JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

The 2011 Championship was an incredible one for me. It had incredible high moments, and incredible low moments. Overall it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

I'm so proud to be a Robowrangler, and extremely happy with our team's performance this past weekend.

I took the time to post a few thoughts and memories:
http://blog.iamjvn.com/2011/05/my-20...mpionship.html

I hope your experiences were as powerful as mine. Enjoy your off season.

-John

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

John, as cheesy as this sounds, 148 and 234 are both two giants who's shoulders our teams are attempting to stand on. The win against you meant a lot to the team, not because it was just another win, but because you guys are their role models as well as for the teams in the EWCP.

I can't wait to see your 2012 machine, and be pushed even more in the pursuit of excellence the way 148 constantly is. Because of you and Team IFI, our adopted mantra was also "continuous improvement," and I hope we achieved that to a level that even you can be proud of. Thanks for being the epitome of good engineering in FRC.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

Another great blog post by the great JVN. If anyone is reading this who doesn't keep up with it, you're really missing out.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

I stopped by your pit, and got a very detailed thorough tour of the robot by a few students, that thing is sick btw

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

I can never really understand all the technical jargon about robotics or the systems, subsystems, and programming aspects of the teams. I do understand when the students and their mentors get excited about all of that and I respect it. On 148, I always respect that part of the team because it is so much a part of 148's standard of excellence and reputation. But - the part that I really understand and appreciate about 148 is the heart of the team. This blog entry showcases this heart which is the size of Texas. And this blog entry made me cry from paragraph to paragraph and overall. Inspired tears are made of something precious - appreciation of Herculean efforts, long hours, beauty, power, respect, going the distance, and honor.

It's easier to smile and laugh at your blog entries, John, especially when the students take over and entertain all of us. It is much harder to be inspired by the journey of the team as seen through the eyes of a lead mentor with a big heart. Because then we are inspired to tears.

Thanks for inspiring teams everywhere, especially in Texas,
Jane

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

John,

Amazing read. I loved seeing 148's bot up close. It was very well done!

While our team had issues with pneumatics, I'm highly curious about the one way pneumatic valve/fitting. Is there a chance a robowrangler or anyone could give more information about this?

Thanks,

-RC

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

John,

You may not know it, but the Tators made a trip down to San Antonio on week one, largely to see the Robowranglers run. On that trip I had a chance to talk with Andy Baker and told him that we would have to work at least more 6 weeks to even get close to your team's week one performance level.

Your team set the bar for us this year, and inspired us. It was a priveledge to play with and compete against the Robowranglers and we hope to be able to make it to that level again in the future. Thank you for setting the bar - in so many ways.

Best regards,

Mark Wibbels

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

Hi Mark,
Thanks for the very kind words. You guys have a fantastic team and were certainly playing at a high level last weekend.

We really enjoyed our qualification match together, and enjoyed our QF showdown (less so).
I promise we'll make it harder for you next year. ;)

Please pass along my compliments to the rest of your team!

-John

PS - Love the team name & image...

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

I don’t contribute much in the way of posts on this forum, but I felt compelled to share some of my thoughts after reading your musings this season. The reflections you have shared through your blog has been most enlightening to me and other members of my team. Your team’s success and quality has encouraged me to work harder as a mentor to provide greater opportunities for my students.

Your team’s formidable robot is only equally matched by your capable, respectful students. I stopped by with my son to check out your robot and we had our questions answered in detail by a kind young man.

Thank you for what you and your team bring to the FIRST community.

Darren Collins FRC2046

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

JVN and TEAM ROBOWRANGLER

Your team is one of the ultimate Class Acts of FIRST. You inspired our team to try an entirely different way of designing a robot. We read and absorbed your work from last year and put it to use in our prototyping this year. It made a huge difference for us. Thank you for putting your self out there over and over and helping FIRST become a better place.

Like many mentors including me, you wear your heart on your sleeve for your team. How can a Coach/Mentor not do this? I salute you it was an honor to be in the same Dome with you this past week. Congratulations to you for what you do... you and your team inspire us all!!

thanks Bob Steele and Skunkworks Robotics 1983...

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

"HEXBUGs are just a part of that VEX thing. Don't be impressed." Having a product show up in Target toy departments and at Michael's checkstands is not impressive? Hmmpph. I guess that person isn't a businessman.

On to the important topic:
If you gotta lose, it's great to know your team did their best. Happened to us, too. I don't know how our students feel about it, but I'm proud of them.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

You forgot Mrs. Z to make it mega epic....

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

Congratulations on the successful season. 148 was fun to watch some of your matches during qualifications. Its unfortunate to see you guys lose at quaterfinals but both alliances were super awesome. Keep up the awesome work and I hope 280 can play with 148 next year.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

And on tetrix motors being the next year game piece we have about 8 of them that we burned up. Plus two that might not make it through off season.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

John,
Very nice post! Thanks for the kind words and don't beat yourself too bad. You guys did very well and I like watching your students working hard in the pits. It is what we should all be doing at Champs. I hope your students had a great time.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

Great blog post. I always look forward to hearing what you have to say in your blog.

