Lack of passion in scouting
 

Hello,

I just got home from the first day of GLR, and after meeting quite a few scouts, I have noticed a general correlation.

Most of the scouts I talk to seem to have no passion whatsoever towards the game, their team, scouting, or FIRST in general. Why?

Today, I had a scout ask me if we had a ringer. I guessed that he meant to ask if our robot could hang ringers, but when I asked to make sure, he replied with a hesitant "I guess...". This person did not even know what every entry on the scouting sheet meant!

So here's the reason for my post: teams, please make sure your scouts are educated about the game, and that they care. Don't assign scouting just because the freshmen have nothing to do. Don't assign scouting just as a punishment.
Scouts, please, put a little passion into your work! I love to talk to people who are excited and truly interested in the robots and the teams, but it is IMHO a waste of both your time and my time if you are just filling out a list of 1-5s on a scouting sheet. Those 1-5s don't reflect truly on anyone's robot or performance. Don't mumble; don't give me "I...guess..."s. Be confident! You have a very important job--make friends and get to know people! Don't muck it up because you have to fill out "all those stupid scouting forms"--that's not what it's about.

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir here; scouts on CD are probably very dedicated and this post probably doesn't apply, but I just thought I'd post this here.

Just my 2 cents that I figured I should share
JBot

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I don't really have much say in this yet since I haven't attended my regional yet, but I know we've been trying to better the scouting process. I started a collective spreadsheet online that all teams can modify and check out. This'll give people a good view of all the bots before even going. This'll help out rookie teams especially too, teams who are too small to spare a scouting team or too inexperienced. It's only set up for philly so far, but I think it's a good idea for the future.

:p

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

i know exactly what you mean!
at BAE i had a pair of scouts questioning me about our robot. they relied soley on a sheet for questions, and when the robot did not fit the limited descriptions on the sheet they drew complete blanks... they walk up to the pit [with the robot in plain view] and ask "do you have bumpers?"

PLEASE teach your scouts whats going on, otherwise theyre next to useless...
and if your just trying to assign busywork, have them do something that wont disturb the serious participants more than nessicary

[i wish we had that many people]

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I have yet to go to a regional as well, but am trying my best to get everyone pumped up about it, so hopefully my scouts will have an idea on whats going on and will be interested in learning about everyones robots

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

"The beatings will continue until moral improves."

A motto I live by. It seems kids don't mind sharing the work as long as the scouter shares the load (there are lots of teams and not many opportunities). The faster you get through the initial scouting, the smoother things tend to run.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Lol our team has like 40 people and nobody scouts like at all

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Inspired by uninspired scouting, a few of my comrades are going to be scouting in Atlanta. We've already got the pre-2007 robot battery plus 12V inverter mobile outlet set up in a backpack, ready to power a laptop for hours. This should be interesting, because the last time we set it up, someone plugged in speakers and blasted Hammer Time at full volume and ran around the shop.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

well... i sign up for scouting every year. i watch robots, every year. i watch so many robots that i need not even ask questions. scouting is wat i do for fun. so if u ever see team 343, u have me. and ill probably scout, unless one day im on the drive team, but ill still scout anyway.

so yeah, after 8 years of scouting (since ive done it since i was 7), i sort of no the ropes of scouting. our next competition is in three weeks, and ive already started to devise our gameplan.

i hope that this is passion enough, b/c this is how i roll :D.

and hey, 845, i want to no wat ur robot looks like. post some pixs on the palmetto robot threads.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

im making a spreadsheet of scouting data aas we speak, and i look on here, these kids just leave stuff off, plus listen to this

What should be put there

Robot speed: 12ft/sec.

What the kid put down

Robot Speed: Very Fast

Im going to explain to these kids how important scouting is in a regional, and how it can be sued. then im going to give them their papers back adn tell them to bring tese back filled out CORRECTLY

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I have heard alot of stories about a lack of passion this season.
Must be an epidemic.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Not me. I scout and handle strategy on our team by choice. It's a combination if being excited and seeing how other teams did and what they did, and a "know thy enemy" factor - you can't coach on the field if you don't know what you're going against.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

This thread is the reason I made sure everyone on 1155 watch matches, even if they had other things to do, in order to get basic fundementals about the game.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

haha, i was hoping that it wasnt that bad. if u ever see me, i wont do that to u. i promise.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Over the past four years - and often being the one of the only students on our team that understands every single subsystem on our robot inside-and-out - I've talked to a lot of scouts. And the issue with many of them is not always that they do not know what they are doing, but many times it's that they are shy and introverted. To them, being a "people person" can be quite hard! :yikes:

So don't bash someone just because they are shy and don't show spirit while scouting. Instead work with them, be friendly, and make them feel better about what they are doing. Be helpful and anticipate their questions. If they are asking about your drivetrain, elaborate on it - but without going too far into petty details, and you may answer some of their additional questions.

