[BB]: What do you Think (two parts)

[DonRotolo]

Of course, we all know that answers on Chief Delphi are not likely to be seen by FIRST HQ. If you want to share your opinion - and you should! - look for an official FIRST communications channel.


About that chicken and egg: It is perfectly clear that the Egg came first. It just wasn't a Chicken that laid it.

[wendymom]

I can only say what happened with Exploding Bacon and Team BAD. We both had FRC teams and then added FTC teams later to give the kids something to work on during the fall.

As for overlap? I'm thinking more about time overlap than distance. We run into issues when kids who have been doing FTC all fall want to morph into FRC while the FTC season is still going. Either they neglect FTC, or they don't join into the FRC build until late in the season and they have a harder time getting up to speed. We finally had a rule last year that if you wanted to drive the FTC bot, you could not apply to be the FRC driver. We did two years with both FTC and FRC teams making it to World Champs. We only had 20 or so kids on the team at the time. It was very hard to maneuver.

As for distance......I have families that drive close to an hour to come to meetings. (and every night during build)

[Eric O]

Do FTC teams use TIMS? If so, it seems like this information could be collected by a question in TIMS and be required at registration. "What influenced the start of your team?" FTC Team XXXX, FRC Team XXXX, with the numbers being a drop down lists.

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by Eric O

Do FTC teams use TIMS? If so, it seems like this information could be collected by a question in TIMS and be required at registration. "What influenced the start of your team?" FTC Team XXXX, FRC Team XXXX, with the numbers being a drop down lists.

I like the idea! I think a dropdown would have too many options, though. It wouldn'y be to be very easy to use. I would use a plain text field or a combobox

[Mark McLeod]

Here are some rough numbers at a glance:

• 60% of FTC towns have had FRC teams at one time or another
• 43% of FRC towns have had FTC teams

40% of FTC teams would seem to have no probable affiliation with any FRC teams.

Of the others that could have an affiliation I imagine that many of those in large cities are probably overly influenced by the abundence of other nearby companion FTC teams.

[Rosiebotboss]

[quote=DonRotolo;1075401]Of course, we all know that answers on Chief Delphi are not likely to be seen by FIRST HQ. If you want to share your opinion - and you should! - look for an official FIRST communications channel.
QUOTE]

Don, I wouldn't be to quick to say that no one at HQ reads CD. "They" do. A lot of us Senior Mentors are on here regularily and we bring back a lot of your inputs. And I agree, seek out as many channels as you can, FSMs, RDs and frcteams@usfirst.org.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

Don, I wouldn't be to quick to say that no one at HQ reads CD. "They" do. A lot of us Senior Mentors are on here regularily and we bring back a lot of your inputs. And I agree, seek out as many channels as you can, FSMs, RDs and frcteams@usfirst.org.

"not likely" != "no one".

If anyone here on CD believes that the best way to communicate with FIRST headquarters is to post on CD, they need to re-think that.