Quote:
Originally Posted by mtaman02
Once again, as part of the Field Assy. crew, we powered up around 5 or 6 ish last nite. We followed the step by step directions and went over our work at least 30 times. Between the current stresses of not knowing whats going on and being constantly reminded that SBA wanted to close up didn't help. We stayed as late as we could to get things going. There were many contacts made to try and help get this solved. It's not like we were just sitting around and saying tomorrow is another day the teams will understand. We were working our rears off to get things going. We all realize that teams paid good money to participate and so they shall, but the one thing teams MUST do is excersize patience and understanding. We're not playing with IFI controls anymore here, we're dealing with new stuff and while we all expect perfection we all have to realize that perfection doesn't come easy. Fri and Sat should be better days or at least I'm crossing my fingers and praying that it will be, we just ask that everyone be calm and bear with us. Angry Teams will not get the field going any quicker trust me on that!
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Mike- I (we) truly appreciate all the efforts that the field crew have had to go through to get the event working. This is not a slam against you or anyone working your butts off to get that thankless job done.
My objection is that this whole system never should have gone out until it was FOOLPROOF. Working from the team end this season has been pure Hell- complex configurations, failing equipment, constantly changing updates and such. Wasnt this system supposed to be a huge improvement on the IFI system and able to do more faster? i'M NOT SEEING IT. Yes- change is sometimeS hard and people don't like stepping out of their comfort zones but this whole situation was a total mess.
Through it all the NI tech support guys have been great. But at times even they were overwhelmed. We never started competition day with 7 teams unable to get their robots onto the field due to programming. Josh in our pits today was running himself ragged trying to help teams that were at their wits' end.
The parent company never should have put their teams of diligent volunteers in the situation in the first place. This was their doing- not the regional field crew's. The field crews should be sainted for the effort above and beyond all expectations that you put out.