When you are helping scouts, you are the voice of your team, so be truthful, succinct, sociable. If the scouts feel more at ease, then everyone wins. ;)

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

You may think that scouting is a commonplace term within a robotics team. But years ago, scouting wasn't all that big of a deal. With only a few hundred teams across the country, you knew exactly who did what, how they did it, and when they were going to do it. Now, maybe my memory is going as I get older, but I think it has to do more with the fact that there are MANY more teams now, and the regionals keep getting bigger and bigger. Teams SHOULD have a scouting group, and a knowledgable one at that. But, it still hasn't found its way into every program.

Please, it's better to educate than to ridicule. If you know more about their scouting sheet then they do, take a minute to explain what 6wd or 2x12" means. In the end, it'll help both of you out...

I am MORE than happy when other students come to look at and learn about our robot. I bring them over and have them stand right in front of the robot. Now, saying that, I do have to laugh at scouts who ask the most basic questions about our robot, when all they have to do is look at it. Particularly ones like:
"Does your robot have an arm?"
"How many wheels does your robot have?"
"How high do your ramps lift?" [we have no ramps...]

BEN

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

no, im referring to the kid writing that down WITHOUT asking the team. btw:
thanks, and nice job at VCU, i was rooting for you guys (we teamed up at palmetto in 04 and at Florida in 05)

im still doing that spreadsheet, here is another funny one

Number of wheels: ? or left blank,

thats how it is on at least half of them.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

The real advice here would be to either get rid of the sheets, make the sheets much more open-ended, or put a lot more detail into the sheets. Then you may need to educate your scouters.

Example:
"How many wheels". Well, our robot has a total of 8 wheels. 6 of them touch the ground. 4 of them drive. Which statistic do you want? Also, those 4 that drive are in pairs, right next to each other, rather than front to back. Most of the time, that's called 2-wheel. See the problem?

There are 2 ways to fix this question on a scouting sheet:

Ask an open ended question, such as "Describe the drivetrain."
Ours would be "Tank drive, 2 CIMs per side with AM Gen 2 shifters, each driving a pair of IFI traction wheels in the back. Casters in the front."

Ask specific questions.
What kind of drivetrain is it? Swerve/Mecanum/Omni/Tank/Other (describe)
How many drive wheels?
What kind of drive wheels?
What kind of transmissions?
What kind, and how many motors per drive wheel?
What kind of casters, if any?

Tank, 2 pairs of 2, IFI traction wheels, AM gen2, 2 CIMs, 2" ball casters.

Now, that sort of information provides a lot more than '6 wheels' or '9 wheels'

If you get rid of the sheets entirely and let the (presumably knowledgeable) scouts write what they think is important, they'll provide information that doesn't fit on those sheets. How many of your sheets provide a question that would handle our (imho) innovative kicker wheel?

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

my sittuation is not too much different than yours

sure some kids did the intial interviews with all the teams

but afterwards nothing, not match by match progress.

however that is where our similar situations end

in my point of view scouting in this game is not even of any importance.
i say this because of the messed up algorithm for matches that they used this year. we saw the same teams over and over again, so much that i decided that one person(me) could do all of the scouting.

i mean just by talking to the teams 30 min before the match was enough info to see where and when the robot does what and how often they do it.

and it all worked out very well i predicted what each team was going to do every match we were in, i even predicted the scores for all of the matches with an margin of error close to 5%

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Our team is beginning a program for scouting this year where we only go to the pits of teams that we have seen perform well during matches. We then get a lot of detail on the top 12 or so, which are all the teams that our field crew looks at. This method saves time, effort, and ear pain of hearing teams talk about things their robot "can" do, and yet has never done on the field.

