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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'
The 6 week build season may be a reality for some, many or even a majority of teams; I don't know. For the eleven season that I have been involved in FIRST FRC, the 6 week build season has clearly been a myth for some number of teams. And in the past few years, the two teams which I have mentored are included.
I agree that allowing access to the competition machine during the competition season will provide the opportunity for more folks to choose to extend the intensity of the build season without spending the additional finances required to effectively build a practice robot. I don't know how many folks would make that choice, but it is a personal choice and I do not feel compelled to decide for anybody but myself.
I am 85% confident that our team would make use of the time and be more competitive sooner as a result.
My position is that the current system makes a mockery of the idea that all of this great design, fabrication, iteration, optimization and improvement occurs in six weeks. It is laughable and I find it completely intellectually dishonest.
If FIRST wants to continue to perpetuate the myth, I will continue to follow the rules and strive to increase the number of sponsors, mentors and additional processes and resources required to continually improve our team's on-field product, because that is my area of focus on the team and because the students have much more fun, are much more engaged and appear much more inspired by a much more competitive machine.
I like that we have the opportunity to improve as the season progresses and I think there is tremendous value in exposing students to the process of continual improvement. I would not want to see the system altered to eliminate this aspect of the process.
What I would appreciate is the ability to more cost effectively and productively take advantage of the full 13 or so weeks between Kick Off and the Championships ship date.
Like I posted previously, the only stop build date should be the date Fed Ex picks up the crate to take the machine to Championships.
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