I was upset to see you guys exit in the quarterfinals with so much potential. I was also surprised that you didn't win a design award (though the teams that did were very deserving).

Unfortunately there are some people in FIRST that don't understand what it is all about. J

John, you and 148 truly exemplify what a FIRST team should be. You're an inspiration to all of us. Your team operates on a high level of competition and an even higher level of gracious professionalism.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

John you're the Rock Star!

Pretty sure that is evident walking through the pits with you. You can't go 5 steps without someone stopping you to comment on the blog or interviewing you.

I just want to be behind the scenes, work with my kids, and win matches. :cool:

Robowranglers should be a role model for all teams. I know they are for HOT! Your kids should never have to deal with all the "junk" that comes from the small sample of know-nothings out there.

Your a great friend and the Championships would not have been as cool without you.

Actually, when I started in FRC all I cared about was robot performance and results. Now I would probably just prefer to hang out with friends and watch their teams play, because I am a fan of so many teams....this all started with JVN @ IRI2007 being friend #1.

Keep up the hard work. Lets go break the 67+148 SF curse at IRI!

I am glad the term "buzzsaw" is sweeping the nation. It seemed appropriate when I told it to Paul after they got knocked out by another 111 buzzsaw alliance again.

BTW, I have no idea what I did.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

John,

Your blog has been an inspiration to me all year long. I look forward to reading new posts, and seeing things from your insight. Your openness and honesty along with your technical insight are models for all of us to follow. Thank you.

You mentioned that some teams say hurtful things about other teams. I agree.

I worked as an inspector on Wednesday and Thursday in Galileo, and I got to hear some comments from some teams about other teams (148 was not involved). A lead student and I had an interesting conversation after this student briefly saw another team's robot come up to the inspection table.

Lead student: "no way that's built by the students"
Me: "how do you know that?"
Lead student: "it looks wonderful"
Me: "It's amazing how a combination of simple engineering and powder coating can make someone think that no students are involved in the build. I know people on that team, and I know that students are very involved."
Lead student: "yeah, powder coating does make it look great - you're probably right"

I truly believe that I saw no robots this year that had no students involved in the build or design of the robot.

Please keep this up, John.

Andy B.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

John, what you've done with your team is something that every mentor can be inspired by. Your entire team gave me the impression that they're professional, driven, and can still have fun. It's obvious that your students learned ALOT this season.

I was one of the random people who came up to you, asking about your robot.

Thanks for sharing your season with us! I'm giving some small talks to some local teams, and your blog and your white paper are on their 'required reading' lists.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

I just posted an edit & correction.
Apparently our loaned out minibot DID climb the pole for points in Newton match 147 against our friends 217-- the fun part about this? Those 20 points helped keep 217 in the top 8.

Funny how these things happen.

-John

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

You guys were awesome as usual. It was only by chance that those two teams kept you from the #1 seed. I loved your robot, it was fun to be able to see it in person and point out to one of our mentors all the cool things you guys did with the robot. I liked the regional winner medals attached to the inside, it adds a nice touch of #winning. Those who are critical of your team can just learn to stop complaining and get busy making themselves better. As one of our mentors said in response to the best robot, "Yeah the robot you're looking for is over there. It's the one that looks like it came straight out of the NASA Lab."

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

This attitude on the part of FIRST is disgusting. I'm getting very tired of hearing these types of stories. Why aren't more people calling FIRST out on this? It's rank hypocrisy. FIRST says their mission statement is "To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders." The VEX program accomplishes those goals. As does BEST. And Botball. And TSA. And probably a lot of other programs that I'm not familiar with. If that mission statement truly reflects FIRST's goals, then they should embrace any other program that is helping to accomplish those same goals. At the very least they could knock off the passive-aggressive thing they have going on where they take regular jabs at VEX.

If you ask me, this type of behavior on behalf of FIRST shows that the concept of Gracious Professionalism means nothing to them. I suppose you might expect this type of behavior out of some organizations, but FIRST pretends that they are better than that. Clearly they're not. Maybe it's about time that people who are sick of this crappy behavior from FIRST to start collecting up these types of stories where FIRST actively tries to harm other STEM-related projects and feed them to the politicians and CEOs who donate to FIRST. Maybe they'll agree with me that if FIRST is spending even one second trying to "compete" with VEX or other STEM programs then they are failing at their mission and that perhaps their money would be better used somewhere else.

Ironically, at this point, I think VEX and the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation are doing a much better job at FIRST's goal than FIRST is. If you visit the website of the RECF, on the front page they have links to all of their "competitors", even including FIRST. That's true Gracious Professionalism there if you ask me. It seems that they actually believe in the mission that FIRST only pays lip service to, and they back it up by linking to numerous other STEM programs right on their home page.

I'd love to ask Dean Kamen and Bill Miller and any others at FIRST HQ this question: would your grandmother be proud knowing that a judge representing your organization told an FRC student sharing their excitement about their fundraising proram, "HEXBUGs are just a part of that VEX thing. Don't be impressed."? And don't try to tell me that this was just a rogue judge who went off-script. It's not; I've heard first-hand statements from people at FIRST HQ that prove to me that this is an organization-wide problem.