Most of the data that we use to pick teams comes straight from watching matches, where opinions mean nothing.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

well thats all good but will that strategy work for teams that may just need a
defensive alliance partner in order to score alot of points.

i know that was the case for a couple of teams we played with and against

a team that scored only 2-3 ringers in a match would not be considered a great team(but they were blocked the whole match), with a decent defensive alliance partner they can score 7-8 in a row.

not criticising your strategy or anything im just saying watch out for those teams, there will be quite a few of them out there. I saw 3 here in NJ already

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

scouting is going to be hard for my team we only have like 3 serious members actully going and if lucky tehre will be 4 of us there. if we had atleast two more we can get a photo/camera guy taking video recordings of the game while in play becaus ei know for a fact all 3 of us will be on the field our club pres as driver v-pres other driver n me human player......... just saying u guys got it lucky i notice most teams contain atleast 7 people i went to the lv regional last year one team had a grip or members. humm i think im just jabbering now -_-:(

:D W/e GOOD LUCK ALL:ahh::D

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

It did work for that. We look at winning alliances that could possibly be formed, not just who has a good scoring mechanism. On the end of ramps, we look at who has a shallow enough lifter to accomodate us, and what kind of drivetrain they have (for defense).

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Don't assign scouting to the "extra" people just to get them out of the pits. Scouts should have done enough work on their own robot to totally know what they're about.

I do all the pit scouting for my team (I made our scouting sheets myself). I decide our team's strategy every match so I know what I'm looking for in our alliance partners and opponents. I did a lot of the mechanical work for our robot (including all the ramp construction) so I only ask "inobvious" stuff like autonomous & weight (not weight class).

I was one of the busiest students at the VCU regional -- I'm on pit crew, strategist, rules expert, and ramp upkeep/repair. The point is that you can probably spare someone who knows what they're about for long enough to scout all the teams -- just make sure you have their phone # before they head off. :)

BTW if you see me in Atlanta on the floor peering under your robot don't worry -- I'm just counting motors or drive wheels or something. :)

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Don't you worry, I'm super excited to be a scout in only my rookie year on such a big team like 115, and I've really done some things to prepare.

Though this thread does bring up a good point, scouting should be something that can be fun, not just about gathering info, but you can meet other people on other teams, make friends, etc.

I can't wait anymore, I can't even go through a single class without thinking about robotics.:p

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Today, we were working on our ramp, which we might just chop off, and a scout comes up and starts asking us questions. The second question out of his mouth was "Do you have a ramp?"

I think the only solution is, like many have already said, is to have only those who have passion, scout. Our scout captain is very clear that if you don't want to scout, you will not scout.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Well, on our team their are two types of scouting. Pit scouting (The type you mentioned in your original post, and making note of team's attitude toward you asking questions.) and match scouting (Watching EVERY match, keeping track of certain criteria, and making note of outstanding teams).

Generally, pit scouting is not so horrible as far as people not wanting to do it. I think this is true mostly because you can get it done in about 1-3 hours per regional. You also get to interact with the other teams and their members which is also pretty cool.

Match scouting is where it is really difficult to fins a willing scout. I have one reason for this, match scouting is BORING! I am sure some may disagree and say its better that standing around in a pit wishing you had something to do. Here are a few reasons to defend my statement...

1. All you do is sit there for a long period of time and watch robots
2. You don't really get to watch each match as you are watching an individual robot
3. You do not get to interact with other teams, students, or hang out with friends.

I'm sure some will disagree with me, but I have little hope that match scouting will ever get "fun" its still watching a robot rather than a match...

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

boring as it is, match scouting is one of the most important aspects.

not to beat round the bush but: talk is cheap.
if your robot is amazing, it will demonstrate said amazingness during qualifications [barring technical problems cause i know that happens now and again]

basicaly what im saying is that [especailly if youre ranked high in the standings] people tend to tell you what the robot can do and not what it actualy does.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

ah, yeah, i dont do that either. :D
and thanks, we like people rooting for us.
and i remember us with yall at palmetto and florida. yall were great.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

There was a scout at La who asked how many gears our drivetrain had.

I replied "Well, we have 3 gears in each side... Are you sure you don't mean speed because it is a single speed drivetrain"

To which he replies "Nope, it says gears". He then proceeds to write 3 down.

Later on a member of that team came and asked my how and why we had a 3 speed shifting transmission rather than a 2 or 4.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Just to give heart to the scouts out there. You scouts WILL be the difference on your team. When you scout matches and that data is successfully complied, it helps you pick well, or if you arent ranked it helps you see what the better teams are doing.

My Scouts did a really nice job and i hope yours will too. Don't look at scouting as a chore, because its not. I scouted a bunch, and i enjoyed every minute of it.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

If you have the amount of people, but there seems to be a lack of interest, make shifts within a designated scouting group, so that those scouts know that they have a job to get done, but are also given the chance to take a break from sitting that long. You'll get a lot more response from someone whose shift is 1 hour as opposed to 6 hours.

