JVN's Reflections on the 2011 Championship

[sgreco]

Great blog post. I always look forward to hearing what you have to say in your blog.

I was upset to see you guys exit in the quarterfinals with so much potential. I was also surprised that you didn't win a design award (though the teams that did were very deserving).

Unfortunately there are some people in FIRST that don't understand what it is all about. J

John, you and 148 truly exemplify what a FIRST team should be. You're an inspiration to all of us. Your team operates on a high level of competition and an even higher level of gracious professionalism.

[Adam Freeman]

John you're the Rock Star!

Pretty sure that is evident walking through the pits with you. You can't go 5 steps without someone stopping you to comment on the blog or interviewing you.

I just want to be behind the scenes, work with my kids, and win matches.

Robowranglers should be a role model for all teams. I know they are for HOT! Your kids should never have to deal with all the "junk" that comes from the small sample of know-nothings out there.

Your a great friend and the Championships would not have been as cool without you.

Actually, when I started in FRC all I cared about was robot performance and results. Now I would probably just prefer to hang out with friends and watch their teams play, because I am a fan of so many teams....this all started with JVN @ IRI2007 being friend #1.

Keep up the hard work. Lets go break the 67+148 SF curse at IRI!

I am glad the term "buzzsaw" is sweeping the nation. It seemed appropriate when I told it to Paul after they got knocked out by another 111 buzzsaw alliance again.

BTW, I have no idea what I did.

[Andy Baker]

John,

Your blog has been an inspiration to me all year long. I look forward to reading new posts, and seeing things from your insight. Your openness and honesty along with your technical insight are models for all of us to follow. Thank you.

You mentioned that some teams say hurtful things about other teams. I agree.

I worked as an inspector on Wednesday and Thursday in Galileo, and I got to hear some comments from some teams about other teams (148 was not involved). A lead student and I had an interesting conversation after this student briefly saw another team's robot come up to the inspection table.

Lead student: "no way that's built by the students"
Me: "how do you know that?"
Lead student: "it looks wonderful"
Me: "It's amazing how a combination of simple engineering and powder coating can make someone think that no students are involved in the build. I know people on that team, and I know that students are very involved."
Lead student: "yeah, powder coating does make it look great - you're probably right"

I truly believe that I saw no robots this year that had no students involved in the build or design of the robot.

Please keep this up, John.

Andy B.

[JesseK]

John, what you've done with your team is something that every mentor can be inspired by. Your entire team gave me the impression that they're professional, driven, and can still have fun. It's obvious that your students learned ALOT this season.

I was one of the random people who came up to you, asking about your robot.

Thanks for sharing your season with us! I'm giving some small talks to some local teams, and your blog and your white paper are on their 'required reading' lists.

[JVN]

I just posted an edit & correction.
Apparently our loaned out minibot DID climb the pole for points in Newton match 147 against our friends 217-- the fun part about this? Those 20 points helped keep 217 in the top 8.

Funny how these things happen.

-John

[Chexposito]

You guys were awesome as usual. It was only by chance that those two teams kept you from the #1 seed. I loved your robot, it was fun to be able to see it in person and point out to one of our mentors all the cool things you guys did with the robot. I liked the regional winner medals attached to the inside, it adds a nice touch of #winning. Those who are critical of your team can just learn to stop complaining and get busy making themselves better. As one of our mentors said in response to the best robot, "Yeah the robot you're looking for is over there. It's the one that looks like it came straight out of the NASA Lab."

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by JVN

We talked about the HEXBUG fundraiser with some judges. One judge was interested but the other judge said: "HEXBUGs are just a part of that VEX thing. Don't be impressed." It is frustrating that our students are forced to hear about stuff like this. Politics is the nature of business, but it sucks when it affects the kids.

This attitude on the part of FIRST is disgusting. I'm getting very tired of hearing these types of stories. Why aren't more people calling FIRST out on this? It's rank hypocrisy. FIRST says their mission statement is "To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders." The VEX program accomplishes those goals. As does BEST. And Botball. And TSA. And probably a lot of other programs that I'm not familiar with. If that mission statement truly reflects FIRST's goals, then they should embrace any other program that is helping to accomplish those same goals. At the very least they could knock off the passive-aggressive thing they have going on where they take regular jabs at VEX.

