[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

This is not a FIRST sponsored forum, this is a team forum and always has been. Only the First Forum is sponsored by First. For myself, as for others that may or may not be FIRST staff, we write here for the teams that need advice. As part of that responsibility we (the collective CD community) feel strongly in correcting occasional errors in posts to insure that teams get the answers they need. I write personal opinions on issues related to the community in general from my collective experience (17 years on WildStang and 43 years as a Broadcast Engineer).

Fair enough if I am mistaken. Your forum's position is well established in FIRST circles and the frankly your forum actually often comes up before FIRST forums in a variety of situations. My apologies for misinterpreting the extent of your influence.

I just want to make myself very clear again, that nothing I've written in this topic is intended to devalue your views or your experience.

I still have to ask what your reference to students on field teams means?

It all comes down to how leadership decides to handle situations.

I see people all over the place in these topics suggesting that some of us have lost confidence in the field personnel because we speculate and try to solve the problems (funny to be asked not to solve problems in situations where it's the task of the day normally...especially difficult considering the enthusiasm that FIRST inspires in regard to troubleshooting regardless of whom you are or what you know). That somehow we have lost confidence in FIRST's ability to troubleshoot this issue on the field.

I have lost no confidence in any field personnel. None at all. Not one field person I've seen recently seemed to me to be intent on making the playing field anything other than fair, circumstances beyond their control may influence the situation otherwise however. It was certainly clear to me on several occasions they were not fully equipped or fully prepared with quick, direct and specific resolutions to a variety of problems. Again there's a limit to what they can bring to the table, having never seen your robot before, having no access to valuable tools, and sometimes not having information about things that could and probably should have been given to them before these events. As my example in this topic, I was expressly assured by field personnel that the field was on 2.4GHz...not 5Ghz. That's a problem that needs to be addressed, it was a mere simple error I'm sure, but it's an error that masks other communications issues. Collecting anecdotal information before events is no real solution to the issue either of getting these field folk and the teams the information they need. Continuous, specific, directed data collection is a good solution.

I also brought that up because some people were genuinely thrilled that I had actually bothered to think to bring an oscilloscope to an event as the guy that didn't even know he was competition field spare parts until the evening before. People at that event in management of it made it very clear they intended to recommend that an electronics table, or at least the relevant basic tools were available to teams at events. They were thrilled that I sat there making tails for 2GO PC's with broken Ethernet ports. I even made a bunch of cables for the field and for teams. It was extremely clear to me that some of these teams had no resources to do this for themselves I wonder what would have become of them had I not stepped up.

When I wander through forums often reading but not posting to topics and I see people sort of suggesting that field personnel are somehow to deal with this. When I see people suggesting we should be quiet because the field personnel might feel we are being predatory on them. It makes me very unhappy. The field personnel have done all they could, in many cases much more than they should have been able to do...

However, they are restrained by the tools, by the quality of their instructions, and most importantly by restrictions on information that need to be removed.

I don't find any fault for these people running the fields, in the end FIRST is the central control canopy for all that happens. If the information doesn't get there. If the instructions were not given. If the tools were not there. FIRST needs to do something about it. Not have some people running around topics suggesting that other people are not patient with the field personnel or that the field personnel are the issue. There's no need for people to be silenced, but we can all see the unprecedented and absolute need that this problem...in fact all problems that drop robots dead on the field be meticulously managed and removed.

Data collection needs to be done. It needs to be done to analyze this mess at the Championship. It needs to be done within the organization. It needs to be a tool handed to every nook and cranny of the people involved and it does need to involve the people in the community. It needs to be continuous and it shouldn't be disappearing behind the curtains now. Blame is irrelevant and again purely anecdotal.