As applies for any other subteam, it helps a lot to have one or two students completely enthusiastic and willing to lead the scouting group to begin with, because the scouts will look up to their peers (as opposed to what they will do if they are just told to record information).

Ask your scouts to pretend they are creating strategy for a sporting event. Chances are, they'll have a better idea of what needs to be recorded. I know that when I was new to my team in high school, I had no idea what scouting was. If I had been able to make a parallel between robotics and sports, I would have been MUCH better as a scout.

It might even help to point out where scouting helped your driveteam make decisions in matches: "Hey, we played defense on that robot there because that's where they typically score from, and look how well our alliance did", etc. etc. It'll show those scouts that their work really did pay off, and will help them to be proud of their work.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

i no that scouting is important on our team. being the main student scouter, i got to be the representative :D. and i got to speak into a microphone and say a big word like "graciously"

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Another thought is to find a way to make scouting more fun...

We do both Pit & Match scouting (although echoing others here, match scouting gets more weight than pit... anyone can say they can score 20 tubes in a match, to see them do it is another).

Our pit scouting was developed by one of our mentors who knows labview really well, and he created this really awesome GUI with the help of our strategy/drive team. In a way, it makes scouting fun :) They have a visual way to add tubes to the rack, they can type in notes on teams, and indicate extra points, penalties etc, all through a computer interface. In the end, they hit submit, and we can pull from a master database all the information about exactly what the team did during the match. (look for this to be released for other teams to use soon - almost done working out kinks).

Pit scouting is a good way for students to see other teams, perhaps they dont know everything about every robot in existance, but I have to echo Ben's thoughts here... help them LEARN. This is not about being the best at everything you do, its about learning. Maybe they dont seem to care because they dont understand, or maybe their passion is animation and they are just trying to help out the team. Who knows... take a minute, and educate instead of getting frustrated.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

A couple thoughts -
1. Remember that as a scout, you are a representative of your team. If a scout comes to my pit and asks how high our ramps go (it's quite obvious we have no intention of having any ramps), I may (mistakenly) assume the rest of that scout's team is as naive as him or her. Serve your team well. Think things through.
2. As a scout, if you see a feature on another team that would work well with your strategy (or vice versa), tell them! Plant the seeds of possible alliances as much as possible.
3. Scout in pairs. That way you have a friend to talk to, someone who may pick up things you may miss, another pair of eyes and ears. If you're very strong on game knowledge, pair yourself up with a weaker teammate. If you don't know very much about the game, grab a knowledgeable partner. You both will benefit from the shared knowledge, as well as any strategies other teams may use.
4. Concentrate on specific robots. If each scout is very smart on 5 or 10 robots, and can explain those 5 or 10 robots very well, it would serve the team better than one scout who knows a little about all robots. This also works well for match scouts - if they only have to concentrate on a couple robots then watching matches become less tedious.
I hope you found these helpful, and I hope 1529's scouts serve as great ambassadors for our team at Purdue.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

What is the website?

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I have to agree. One team came up to our pits during LA regional and didnt even know what the autonomous mode was! I'm doing prescouting for Silicon Valley Regional so if any teams going there want to PM me so I could ask some questions about their robot, please do. I think the drivers, whenever they could should do scouting, because they're the ones who are going to have to integrate the information during matches.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Coming from a kid who started as a scout, you have to understand that not every scout is the same as you.

Whoever mentioned the "3 gears" thing...think about that from THAT kids perspective. He's told he has an important job to do...he is to go out adn collect information on all the teams that are at this regional, and this information is going to be used to form strategies. They tell him, go out and ask teams these exact questions on this sheet and write down their answers.

To the kid that wrote the scout sheet "gears" makes sense...its a term used all the time to name the "speeds" of cars and other things. To the kid reading it, he may not know what it means...to you, you hear "gear" and think of the spurred tooth friend found in 99% of drivetrains and offer your response of 3 per side. Who is at fault in this situation??? No one, your as much to blame/not blame as the kid who is writing down the information, and the kid who wrote the scout sheet.

Please be understanding of the kids that come down to ask your questions. They may not be as passionate about scouting, or even robotics as you are, but if they seriously dont know what somethign on their own scout sheet means, than explain it to them. Maybe them seeing they can actually learn a lot will spark that passion. It can be very intimidating to join a club where it appears everyone around you has an abundant amount of information about robots. Some kids may shy away because they feel they can never reach that level.

Respect the scouts, respect each other, and most of all help them learn, and I bet you may learn something yourself...