These repeated negative comments about other programs coming from FIRST have me wondering why I support FIRST at all. I've already backed off on my involvement on FRC 111 in part because of this behavior. Now I'm questioning why I spend a bunch of my free time making the FRC Spyder app that helps support FIRST. I have absolutely no idea how IFI continues to be such a big FIRST supporter given the terrible public treatment they and VEX and RECF receive each year. Maybe things are more friendly behind the scenes but on the surface it looks to me like an abusive relationship. And for those who don't remember, Dean actually gave IFI the Founder's Award a number of years back! Can you believe that? Maybe he'll be dissing on Boeing 5 years from now if they dare to sponsor some non-FIRST STEM program too.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

John,
You have done another great blog post. I enjoyed hearing about your team's hard-work and fun, especially operation playhouse. I look forward to the full story, I can't believe I missed seeing that. 118 was just around the corner from us.

I am sorry to hear how low the lows were. I can't believe judges had the nerve to make such horrible comments. They were completely ignoring your students. This is exactly the worst thing a judge can do, making up their minds before hearing all the facts. Judges are suppose to be open to knowledge and make informed decisions.

Your team has been inspirational to us. If you had posters of your robot as a give away, our team would totally grab as many we could and plaster them on our walls. We even tried a little sheet metal this year. Just a small amount for sensors and made the mini-bot using a break. I look forward to what 148 cooks up next year.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

I agree, with you. They seem to be doing the say one thing and do another. From what i've done with non-FRC robotics VEX is clearly the better. FTC is really expensive with the TETRIX stuff. VEX is nice to work with it's the closer of the two to a FRC type event in customization, etc. I like Victors more too because they don't have an over-current fault state. Jaguars do and trigger before a breaker, which means for my team, no arm going up on a Jaguar. Probably got a little too specific there, but I agree that FIRST isn't holding up their own ideals.

Thank you for making FRC Spyder. It is the best thing ever, especially at competition. When pit admin. decided to announce to not use it, we all just looked at each other like "are they kidding us?". FRC Spyder at world championships was 100% about everything. I don't know what many teams would do without it. The normal scrolling thing FIRST has on the flat screens failed and they just scrolled through a webpage and they wonder why we use this awesome, not failing app.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

These are all the same issues that a lot of us brought up when they first announced the switch to Tetrix. Its a shame that our concerns about judging bias are true and being brought up in front of students. Not only is it disrespectful to the teams who work their hardest to promote STEM education through any media possible, but it is also greatly disrespectful to the students who participate in the VRC competitions.

The issue should be/ NEEDS to be addressed and brought up to FIRST's face.

One of the more articulated post on the subject by Rich Kressly: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...51&postcount=9

and http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...21&postcount=5

.

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

A Rollercoaster of Highs & Lows is definitely the best description of the weekend... I think that can be echoed by soooo many teams.

I think I pointed out to no fewer than 10 people how impressed I was that every time I walked by 148's pit (and that was a lot since I ended up in charge of doing all the "robot photos" for our scouting) the only people ever touching the robot (in fact very often the only people IN the pit) were students.

We unfortunately had some major travel hiccups which meant our students didn't get to the venue until 7pm... with all we had to do, we chose to work with the 5 of us we had (adults) to get things going... as soon as the kids walked in, we switched and walked out. We then had the unfortunate episode that the rest of our adults (chaperones & mentors) plane got grounded, and for 4 hours on Thurs morning we had all the kids, 3 chaperones and 5 mentors, and that was it... in a way, it was wonderful... the kids really HAD to do everything. I felt like we were glimpsing what the Robowranglers always do.

Then as I wandered to every single pit to take robot photos, I began to take more and more notice of who was working on the robots. In the lower numbers, it was often mentors & students hand in hand... but as I climbed in numbers, the mentors seemed to take over... odd since so many of these seem to be the teams complaining about the "beautiful mentor designed robots". Sure there were several pits where the students were still very involved, but it was noticeable, as I tried to go in team order.

I was completely in shock to see 148 out so soon. Our team elected to take the team photo at 1pm, I thought for sure I would get to see a few 148 eliminations matches... but one of our kids turned as we were leaving the stage, upon seeing 234 said... OMG, isnt that one of the Robowranglers partners?!? We were kind of in shock too...

And I laughed at the Will.i.am being free vs Karthik for $10... This can obviously be taken two ways... the first that our Real FIRST Rock-Stars cost money to see, while anyone at all can go see Will.i.am :) The second of course being that teams should have more access to FIRST Rock-Stars... though honestly, if Karthik could keep his presentation clean just one of these years, they might just film it and put it up online for everyone to see ;-)
Not sure which way you meant John, but I would gladly pay $10 to see Karthik, not sure I would say the same for Will.i.am (even though his support is welcomed!).

Overall I agree... oddly I felt very neutral walking out of championships this year. There were some things that had me crazy frustrated... but there were some really great things too...

Re: JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship
 

...wow. I admire your restraint for not putting your foot where I would have been tempted to after a comment like that.