Well, JJ already posted the sustainability model I've been tinkering with on and off for a year or so [1] I'll just talk a little about the thinking behind it.
A team needs 4 things to compete.
- A competition
- Money
- Mentors
- Manpower (students, but I wanted to be able to refer to these as the three Ms)
The competition is, for the most part, outside of the team's control but having competitions more local does seem to help. But, I kinda ignored this one tbh.
Remove any one of the 3 Ms and the team folds. Or reduce the sum total of them beyond a certain point and the team folds. This gives us a wonderful way to actually discuss what is going to have in impact on sustainability that's not just anecdotes about how much the upper half teams spend on practice bots [2] or some name calling about districts in certain states [3].
So, the question I want to ask is -
How does removing bag day impact the 3 Ms of sustainability?
And then I have to add a follow on question to this thread:
Is team sustainability the metric we want to focus on? It's easy to say we want 100% retention [4] but the important question before setting any goal is
Does this further the goals of the program? [5] Instead of focusing on how every single team started can continue can we focus on how do we start teams that will be inherently sustainable?
I think the answer is yes, but it requires really evaluating something more than retention numbers. It forces us to start asking really awkward questions about things. Team 1337 may a hundred students and loads of money, but no mentor involvement. Is that team REALLY furthering FIRST's goals? What if it was the other way around and was the proverbial mentor built team? What if it was a team with mentors and students but no money? Or if it only had 3 students?
My point is, if the team isn't furthering the mission of FIRST year in and year out, is that a bigger issue? Can we focus on quality of impact rather than simply existence?
[1] Available here if folks missed it
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...xeo/edit#gid=0
[2] We get it, it's a lot
[3] Everyone getting their bingo on?
[4] Or 98% or whatever metric you want to pick
[5] This is the part where folks start doing a double take considering how vocal I usually am about sustainability. I have a point, trust me.