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

One of the biggest problems I see (I'm unofficial head scout/strategist) with our scouts is the lack of enthusiasm. They're told to sit there and watch a robot. Essentially, they say, "I don't care, I'm not going to do this." We've tried to make it easier for them (intranet-based databases on laptops, forms that make it really easy for them to know what they have to do, etc...), but they still blow it off. So I pose this question, because I haven't figured out the answer yet: How do you "inspire" your scouts? How do you get them excited about it? How do you focus them? We bring our entire team (~35-40 people) to NJ. ~10-15 are down in the pits at any one time. So, we have 20-25 people available, and we only need 6 at a time, but I sometimes have trouble finding people. Everyone runs when I see them, or says "I just got here, gimme a break", or "I just did it", or "I'm going in like 5 minutes". How does everyone get their scouts interested in what they're doing?

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

The inspiration comes as a general team attitude. My old team (11-MORT) became very large in the 4 years I was there. By the time I was a junior there was no way we could fit even a quarter of our team in the pits. When you have that many people not directly hands on with the robot, you have to get them something to do, something they will ENJOY doing.

My sophomore year of high school was the game known as stack attack. I was the human player of my team so I was in the pit. A couple of other kids in my grade decided they wanted to get involved so they grabbed pieces of paper and started scouting the pits. Eventually more people joined in. By the time we got to nationals we had a solid scouting database going.

The next year...we go to NJ, now our team is getting quite large. The same guys decide to head up the scouting team again, but this time theyre going to recruit a few of their friends to help them out. All it takes is 1-2 people that are passionate to get scouting going.

I didn't spend a lot of time scouting because of human playering/coaching/driving the robot and being in the pit...but the few times I did, i cant tell you how much fun we had. Everyone would be in the stands laughing, telling jokes, sharing stories, and SCOUTING. Eventually scouting became THE thing to do at competitions, and our team started doing a lot better, the robot was performing beautifully.

Lead by example....show people that scouting can be fun, and is possibly the most important thign you can do at a competition. From a coaching standpoint, I can tell you...the coach is NOTHING without valuable scout information. If the coach is nothing, the robot is NOTHING. It all starts from teh scouts...get your kids to see this.



Pascack rules!

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

One of the reasons you may have lack of passion is the scouts do not see any results from what they are asked to do. A few years ago I asked one of our scouts what he thought about the robot he was assigned to. He went for 5 minutes. I do not think I had spoken to that kid that much in all the years he was on the team.

The point is instead of just relying on the numbers ak those scouts to be part of the discussion when confronted with or allied with a robot. After all they have seen them run. Then they feel more part of the team and you are asking their opinion.

I also have them decide to pick the "Best Bot" waward winner for a team award we give out on Friday evening. The all know this is theri responsibility.

We alos have certian studentd we call SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). When we see teams rising in our rankings the SMEs are sent to investigate those teams and the robots. They ask the questions. These folks have a much better understanding of the robot and the game.

Show the less passionate scouts that what they say matters and you will see it turn around.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

You know, this is a great point. I don't...really have an answer for this...

I would need to talk to one of these kids and ask them why they are on the team at all to figure out what I need to appeal to. I'll try this tonight if I can get my mentor off my back long enough (I've got loads of software to re-write and we're taking a fix-it tonight, so I need to get to work:) ) so I can talk to some of these kids.

I do want to say that I am not trying to ridicule scouts. I know that many are forced to do their job (and that's partially why I created this thread) and that it isn't much fun for some. I try to help out scouts. But one of the points I want to make is that a 1-5 form is pretty much strategically useless, IMHO, and the other point is that without a little bit of education, a scout can be misled by a team's responses--not something the head of strategy wants when choosing someone to pick.

JBot

PS: I'll post back if I get a glimpse into the heads of the not-so-eager scouts tonight.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Just a word of advice from my experience - pit scouting is fine and is good for team PR. It also gives INTERESTED students the chance to check out the other machines up close. That being said, I believe the scouting from the stands offers much more valuable info. I don't particularly care if a machine has two wheels or six, one motor or five......all that really matters is how well they can play the game and what strategies work best for them. Most of the students enjoy just sitting in the stands and watching the matches when they aren't busy with other things, so we give them a sheet with each team number and a box in which they can take some notes. Near the end of the qualifying rounds we gather the sheets and compare notes between them to figure out who does what and how well. Also, at the last team meeting prior to the competition, I stress the importance of performing this task. We always seem to have plenty of volunteers. Just my $0.02.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

A quick story:

When I was a freshman on the team, I got really involved during build season, so I had never even been to an off-season competition or gone to kick-off. At Drexel, my first regional, is was given the job of "scout" along with some little sheets of categories. Other than that, i had free reign. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing; at one point, I even asked a few teams, "Do you have a human player?" (Add that to your terrible questions list) As I went along, I got angry or exasperated looks from some people and helpful hints from others, and by the end of Thursday I understood what exactly I was supposed to be doing. On Friday and Saturday, I was able to be a (semi) good scout.

