Quote:
Originally Posted by gblake
Counterpoint 1-3...
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I think we have 2 fundamental disagreements:
Logistics: As someone already involved in the outreach community, we're often limited not by misuse of person-hours but by literal dearth in weekends. Maybe we lose one to snow, one to exams, one to transportation, and all of a sudden there's only a few left out-of-bag. This isn't not because anyone bit off more than they could chew, and the problems don't scale directly with a longer season. Every season I'm in a position of saying I would've come again if there was another day. I hear this a lot from other outreachers--in fact many are volunteers rather than whole teams, so time management of the team's own build season isn't even as big a factor. It's literally just how many places you can go. Similarly, I disagree with the implication that everyone is a slave to Parkinson's law. Yes, teams that currently have poor time management will likely continue to. No argument! But not everyone does. A team that manages to run (4) 3-team weekend meets without a B&T is not incompetent because they only managed to run (1) with B&T.
Inward/Outreach Spectrum: I have minimum goals that I want to help my team toward before I allocate major resources (team or personal) outward. I expect every team falls in a different place this spectrum: maybe some can logistically run (2) 3-team meets with B&T as long as they sacrifice letting their own kids weld. Maybe some don't like that trade-off. The key is that inward goals aren't all competitive, so they don't inherently scale. Maybe it's "get N students CADing, master Y programming skill" rather than "be first seed". Without B&T (and particularly with good support resources and community norms), some teams further down the spectrum can aim for "get N+3 CADing, master Y, and meet with 2 rookie teams 3 times". I'm not saying this would happen automatically, but I think it's within our community's capabilities. Basing it around palpable schedule shift is much more realistically incentivizing than "everyone spend less time on your own team and reach out more"--even if we agreed that within the 6 week season that would benefit FRC as a whole, which I'm not totally sure I do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gblake
However, a few hours per week is all that is necessary to build a simple FRC robot that will perform consistently well in the hands of a practiced driver. Good scouts know that consistency is very valuable in FRC competitions. By assessing their own strengths and weaknesses, setting appropriate goals, and executing their plan; and team that only meets a few hours per week can show up ready, and be proud of doing what they set out to do.
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I can count on one hand the number of 'few hours per week' clubs I've seen that have a practiced driver. This is hard enough logistically, but most teams have no understanding of competition mechanics at all. I'm not saying they all
shouldn't understand this properly, but I don't see why we argue for them to do so on their own. Are we as a community really making the case that because we know it's possible, we'll ignore the challenges of those who struggle with it? It's just their problem? These are exactly the teams I and others try to reach during build season but struggle to within the confines of B&T. And I personally remember what it's like to be on a team that has no freaking idea how to build an appropriate robot. MOE reached out to us once, and it was huge. We would've gotten a lot less stupid a lot more quickly if only a few other teams had done so over the course of 5 years. It's not a high bar; it's just that the need far surpasses the hours.
And what about low-tier non-struggling teams? I can literally see and they often explain what more time could've done for them. And it's not 'we would've built an arm' or 'we'd've beaten everyone here!'. It's 'if we'd had a couple more more Wednesdays maybe Jane would've understood that programming skill' or 'maybe we would've convinced Carl to like electronics'. In fact I find that the infrequent club model is somewhat less susceptible to Parkinson's law, because they tend to view it primarily in this light. Unfortunately they also don't logistically get much FRC community support and the teacher tends not to continue past their event--or come back the next year. We have huge rookie attrition in this area in Philadelphia, both with struggling and non-struggling low-tiers.
In terms of the 'falling further behind' argument, I'm not sure I follow it. If Team 7000 finishes 56th with B&T and 56th without it, but in the latter Carl has decided to be an electrician and Jane understands Java and Alex came by 3 times to help with the design process, what's wrong with that? Moreover, I don't (even by your logic) see how they're falling further behind on a palpable level. As a former low-tier student, I really couldn't discern whether the Cheesy Poofs are Mars instead of the moon--or at least I wasn't upset by it. By your logic, the teams I was actually competitive against would remain pretty bad at managing their time (assuming no one got adequate outreach). The best get much better, but the ones I actually compare myself to still have the same problems I do, and there are still 24 robots in elims. Moreover, can't I switch that around and ask why teams who are bad time managers should benefit from an artificially shortened season against those that aren't? Isn't it better to incentivize time management and open more time for outreach rather than artificially compress the schedule?
Quote:
Originally Posted by gblake
Struggling teams need less struggle (reduce the root causes of their struggles), not a longer struggle.
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Agreed. (I think they benefit from a longer season to succeed in, once the community has greater resources to help them more.) I've belabored my outreach paradigm for doing this. What's your idea?