If you ask me, this type of behavior on behalf of FIRST shows that the concept of Gracious Professionalism means nothing to them. I suppose you might expect this type of behavior out of some organizations, but FIRST pretends that they are better than that. Clearly they're not. Maybe it's about time that people who are sick of this crappy behavior from FIRST to start collecting up these types of stories where FIRST actively tries to harm other STEM-related projects and feed them to the politicians and CEOs who donate to FIRST. Maybe they'll agree with me that if FIRST is spending even one second trying to "compete" with VEX or other STEM programs then they are failing at their mission and that perhaps their money would be better used somewhere else.

Ironically, at this point, I think VEX and the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation are doing a much better job at FIRST's goal than FIRST is. If you visit the website of the RECF, on the front page they have links to all of their "competitors", even including FIRST. That's true Gracious Professionalism there if you ask me. It seems that they actually believe in the mission that FIRST only pays lip service to, and they back it up by linking to numerous other STEM programs right on their home page.

I'd love to ask Dean Kamen and Bill Miller and any others at FIRST HQ this question: would your grandmother be proud knowing that a judge representing your organization told an FRC student sharing their excitement about their fundraising proram, "HEXBUGs are just a part of that VEX thing. Don't be impressed."? And don't try to tell me that this was just a rogue judge who went off-script. It's not; I've heard first-hand statements from people at FIRST HQ that prove to me that this is an organization-wide problem.

These repeated negative comments about other programs coming from FIRST have me wondering why I support FIRST at all. I've already backed off on my involvement on FRC 111 in part because of this behavior. Now I'm questioning why I spend a bunch of my free time making the FRC Spyder app that helps support FIRST. I have absolutely no idea how IFI continues to be such a big FIRST supporter given the terrible public treatment they and VEX and RECF receive each year. Maybe things are more friendly behind the scenes but on the surface it looks to me like an abusive relationship. And for those who don't remember, Dean actually gave IFI the Founder's Award a number of years back! Can you believe that? Maybe he'll be dissing on Boeing 5 years from now if they dare to sponsor some non-FIRST STEM program too.

[Mark Sheridan]

John,
You have done another great blog post. I enjoyed hearing about your team's hard-work and fun, especially operation playhouse. I look forward to the full story, I can't believe I missed seeing that. 118 was just around the corner from us.

I am sorry to hear how low the lows were. I can't believe judges had the nerve to make such horrible comments. They were completely ignoring your students. This is exactly the worst thing a judge can do, making up their minds before hearing all the facts. Judges are suppose to be open to knowledge and make informed decisions.

Your team has been inspirational to us. If you had posters of your robot as a give away, our team would totally grab as many we could and plaster them on our walls. We even tried a little sheet metal this year. Just a small amount for sensors and made the mini-bot using a break. I look forward to what 148 cooks up next year.

[Chexposito]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

If you ask me, this type of behavior on behalf of FIRST shows that the concept of Gracious Professionalism means nothing to them.... Now I'm questioning why I spend a bunch of my free time making the FRC Spyder app that helps support FIRST.

I agree, with you. They seem to be doing the say one thing and do another. From what i've done with non-FRC robotics VEX is clearly the better. FTC is really expensive with the TETRIX stuff. VEX is nice to work with it's the closer of the two to a FRC type event in customization, etc. I like Victors more too because they don't have an over-current fault state. Jaguars do and trigger before a breaker, which means for my team, no arm going up on a Jaguar. Probably got a little too specific there, but I agree that FIRST isn't holding up their own ideals.