Now, it could be said that it was terrible of my team to leave me, poor freshman, on my own to figure out scouting. But I disagree. I made a lot of great friends and contacts, regardless of my embarrassment as I realized the stupidity of some of the questions I had asked, and I had a lot of fun. The freedom I was given made me fall in love with robotics. I learned through experience, which is exactly what FIRST is about.

I'm not saying that giving scouts a book and nothing else is the way to go. On my team, we have small "squads" of scouts, who all have different topics to talk about with other teams, some of which aren't even robot related. However, they don't have specific questions. We recognize that it really isn't important to know how many wheels a robot has, or what their exact speed in feet per second is. What is important is that our girls, especially the rookies, are out there learning as they go and having fun.

"Bad" scouts don't deserve all this. Most likely, they are new and learning. Just because they don't know exactly what they're talking about does NOT mean they are not spirited or passionate. If someone berates them for not knowing, though, it's likely they won't become passionate. Perhaps it is just a job to keep people busy, but I personally can't think of a better job to give people just standing around than to go out and learn.

Plus, look at me. I went from a clueless scout my first day of competition to President and 1st driver of my team. I'd call that an improvement through experience. :D

(Sorry for the long post, didn't realize I had that much to say.)

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

This might help. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hlight=logging
Its a data recording device we came up with. We are testing now, AZ reg, San Diego reg and Vegas Region, Nationals. Hopefully for sale next year.
If you are at one of these regionals, check it out. Its like reverse game play, something happens and then you hit the button. The data can then be downloaded and put into an excell spread sheet.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I for one worked my tush off scouting :mad:, by the end of the first day i had every team scouted for the Great Lakes Regional. I also had about 80% of pictures of all the different bots. i did notice some teams having no idea what things on there scouting sheets meant and also teams that weren't prepared and just had a lined piece of paper to write on. To the fact of a lack of passion for the game and for the team... if a person is scouting and dosn't show any enthusiasm then it really affects the look of the team. I am from team 326 and I express my concern in this field. Scouting is a major part of the competion and w/out it, really gets rid of the spirt and dedication to all of FIRST. To all of you who didn't care about scouting and showed no enthusiasm. I am appalled by the teams that came up to me and admited they had no idea what stuff on their scouting sheet meant. Not to undermine any teams but a lot of teams sent out people who weren't doing anything and were just there to mess around. U are right to say that a lot of teams showed no effort but there were a select few who did and i thanked. By scouting u represent your team and the inspiration of FIRST.
-Adam-

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)

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Some kid at GLR came to scout our team and he asked me if i could "fill out this sheet" for him. I told him he's gona have to at least ask me the questions himself, or I wont fill it out at all.

Another thing that bugged me related to scouting is that the students on my team constantly pointed all of the scouts to me, even ones that were at almost every single build meeting. This disappointed me. I know they knew the answers, but maybe they werent sure on exact details or didnt want to be sociable.

Hopefully it wont be a problem at the championships!

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Another story from 2006 I thought I might add in..

Last year we seeded 11th at GLR, on Friday I realized that we may be in the top 8 so I explained to our scouting team that we needed a list in order of the best alliance choices. I decided that I was gona be the person to go up and pick our partners if we did get picked because nobody else knew what was going on. When the time for picking rolled by, there wasnt any list made so one of the parents quickly wrote down the top 24 seeding teams. I was the last person to make it to the field for alliance picking (sorry everyone). When I got there I couldnt read any of the numbers on the list and it was a nightmare, I was too frantic to start marking down teams that had already been picked and all too soon I was getting called up to be the 8th alliance leader. I was like @#$!. A nice girl nearby told me that it was ok and she told me who the next team on her list was, team 65 I believe. So i went up and asked them to be our partners. They accepted. Then I asked their person who a good team was real quickly before I picked my next partner. We lost out in quater finals (against the winning alliance).

It was probably the most Nerve racking thing ive ever had to go through (in FIRST), I didnt want to walk up there and ask for a team that had already been picked, or didnt exist in front of 1000s of people.

