[XaulZan11]

As a fan of FIRST who just wants to watch matches, see which strategies and robots win, I'm super excited to get to see finished robots in just a handful of days. As someone who has to work with students on my team, it does bring some additional challenges. While I may have enough experience and confidence (or stupidity) to deviate from these legendary FIRST mentors' strategies and designs, I think that is pretty hard for a 16 year old high school student to do. As Matt Stark mentioned, I'd prefer to let students think for themselves for a little bit first before getting too much tunnel vision. Last night, a student jokingly asked me if we should even meet during the first three days of buildseason.

Last year, the original Ri3D built a robot that would have been competitive at every regional and may have won a couple events, but probably wouldn't have faired too well at the championship (tall cyclers usually had trouble getting the nod over short cyclers unless they had a secondary feature). One of my concerns is, what if one of these five robots stumble on 'the design'. For example, the minibot ramp in 2011, 469's 2010 ball return, 1114's 2008 puncher claw, 67's 2012 utility arm (even if a team doesn't copy the arm, I'm sure they would build a wide robot). I prefer not to watch events (let alone the championship) where the winner is who could implement the same design better. Given the experience and talent of those building the robots and the competitive environment, I wouldn't be shocked if one of them built the dominate design of that year.

One possible compromise that I would prefer (but may not be best for all those involved) would be to still build a robot in 3 days, but not share anything until a week or so into build season. How cool would it be if each team created a professional quality hour documentary on their three days and then we had a unveiling week with one team showing their video a day. We all loved 148's unveiling videos, but what if it was an hour long and featured interviews that detailed their design thoughts and process? Teams would still have time to think for themselves, while these robots built in three days could still provide significant help for those inexperienced teams that are behind and really need the help. Plus, the documentaries would probably be more inspiring and cool than some youtube clips. The videos probably would be one of the first things I'd show to a potential mentor.

While there are certainly some valid concerns and downsides to these completed robots shortly after buildseason, I do think the benefit outweighs the negative.