. Scouts should have a general idea of how robots run. The more they know about the motors, pneumatics, electronics, and general structure, the more they'll be able to form their own predictions on the team they are scouting, and the more they'll be able to form solid strategies.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Thanks for the kudos, I believe your other alliance partner was team 1159. You guys played some great matches against us. I wonder what it would have been like to join forces. Good Luck this season! Hope you have some interested in scouts!

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Well this year Team 467 changed the way we scouted.

On Thursday, every team member gets 1-2 robots that are competing at the regional. Each team member is responsible for going to the pits and gathering the vitals on his/her robots. Also, that team member is responsible for watching at least 2 practice matches involving his/her robots.

On Friday and Saturday, the setup changes as there is a select group of students and mentors that sit in the stands and watch matches. The method for information collection and delivery to the strategists is still being tweaked for Boston, but the basics are the same. We will have 3-6 students and some mentors keeping track of the basics of scoring ringers, getting bonus points, and defending for each robot. Comments are also welcome for clarifying performance.

In our strategy meetings on Friday night, we use the knowledge of our match watchers heavily, especially the feeling the person has about a team.

On a side note, some teammates and I found the picking at FLR to be almost from a bizzaro FLR. Some of the teams didn't have a good handle on how their picks would build the best alliance to win this year's game. I'm not going to single any teams out because that's not very gracious or professional, so I'm just going to emphasize that if possible, a team needs to know the robots available and how they fit into the three important categories for this game: ringers, bonus points, and defense.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

At GLR we had some computer->printer probelms so we couldnt print. Me and an engineer went out to circuit citys and best buys trying to find a driver for our computer (wanted to charge us $30....) So after about 2 hours of nothing, we finally come back and ask the staff at the venue if they could print something for us. they printed a copy and we made copies off of those. a few of our members were stressed out to the extreme because we couldnt get it to work. Our team has alot of passion for scouting because we believe that this is the reason matches are won. I know that last year at nationals scouting helped us win our first elimination match. I really hope people take scouting seriously becasue it is one of the most important things in FIRST competitions.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I haven't had time to read the whole thread but, in my experience, the best way to boost enthusiasm in scouting is to prove how important it is on the field. I have done the MARRS program the past 2 years for Team 537 and we get our scouts to know the importance of the scouting by putting it to good use. Scouting is useless unless your drivers use it.

Here are some tips:
-Make the scouting sheets simple (numbers, circle the option, etc...) and use a program like MARRS or even just Excel to crunch the numbers.
-Make scouting fun! Let your scouts participate in the stands and the music.
-Give your scouts breaks. Rotate different teams in every few matches.
-Give your scouts kudos when they do a good job.
-Finally, if your team is winning, make sure to thank the scouts, because it really is their hard work that helps you win.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

One of the student leaders saw that the drive team was lazing about, just goofing off, not doing any other work. We're a team of maybe 12 students, if we're lucky. I don't have a lot of scouts to send out, and at a competition like SVR where there are 47 other teams, we're stretched. Having the drivers do it takes some of the load off. But because the leader said that they had to scout 4 teams before going on the field... we ended up with a lot of bad scouts. At Davis I'm going to make it so that the sheet had better be filled out correctly before they are allowed any other job. I apologize in advance if this gets you a scout that comes back to you four times with the same questions, cause they need to learn their lesson, and I'm sorry you had to be the one to suffer.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Yeah, some of our scouts weren't too passionate about it, I noticed that their notes were not satisfactory when I took a scouting sheet of a team that they had scouted before. But we were pretty selective of who was supposed to scout, so that didn't happen too much.

But overall, it was pretty cool for me, I was actually kind of disappointed when the scout leader gave me Friday afternoon off from scouting, but of course we had enough scouts to go around.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

we didn't have that much of a problem are porblem was more along the lines of miss commcation.:)

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Going off of what my teammate mike (themagic8ball) was saying, it does take some work to get scouts enthused. i was partially in charge of scouting for our team this year, and i ran into some problems that people have mentioned.

one of the ways to keep scouts enthused is to use scouting as an award. for our pit scouting, that was an excuse to get out of the stands, and look around the pits. so, only those who had proved themselves scouting matches got to go to pit scouting. this ensured that we didnt have people who didnt care wandering around the pits makeing our team look bad.
also, really emphasize the importance of scouting. i think a thanks to the scouters was mentioned durring every little pep talk our team had. before our first regional we explained to everyone who was new to the team, or scouting for the first time that we consider our scouting system a huge leg up on other teams and that its essential to our strategy. in sum, make the scouts know that they are important. someone who feels important will do a better job than someone who doesnt.
we had to pull one member off of scouting duty for awhile because they werent taking it seriously. this was a serious mark of shame and the whole team knew it. scouting was a privilage, although a work intensive one, we showed that if you dont care, we dont want you.

also give the scouts structure. our scouters sat in one area when the scouted and they enter information onto standardized sheets. this keep them focused and if they had a game question there were 7 other people around who they could ask.

breaks are important too, to prevent scout burnout. we had 4 scout teams at buckeye who rotated. each team was run by a scouting lead who would check the scouting forms to make sure that everything was filled out and who would also fill in if one of the scouters needed a break.

most importantly, keep scouting fun, and keep scouting cool. if its not someones turn to scout, let them do whatever they want as long as they are back in time to scout thier matches. if someone is doing an awesome job at scouting give them a public shout-out. if someones lagging behind, tell them waht they need to do better and emphasize that they are needed. everyone loves to be needed.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I understand how some people can see scouting as a demotion but it really isn't. Scouting is one of the most important things you can do at a competition. On my team we make sure that it's important that they give the job their all, to do it completely and with a passion. There are two types of scouting the way we see it: pit scouting and match scouting. There are so many benefits to scouting. You get to learn about other teams robots, you get to make friendships with other teams, you get to make a good impression on behave of your team, and it helps you learn what robots you want to be with in eliminations. Ultimately scouting is one of the most important things you can do to have a successful competition, and it should be treated as such.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

You get all of the power when you're discussing a strategy with your alliance as well. Every alliance should be listening to the team that has the facts on how a team performed on the field. A team can say whatever they want in the pits (we're guilty of giving false information), but it will most likely differ from how they perform on the field.

Students on 166 feel the same way about not wanting to scout. I try and tell them over and over that scouting is infinitely important.

Here's some ways we get them to do it:
We assign shifts so they aren't constantly scouting
We have a pair of leads and a mentor to make sure they are doing it
It's very organized. We have the shifts, the sheet is easy to work with, it's easy to do

Boilermaker was the best scouting we've ever done. We just need a bigger binder so all of the teams are in the same binder...

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I agree with your outlook and your system mirrors ours in a few ways. I also agree with your idea of talking to future alliance partners before a match to dicuss strategy ahead of time. In fact at GLR I would go before a match to talk to our alliance partners in the pits holding little meetings to discuss strategy. I found it very affect and I think that it contributed to our success, it was very affective.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

try entering all the information onto a computerized database. then you can just chuck the scouting forms when you are done entering them. no need for a binder, and its not like your team isnt gonna be ever without a laptop (we are proud geeks for goodness sakes)