Moral of the story - Scouting is imporant and organize things before the regional so that you have that list made up!

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I think that the biggest problem with match scouting is fundamentally a problem of personality. The fact is ( at least for our ( rookie ) team ) is that the people who join the robotics team are not the sorts of people who enjoy watching tedious match after tedious match. Instead they would rather either:
-Work on the robot, which is normally exciting
-Play line rider

After thinking about this, it seem obvious to me that we either need to make scouting more interesting or get some future accountants to join our team.

I don't know if other teams are having this same problem, or if it is just us.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

First of all, does your entire team scout? Or do you have designated people scouting? What is your process for scouting as of now?

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Scouting would be soooo much easier if each team had a peice of paper with all their information on it. Then you could set up a file box that has a file in it for every team. That would be AWESOME, so instead of running around endlessly trying to find out information about 50 different teams, you could actually enjoy yourself while you scout (aka meet new ppl and enjoy the comeptition). When you need information on a team, you could just go to that file.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

The way scouting has worked for us is:

I designate anyone not 100% essential to the pit crew as scouters (up until we have 6 or 7). We scout all day Friday and I generally leave them about 5 matches before ours and head down to discuss a strategy with our drive team and our alliance partners. It had worked alright and I was always able to devise a list of teams based off of watching matches and reviewing the sheets that our team filled out.

For the past three years, I had always been disappointed in the lack of scouting willingness within our team... until Atlanta, 2007.

I had the opportunity to coordinate a scouting alliance while in Atlanta between us and two other Wisconsin teams. I created scouting sheets and made up an excel program where we could collaborate and review all scouting data. I reviewed all of the robots we would be facing in Atlanta by watching videos from Soap and TBA.

When the scouting started, it was ok, but after about an hour and a half into scouting matches in Atlanta, it started.

At first it was one entire team getting up and leaving, only saying that they needed a break. Then I started receiving sheets with nothing filled out except for a single comment saying "Sorry, I forgot to watch the match." Later we had both teams disappear for over 2 hours.

We brought 9 students down to Atlanta. 7 of them were either mechanical, electrical, programming, or drive team and were needed in the pits, almost all of the time. We had a scouting team of 2 students and 1 adult, scouting 6 robots for over 2 hours, gathering data, writing comments, and studying for the benefit of teams other than us.

I ended up spending hours after the event, continuing to enter in data into a computer, which was supposed to be the responsibility of another team. I was up until the morning.

First thing on Saturday, I rushed over to the other teams' pits and dropped off copies of the scouting data, I was thanked with a "Ok, is it all here?" and only heard a comment afterwards of, "We should do this again next year."

We have learned our lesson and I value my scouters much more. I guess you don't know what you have until you have nothing.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

One of our members came up with this system at Western, and we used it there and in the Championships to great effect...

Give each scout an equal list of teams (hopefully well under 10) and have them ONLY scout those teams. They can visit their pits (i.e. if they tip over or seem to break something), but basically they only need to watch the matches "their" teams are in.

When we get together at the end of the day for our "scouting results meeting", we create a "master" sheet of all the teams and then call out each robot's number. The person in charge of that robot gives us a 10 - 30 second "report" on them covering their offensive, defensive, autonomous and "bonus" features (i.e. ramps). They tell us if they're "tippy" or "drop a lot of tubes", etc. They really get to know each robot and have good "inside" info on them.

This works great as nobody is overburdened, and the info the scouts provide us goes beyond the basic stats. Say for example, a team scores two or three very quickly, and then goes on defense to prevent the other team from scoring. In the stats it might only show "two scored" but in reality they can score one every 15 seconds or so. Also we find out how well they do when defended vs. undefended which also doesn't usually show up in the basic stats.

Works for us!
:D

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

That's a really good idea. Like professional sports on TV, it's hard to watch teams you don't care about. The way we did our match scouting was just having three people sit up in the stands and observe two bots each, every match. They almost never care who won or lost. However, I'll bet that if our scouts actually cared about the matches they were watching, they wouldn't mind keeping track of them.

However, it was our rookie year, and we were so much more worried about drilling holes in our robot than quality scouting... Next year will most definitely be better.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Normally, our team will have anybody sitting in the stands scout. Ideally, we have about 6 people, 1 to a robot. We make up a basic scouting sheet that has areas that we think we need information about. This year, we got into the habit of assigning each of the 6 people to a field position (Red 1, Red 2, Red 3, Blue 1, Blue 2, or Blue 3). This helped reduce confusion before each match. There were times when we had people leave the stands or stop writing the information we really wanted. There were times when individuals on our team were covering two or three robots by him/herself. I think, as we got closer to the end of the season though, more people realized how essential scouting was to our performance on the field.

