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Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
FIRST as a community was not ready for this game. The floor of the competition was far too many floors down from the ceiling. It created many instances where some of the best teams in the world simply struggled to get the W entirely because of their schedule. I can't imagine how painful that must have been for the students, parents and mentors on those teams.
But, this isn't just all on FIRST. It's on us as a community. We've made great strides in raising the floor of competitiveness, via initiatives like EWCP, Robot In 3 Days, etc, but we can do better. As a community, we probably could have done better with our neighbors to help them actually contribute to matches, rather than create hard feelings because a team who lost 20 days to snow couldn't hold a ball.
Everyone can complain about how 'the refs did this' or the 'rules said that' or whatever they want to say. We've all aired our dirty laundry on that several times, and I'm quite confident FIRST is listening. They've shown (especially Frank,) a lot more transparency this year, along with frequently responding to the community. They get it, and I'm sure they'll improve upon these issues.
FIRST could definitely stand to improve the inspection process and training. I can't count the number of times this year that I had to remind fellow inspectors that they are the first line of officials that a team meets at an event, and they have a responsibility to provide good customer service. It's been 23 seasons, and we're still hearing horror stories related to inspection. Also, the lack of no formal reinspection process reared it's head this year in Florida. In hindsight, it's kind of weird that we spend so much time documenting the initial robot inspection, and then hardly do anything to keep up with teams at the events. I look forward to this changing next year, hopefully with the new tablet system pioneered in MAR.
FIRST has their work cut out for them, but I'm confident that they're up to the task.
- Nick
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Alumnus of 1503 Spartonics
Founding Mentor of 5406 Celt-X
Mechanical Design Mentor of 3940 CyberTooth
Emceeing events since 2013 - come say hi!
Success doesn't always equate to match wins. It's about the wins off the field.
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