[mtaman02]

Originally Posted by Rob

Negatives:

It seems that the four divisions field crews have a "race" each year to see who can finish their qual matches the earliest, with the prize bieng invited to be the field crew on einstein. I may be way of base here but from my observations it appears that this is the case. While this may be a good way to keep the volunteers entertained, I strongly feel that this creates a situation where rules and policies can be bent and the experience of teams can suffer. Teams work really hard to get to the Championship event. This "race" against the other divisions can detract from the teams experience and lead teams to feel as if the field crew believes the teams experience comes second to accelerating the schedule to finish early.

FIRST and foremost because I keep forgetting to type it in my views are solely based on my personal experience as an Team Alumni / Volunteer and not on behalf of FIRST.

As far as this goes you have to keep rotating things in the back of your mind b/c what you say here is kind of loaded in a way.

Scheduling: FIRST handles what they want ---> FMS manages match scheduling
---> Show Ready manages the event as a whole and attempts to keep the whole event on time by constantly adjusting FIRST's expectations as needed.

So no matter which field finishes first you still need to wait for the rest before you can move onto the next phase of the event. FIRST would rather hear the fields are running on time safely then ahead / behind schedule which would cause a concern for safety all b/c a field thinks by finishing first they will go to Einstein. Carelessness and sacrificing a teams competing experience is not acceptable.

Field Races: I feel thats untrue. Division Volunteers are encouraged to work at a set pace according to FIRST's expectations on how quickly a field can be reset but not rush or bend the rules / policies to get the job done quicker. Think of it as 4 Regionals going on at once. Each field has their own FTA, Supv and Queuing Personnel etc... So each field operates independently of one another like a Regional Event and of course will naturally operate differently then one another. At the end of the last match or just before pairings The Supv's of their Fields gathers their respective crews and selects "X" amount of volunteers for the Einstein Crew (at least thats how they did it in '05 and '07). Those chosen were the ones who can reliably repair minor defects in the field w/o causing a distraction and those who can effectively and safely help move teams on and off the field. Field reset only takes 2 minutes at max. The rest of the time is used for Robot Linkup and last minute debugging if required. So this years reset expectations are a little faster in of itself and not the doing of the volunteers & how quickly they worked - It's just how the game was desgined. Volunteer as a Field Repair / Reset Crew member and you'll see what I mean. If I'm not mistaken the turnaround time between matches should've been 6 minutes + match run time. Thats pretty comfy. In the past it used to be a little more reset time due to the complexities of the game (more objects to be scored + different methods for scoring which = more items that have the ability to break). There's only 12 balls on the field this year - we just clear them out of your way so you don't trip and you place them before you leave your robot. So this years reset expectations were simple and quick from the get go. Next year the fields might not run as fast due to change in game and deisgn of key game features. So you have to take all of that in account. Thats probably (and I use that word loosely b/c no one person can really find out why FIRST does what they do) why FIRST ran this reocrd amount of matches this year - the game was simple enough to reset and they figured they could add 1/2 a day to the Qual. Schedule b/c of this years game features and # of teams competing - next year you might be back to Fri and Sat only competing and have a slower match cycle time. I've done Field Repair / Reset / Setup / Break Down / Queuing on all levels and FTAA - All jobs which revolve around a set schedule that FIRST outlines. At times you feel rushed but that could be because your behind 45 minutes and looking for innovative ways to regain some of that time lost for whatever reason. Sometimes it's unrecoverable but when ever I was told to help in the speeding up process we were never told to bend or break pre-set policies. We were always told to do the best we can to be on point when the buzzer sounds. As a team member you get to have fun playing at the event and experience everything - As a volunteer part of your particular job crew you get to experience how to work as one so that the team members can have a good time in experiencing everything. Nothing more nothing less

=) Hope your '10 off-season is awesome. ^_^