Quote:
Originally Posted by Ari423
I'm a programmer myself and even I wouldn't want to be in a room full of programmers. Just thinking about it is scaring me.
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Man, you won't like the professional world then... A cube farm as far as you can see, filled with nothing but programmers!
All kidding aside, I know plenty of ways something similar to this happens on a small scale after kickoff all the time. To give just one example, there's a group of local area mentors that get together regularly throughout the build season - we talk about our impressions of the game, robot designs, and what we're having trouble with, all so we can mutually support each other and keep all of our teams on a successful path. Mentors from maybe a dozen teams are involved, and not only is it a lot of fun, but you hear about stuff you never would have imagined!
This brings it to a much larger scale, which is great. I would recommend largely separating students from mentors in the discussion, though, maybe with some sort of regular summary available as a go between for the two groups. From my experience, excitable mentors have a tendency to drown out students, and our concerns may be different - while the students want to figure out what to build, mentors are often looking more at how to build different aspects and the problems they'll encounter later on in weeks 4/5. I know I, personally, would rather be involved in discussions with other mentors specifically so I can figure out the landmines awaiting us. My team will come up with the design they see fit, they don't need me involved too much with strategy or overall capability design
