[RoboMom]

Maybe my experience is unusual, but with the handful of Regionals I've assisted with, on Thursday there is a whole lot of helping going on in the pits illustrating Woodie's mantra of “the robot is the campfire we all sit around.”

And it's not just the rookie teams. There are numerous teams who are "reinvented" each year. New mentors. New students. New learning curve.

I think the goal should always be to have a working robot go in the crate. But the reality is stuff happens. Sometimes big stuff happens. Getting good mentors is still a goal, but not a reality for some teams. With a Regional of 50+ teams (Boston, Chesapeake, DC) my experience has been there will be at least 10 teams with big challenges. And these challenges will usually take up a big part of Thursday to fix, even with the help of many teams.

There is an entire PR campaign that needs to take place to convince the teams to start with inspections, and they are “out of time,” and they will penalize their alliance partners if they don’t accept help from others and pass inspection. Soon.

But this aspect of the competition is also what "sells" FIRST. In fact, this part of the competition sold FIRST to the Dept. of Educ. in Maryland. Sure those spiffy robots looked great and passed inspection earlier, but honestly, the superintendent was most interested in the stories of all the help the brave little toasters got from the teams around them. It was about the teamwork and problem-solving, not the robots. I escorted a big VIP in Boston in the pits a few years ago-same thing. And how many times have we told the story of the teams who built a robot for a team at Championship when their crate didn’t arrive. Good stuff.

I've also experienced trying to recruit enough qualified inspectors year after year. It's hard work. And last year was even more challenging as the volunteer dinner and training was eliminated on Wed. as a cost cutting move, leaving Thursday morning breakfast as the training.

I can’t quite get my head wrapped around what a compacted “Thursday” would look like, but am open to seeing how this could work.

One suggestion is better communication to the teams about how the process works on Thursday at your venue. I have tried to do a quick “greet/assess what help is needed/what help is available” with each team first thing on Thursday at the Regionals I’ve helped with. In the medical world where I’m from it’s called “triage.” With the rookies, there are an extra couple of minutes explaining how the day will unfold and how much time they have. This can be a joint effort between the inspectors & pit admin, but best if there is someone coordinating. I know this is done at most of the Regionals, but maybe the lessons learned could be more formalized across the board.