Quote:
Originally Posted by PayneTrain
A good exercise that may be worth pursuing: here is the blog detailing the strategic pillars for FIRST. How does the removal or maintaining of bag day stand on these pillars, and how does it falter on them? |
That's a very good idea.
How Does Abolishing "Stop Build Day" Fit FIRST's Strategic Pillars
Expand Access and Participation, Broad and Deep:- A Short build season is one of the hardest parts about FRC for new teams. More time allows for more time to get help and work with veteran teams. Abolishing “Stop Build Day” makes FRC less scary for new teams.
- More out of bag time allows for more demonstrations and scrimmage events during the season.
- Level the field for international teams: Teams outside of North America have a very hard time competing at multiple events. By abolishing “Stop Build Day” new areas with very opportunities for events could hold smaller unofficial scrimmages and gain experience during the season.
Increase Diversity:- In conjunction with expanding access to new areas around the world we will dramatically add to our cultural diversity of the program.
- By abolishing “Stop Build Day” we are able to dramatically reduce the cost of fielding a competitive team making it less expensive for global expansion and deep expansion to schools and areas that cannot currently afford an FRC team.
Scale Efficiently:
- The elite teams in FRC are amazing.
- New teams need every advantage they can get and one of the biggest is how open and caring FRC teams are towards new teams. By abolishing “Stop Build Day”:
- Veteran mentors could help more young teams since losing a day of build is less important when there are more of them.
- Young teams have more time to learn, compete, and be inspired by veteran teams during the season.
- Local scrimmages and practice sessions could reduce the need for dramatic increases in events to meet team demand as more and more teams wish to compete more often.
- More time to fix the problems introduced by inexperienced teams. Pre-inspection events can be held prior to an event that allow young teams to get ready for their first inspection and not waste precious practice time
Ensure Sustainability:
Spending countless resources traveling to multiple events, building multiple robots and spare parts for them is not a sustainable solution.
- Abolish “Stop Build Day” and
- Teams can spend more of their money on growing their STEM program to reach more students.
- Have more time to support and elevate young and rookie teams.
- Hold demonstrations and workshops to increase team growth in their areas.
- Hold in season scrimmages that let teams compete more often for less cost to the program.
Achieve Broad Recognition:
The best way I can think of to achieve broad recognition is to increase the level of play on the field. Spectators don’t want to watch robots that are inoperable, uncontrollable, and aren’t meeting game objectives.
- By abolishing “Stop Build Day” we can
- Increase the level of play on the field.
- Reduce the number of robots that are inoperable during a match.
- Give teams more time with their robot to iterate and improve when there are errors.
- Give teams more time to work on programming and increase the challenge that the majority teams can meet.
- Put on a better show!
#BanTheBag