[Andrew]

As I've read this thread, it seems that FIRST is a robot building competition. I thought that FIRST had different goals. Perhaps I am mistaken.

Goal One. Inspire pre-college students to pursue careers in science and engineering.
Goal Two. (a subsidiary to goal one). Make FIRST competitions more spectator friendly, so that folks who are not currently participating in FIRST get fired up and want to become part of FIRST.


The Ship Date obviously does not contribute to either of these goals. If you could spread the build phase further, most people would have the time, physical, and emotional resources to provide better mentoring to the pre-college students on the team.

If you reduce the wasted costs, you allow teams to spend those resources in a manner which may more effectively allow them to achieve their real goals. You also allow FIRST to reduce its costs. Those wasted costs include:
1. shipping - Mostly FedEx (could they put this money to more effective use?)
2. drayage - Mostly FIRST (could they put this money to more effective use?)
3. crate, time to build crate
4. tracking crate, getting it redirected to the proper site when it goes astray.
5. spare robot
6. emergency shipping of purchased parts when you realize you need a Potrzebie TOMORROW!!!
7. cost of scrap parts because you did not have enough time to prototype or think through all aspects of the design.

What happens to most teams when they hit the ship date? They down tools and go back to their lives. You may not see any of your pre-college students (as a mentor) or mentors (as a pre-college student), until you get on the van/plane/hotel for the first competition. If you extend the fabrication date, you will have more calendar time to mentor. This may not work for every team but it would certainly work for ours.

So, Goal One would be directly impacted in a positive fashion by removing the ship date.

Even if you lay down your tools on the ship date and attend the first week regional, Goal Two will be improved, simply because teams will learn the "features" of their design by having their drive team drive it for a week. This will allow teams a better opportunity to know exactly what tweaks to make in the pits. Better tweaks, more drive practice = more spectator friendly competition. Hence, more people are likely to get fired up about participating in FIRST.

Jack Jones made a very good point, which seems to be misunderstood or disregarded. Waste, as directly measured in dollars, will result in a marginal, unnecessary decrease in resource available to teams. Which will result in a marginal decrease in teams.

On a final note: Fairness. Who cares? We ALL benefit when someone who has a good idea has enough time to execute that idea. If teams then copy this idea or emulate this strategy, then better, more spectator friendly matches occur later in the season.

The Technokats had a great "big ball" manipulator in 2004. Baxter had a neat cork-screw tetra pickup in 2005. Those ideas are now in MY tool-bag, for future application in other arenas of life. I am richer for those teams having spent resources to bring those ideas to fruition.