Quote:
Originally Posted by Jessi Kaestle
Mentor/Team Burn-Out and Level-Loading Higher and Lower Resource Teams: I grouped these together because they are connected when it comes to the lower resource teams. Though some have brought it up, it seems to me from reading this thread that some here have lost sight that Chief Delphi is not a proper sampling of FIRST Robotics Competition Teams as a whole. Most lower resource teams that I have talked with drastically reduce how long they meet in the weeks between stop build day and competition. So when deciding if mentor (and/or student) burn-out would happen, remember that you should be thinking of the teams that struggle to have enough mentors (and/or students) during build season due to the current time commitments already being a massive deterrent. As a result I don’t think the elimination of stop-build day will level-load these teams with their higher-resource counterparts, if anything it might just move them further down the bracket in terms of competitiveness.
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Let's imagine that we never had a build deadline, and it was identified that low resource teams were having a hard time getting mentors and students to commit for the full 9-12 weeks. As a fix, somebody in our alternate universe proposes that we reduce the build season to 6 weeks. I think that proposal would be poorly received by the community, because it limits the high performers instead of lifting up the low performers.
Problem: >50% of FRC teams build robots that essentially can't play the game.
Solution: Give teams more time.
Regarding weeks 7-12 in our current setup:
1) Top teams use that time - they have the money and commit the time to utilize it.
2) Some teams can't use that time effectively because they lack funding to make a practice robot.
3) Some teams can't use that time effectively because their people won't or can't commit that much extra time.
If we get rid of the bag deadline, that helps group #2, but it doesn't help group #3. Is that a good reason not to help group #2?