Try to help them to realize that they are an integral part of the team. A lot of times, I think that scouting isn't looked upon as something glorious, but in reality, it's what prepares you for the next match, and assesses the performance of the robots. It is also good to have someone in the stands that can assess your own robot. It's much easier for a spectator to notice something that would improve your performance in a match, than it is for the drivers or coach to notice when they are out there, under a lot of pressure, and have so many things to focus on already. I think it is just really important to make the scouts understand their job is important. If they feel needed, it is more likely they will willingly and enthusiastically engage themselves in scouting.

Also, I think another way to achieve adequate scouting, is to show how it will help. It is hard as a rookie team or even a freshman or new member to the team to see the benefit of scouting. Give them a challenge to each become strategists. Encourage them to observe what's happening on the field and how you think your team will be able to compete in the next match with and/or against the other robots. It is really amazing when you start hearing all of these options and ways to prevent/outscore/overcome your opponents for that particular match. I know our team relies heavily on the scouting to know what to expect before a match.

I think that once you are able to get a few more scouting, and really encourage them, they will start to see how much they learn from scouting. At first, when I started scouting, I wasn't really sure why, or what I was doing, and I had no idea if I would enjoy it. Now I can say, I absolutely love scouting. It is part of a competition, and you learn so much about other robots and teams, and start learning in-depth differences between robots. I can now differentiate between different drivetrains, understand some of the intricacies of various arms/lifts, and most of all, I admire and appreciate every robot that takes that field, because they have accomplished something, and I'm able to learn from what they have done.

Of course, this is FIRST. You can only do so much to get them involved and can only push them so far to understand the importance of all of this. Some of it is self-motivation. If they don't have the desire to scout, then it is going to be their loss--nobody else's. They will be the ones missing out on one of the greatest aspects of FIRST: interacting with other teams and learning from experience.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

To me, there are three keys to winning at first: Average Robot, Strong driving and scouting. Without knowledge of your opponents your drivers and coach are like fish out of water. It makes strategy impossible. Make sure your students know this, because it really gives them a reason to scout.

Our team has a very strict and traditional scouting system. Each student in the stands is assigned X number of teams. They are responsible for watching every match that their teams play. The teams they have are written on a piece of paper and when I or the other scouting captains need info on a team for a match, we go to the student who has the team in question. Each student is an expert on five to ten to twelve teams and you can confidently know the capabilities of any opponent or ally. One meeting before our first regional is devoted to going over our scouting sheet and the proper way to fill it out. This allows all of our scouts to understand and easily input information.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

I scout at every competition at least once if not the whole time.

Lack of passion: Like some people have been saying, assign people who are interested in scouting. If you do not have anyone on the team interested, assign people to scout so many matches then switch out with other teammates.

Knowledge: If you are unsure about someone not putting correct information on the scouting sheet then have them pair up with an older team member(one who knows the game) and be the mentor and teach them what theyu need to know

Scouting sheet: 1 TO 10 is not a useful thing to know..each person may have a different perspective on how good a robot is. have them write down bout the drive, how fast,realiable,good/bad defense/antidefense etc.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

note to scouts dont bother people working on the robot thats annoying some time so ask the person with there hands in there pockets look ing at the celeing haha but truly dont bother people working

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Good point Alex. We never had that problem, but that is annoying when somebody is sitting around and the scouters ask me for info.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

we dont have a problem with this at all. the scouters we have all want to do this thats why before every season we ask we do u want to learn this year and if they say scouting then we'll teach them scouting but in some time if they dont want to do it we let them go to another community.

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

Solution:

A couple of your regionals are far away. It benefits the team to take people who are good at all aspects of the competition. So:

Only the best engineers can travel.
Only the best drivers can travel.
Only the best cheerers can travel.
AND ONLY THE BEST SCOUTS CAN TRAVEL TO MISS SCHOOL!

It's all about motivating people. So try not to get angry at an unenthusiastic scout, instead encourage them.

Sam

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

i love the scouts we like to play a game were you try to give the most ridiculous
answers for example how many wheels drive do you have i said 43.5 and they right it down but in the end we always fixes are answers and apologist
it just seem like ever one has no humiliated at comp

Re: Lack of passion in scouting
 

We were too busy trying to get our piece of crap up-and-running to worry about how finicky or weak the scouting was, although in my honest opinion there weren't that many awful scouters at Buckeye last season.