[aldaeron]

For me, the build season is a major selling point like Al mentioned. When you tell the general public that a bunch of high school kids built this fantastic robot in 6 weeks - they are always astonished. I typically correlate this to a real world competitive bid for a project demo - if you don't have a working demo at the deadline, you're out!

The main thing I worry about with regard to the 6 week build season limit is newer teams that compete for one or two season and then fold. The first year I mentored we failed spectacularly (caused by our lack of knowledge of "what works in FRC" training resources). While it was a great "learning experience" for the kids, most of them did not return the following year.

I recall seeing some statistics recently about returning percentage of rookies being quite poor (someone better at searching - help me out here). My experience is that FRC can be quite a steep learning curve and that with more time, newer teams would be more successful and want to keep participating.


My suggestion is to keep veteran teams on the 6 week schedule and allow rookies an extra 1-2 weeks before bagging. My reasoning is that they would get to see other robot reveals, catch up if they are behind, tweak their design slightly based on reveals of top teams or get in some driving practice to ultimately make more competitive robots. Since many regions have pre-ship scrimmages rookies would be able to see their robot in action and then make some tweaks over a longer period (typically there are only 3 days between scrimmage and bag). This would hopefully improve their experience and make them want to return. I realize that in some cases, this could be abused to give these teams an advantage.

Similarly, 2nd year teams that performed poorly in their rookie year could apply for an extra week and FIRST could allow this on a case by case basis.

I am assuming a bad experience is the primary reason teams do not return, though it can also be loss of funding/sponsor/teacher/etc. I also realize the logistics of this proposal could be significant. I am confident CD can help shape this into a better idea.

In my experience the best measure for student success has been the ratio of students to mentors. The more time students get to spend with mentors the more they learn and the more they get out of the program. With a longer build season for rookie teams I think there would be more time for students and mentors to work together. Most new mentors I have met seem to ease into FRC and only come once a week.

Since this discussion comes up every year, I think FIRST should poll teams about build season changes as part of the year end survey (or perhaps a pre-season survey).

-matto-