Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Van
...The answer to these questions is "to remain competitive". That's not going to change...
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Forgive me, but this is making a number of assumptions that do not hold true for me.
1. Our schedule in build (and otherwise) is not such as it is simply to remain competitive. The world of FIRST is not
all relative. We set a certain standard each year that we want to achieve. It's absolute. This year, it was 3pt pyramid shooting and a 30 point climb. We worked our tails off because
we wanted that climb. If we'd gotten it sooner, which I guarantee we would have in a more open season (because it works beautifully on our practice bot...), the schedule would not have been as intense.
Yes, this is true even if we'd gotten trounced at our events by a couple of 1986s. We wouldn't have stopped dead in our tracks, of course, but we were more than prepared to dialed it back. Because it's not all about competition, it's about achievement. At some point, a point we're pretty much at now, our design plateaus. And we're cool with that. When we discussed trying to get full court shooting abilities and/or floor pickup--this was when we'd only been 2nd pick district semifinalists, mind--we decided against it, because we had lives.
2. This answer's shorter. We buy things we have to ship because we want our students to have experience with those real-world items. For instance, this year we bought material to mold our own polyurethane wheels. Yes, it helped us competitively (well, kinda), but we did it because the kids wanted to try it and because
we wanted that climb. The same goes for the things we ask our sponsor mentors to machine--it's just great experience for the students.
In short, my answer is not to be competitive. It's to be inspirational. In many ways, this is an absolute, and in terms of robot function, it realistically plateaus (unless you're one for a total rebuild, which we're not). More time gives me more of an opportunity to do that: to gather more mentors to help more students, to engage more students for a meaningful time, to reach out to more teams in more ways, to save more money for other efforts, and yes, to 'cram' less.
In terms of competition though, I seem to have forgotten how we determined more time would change relative competitiveness of the top 1/2-1/3rd. The bottom rising I get: more time to cross-team mentor, maybe more mentors signing on...but the top? We seem to have spent most of this thread talking about how the elite and pursuing-elite teams work through the 4 months anyway, and how we all don't want to work harder than we already do. How many people actually think the Jones' would get untouchably better in an open season, or would even force us to work much harder? The Jones' I've seen here seem in favor (whether they're for the concept or not) of spreading out in an open season just as much as others. We've already heard from 67 that they don't even work the schedules we're talking about, we see Daisy's at their limit, and we know 1114's mentors are mostly weekenders. I guess I just forgot, because the gap hadn't occurred to me before.
@Brandon: I agree, there are certainly logistical issues in an open season. No argument. They may even be intractable, though I doubt it. (Are you sure this doesn't fit in the overhead bin, Sir?
Perhaps we should be sponsored by American Airlines instead of FedEx.) I don't think anyone's timeline for opening the season is January 2014. It may even have to wait for more districts, but I still think it's worth talking about.