Thank you for making FRC Spyder. It is the best thing ever, especially at competition. When pit admin. decided to announce to not use it, we all just looked at each other like "are they kidding us?". FRC Spyder at world championships was 100% about everything. I don't know what many teams would do without it. The normal scrolling thing FIRST has on the flat screens failed and they just scrolled through a webpage and they wonder why we use this awesome, not failing app.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Chexposito

I agree, with you. They seem to be doing the say one thing and do another. From what i've done with non-FRC robotics VEX is clearly the better. FTC is really expensive with the TETRIX stuff. VEX is nice to work with it's the closer of the two to a FRC type event in customization, etc. I like Victors more too because they don't have an over-current fault state. Jaguars do and trigger before a breaker, which means for my team, no arm going up on a Jaguar. Probably got a little too specific there, but I agree that FIRST isn't holding up their own ideals.

Thank you for making FRC Spyder. It is the best thing ever, especially at competition. When pit admin. decided to announce to not use it, we all just looked at each other like "are they kidding us?". FRC Spyder at world championships was 100% about everything. I don't know what many teams would do without it. The normal scrolling thing FIRST has on the flat screens failed and they just scrolled through a webpage and they wonder why we use this awesome, not failing app.

These are all the same issues that a lot of us brought up when they first announced the switch to Tetrix. Its a shame that our concerns about judging bias are true and being brought up in front of students. Not only is it disrespectful to the teams who work their hardest to promote STEM education through any media possible, but it is also greatly disrespectful to the students who participate in the VRC competitions.

The issue should be/ NEEDS to be addressed and brought up to FIRST's face.

One of the more articulated post on the subject by Rich Kressly: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...51&postcount=9

and http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...21&postcount=5

.

[Kims Robot]

A Rollercoaster of Highs & Lows is definitely the best description of the weekend... I think that can be echoed by soooo many teams.

I think I pointed out to no fewer than 10 people how impressed I was that every time I walked by 148's pit (and that was a lot since I ended up in charge of doing all the "robot photos" for our scouting) the only people ever touching the robot (in fact very often the only people IN the pit) were students.

We unfortunately had some major travel hiccups which meant our students didn't get to the venue until 7pm... with all we had to do, we chose to work with the 5 of us we had (adults) to get things going... as soon as the kids walked in, we switched and walked out. We then had the unfortunate episode that the rest of our adults (chaperones & mentors) plane got grounded, and for 4 hours on Thurs morning we had all the kids, 3 chaperones and 5 mentors, and that was it... in a way, it was wonderful... the kids really HAD to do everything. I felt like we were glimpsing what the Robowranglers always do.

Then as I wandered to every single pit to take robot photos, I began to take more and more notice of who was working on the robots. In the lower numbers, it was often mentors & students hand in hand... but as I climbed in numbers, the mentors seemed to take over... odd since so many of these seem to be the teams complaining about the "beautiful mentor designed robots". Sure there were several pits where the students were still very involved, but it was noticeable, as I tried to go in team order.

I was completely in shock to see 148 out so soon. Our team elected to take the team photo at 1pm, I thought for sure I would get to see a few 148 eliminations matches... but one of our kids turned as we were leaving the stage, upon seeing 234 said... OMG, isnt that one of the Robowranglers partners?!? We were kind of in shock too...

And I laughed at the Will.i.am being free vs Karthik for $10... This can obviously be taken two ways... the first that our Real FIRST Rock-Stars cost money to see, while anyone at all can go see Will.i.am The second of course being that teams should have more access to FIRST Rock-Stars... though honestly, if Karthik could keep his presentation clean just one of these years, they might just film it and put it up online for everyone to see ;-)
Not sure which way you meant John, but I would gladly pay $10 to see Karthik, not sure I would say the same for Will.i.am (even though his support is welcomed!).

Overall I agree... oddly I felt very neutral walking out of championships this year. There were some things that had me crazy frustrated... but there were some really great things too...

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by JVN

We talked about the HEXBUG fundraiser with some judges. One judge was interested but the other judge said: "HEXBUGs are just a part of that VEX thing. Don't be impressed." It is frustrating that our students are forced to hear about stuff like this. Politics is the nature of business, but it sucks when it affects the kids.

...wow. I admire your restraint for not putting your foot where I would have been tempted to after a comment like that.