Quote:
Originally Posted by jweston
I'm expecting next year's field will be completely empty except for gaffer tape.  |
Oh god, my poor robot.
Only if we limit teams to 2 CIMs or limit travel between zones with rules cuz holy crap I don't wanna take cross field hits with 6 CIMs again.
Improve Team Exp?
Focus on the team experience. Every event needs to understand they are providing a service the teams are buying. This needs to be drilled into every volunteer.
There needs to be a process for removing consistently abusive volunteers.
Transparent and open processes and procedures. (Judging and Field side)
More, events, more often. I wanna see every Saturday in February, March, April, and May have robot events on them, multiple events, around the country. Even if it's just playing scrimmages. We can't just play 2 or 3 times a year. This is all about being the STEM equivalent of getting kids bouncing that basketball for hundreds of hours, we need to provide venues for it. We don't need showy venues, or fancy AV systems. We need the robot equivalent of pickup games. We need bot jams where they show up, find out the game, build a bot, and compete in a weekend. [1] We need portable fields that can be set up by a bunch of kids in an hour to play robots.
Stop focusing on growth. unpopular statement but - teams that don't move don't inspire. Let's focus less on "a team in every school" and more on building sustainable programs. Would a school start a Division 1 football program without a coach with some basic experience or knowledge? No. Why are we doing FRC teams that way?
Those last two really have to go together - don't start teams with people who have no experience with teams. But how do they get experience? By being at these events.
[1] Didn't CD used to do this with the EduBot stuff at the Ford Sweet Repeat? Or is my memory finally going.