[techhelpbb]

There are ways to improve the time to troubleshoot power issues on the robot and they should be explored. Documentation is a fine thing but at some point we have lots of documentation now and all too often it's missed. Writing documents is fine to offload responsibility for risk to those that should be reading those documents. However, as Einstein demonstrates shifting responsibility does little for the reputation of FIRST generally. The people in the stands are there to see the show and robots not moving is what you expect at a museum.

There are proper ways and improper ways to conduct investigations if you know you have a real issue. I should hope the message of this report is tempered to consider that not everyone who takes issues with the status quo is going to operate with reckless disregard for policy and process. I should also hope that this report makes it clear to FIRST that stonewalling channels can lead to negative outcomes. Just a point as I have often found that it's a serious problem to get the attention of those that have the power to command resources to investigate within the organization. That alone can never justify the risk of this situation but I can see how the factor contributes.

From my last post it's clear that ranking or de-ranking Team 25 (based only on the unique information I have as I have their original A version router) couldn't have been the practical goal. Under the circumstances any effect on who won was probably as stated by Al and this report merely secondary to the person's goal to demonstrate the cause and effect of their ability to deny service to robots (regardless of whom was effected which in many ways made their point useless anyway).

Given the only person who has been confirmed to cause any issue was only doing something that anyone could have and probably did stumble over (hence some of the earlier failures). I return to the same point as the others. This was a bad decision on their part and they have paid their price according to what FIRST deemed acceptable. FIRST is the most effected. FIRST lost money, reputation, resources, and opportunity on a national stage as the direct result.

As to the idea presented elsewhere that no team can understand how these teams felt. Let me point out that frequently teams ranking towards the top are effected by the ruling of the refs on the behavior of other teams on the fields during matches. I have personally been involved with a team that felt they were improperly impacted by the actions of other teams and people on the field during play. While this is more unusual than normal it's really quite similar. These are all fantastic teams. I feel badly for the seniors on these teams who will soon no longer be able to hold student roles, but beyond that these teams are not magically great. They have important recognized qualities that will carry them past this and we hope to future recognition.

Let no one mistake that I still think the smart thing for FIRST to do is legally bind these people to silence and strongly discourage any attempt to discover who these people are. We are a large organization. I worry not about the majority of FIRST and how it will behave but I worry that somewhere in FIRST there is a small number of people that will play hero if they find out and only compound the misdeed.

Let us focus on the positive which is that FIRST can move forward into the future hopefully better for this.