FRC booK behind the design

[Ravage457]

Originally Posted by JVN

The quality of the submissions is the important factor in success of a project like this. The books were awesome because teams took some time to provide good raw material, and Vince & Stephanie took the time to polish up some fantastic final chapters.

It is easy to say "we should do this! We'll post it on XXXX site!" but without the quality articles, this is just talk.

How many teams take the time to create a submission worthy description of their robot and publish it? Overall system details? Details of subsystems? Documentation of iterations? Post-Mortem Analysis?

This is a very chicken/egg discussion in my book...

-John

Very true, not alot of team do that, but those that actaully do are the best and it amazing how they do it and come up with the best and great looking robots. especially when breaking down thier system and sub systems

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by JVN

The quality of the submissions is the important factor in success of a project like this.

Very true. And this one thing is probably the #1 risk factor. I'm not wildly optimistic about success. But we should press on and give it a whirl !! Maybe it will happen.

[Starke]

Originally Posted by JVN

It is easy to say "we should do this! We'll post it on XXXX site!" but without the quality articles, this is just talk.

How many teams take the time to create a submission worthy description of their robot and publish it? Overall system details? Details of subsystems? Documentation of iterations? Post-Mortem Analysis?

This is a very chicken/egg discussion in my book...

-John

John,

You stated perfectly what I have been thinking. From a CD discussion during the 2012 build season, I decided to launch FRC Designs: Behind the Design (http://www.frc-designs.com/btd.html). This portion of the site was meant to be an online version of the texts to give inspiration to teams. Is this what people/teams are looking for?

Since the launch of this portion of the site (June 2012), I have had one submission.

Could I promote the site more? Probably.
Could I do a better job at asking teams to submit? Maybe.

As you said, there is a lot of agreement among people that it should be done. But, there is not a lot of follow-up to the discussion.

I am here, available, and am more than willing to publish the information. I just need the help from people/teams.

Matt

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Starke

John,

You stated perfectly what I have been thinking. From a CD discussion during the 2012 build season, I decided to launch FRC Designs: Behind the Design (http://www.frc-designs.com/btd.html). This portion of the site was meant to be an online version of the texts to give inspiration to teams. Is this what people/teams are looking for?

Since the launch of this portion of the site (June 2012), I have had one submission.

Could I promote the site more? Probably.
Could I do a better job at asking teams to submit? Maybe.

As you said, there is a lot of agreement among people that it should be done. But, there is not a lot of follow-up to the discussion.

I am here, available, and am more than willing to publish the information. I just need the help from people/teams.

Matt

Unfortunately, being unofficial (i.e. not an official FRC award) and not actually publishing the submissions in a book detracts from the prestige that attracts people to submit. Perhaps those interested could fund the book through a Kickstarter campaign?

[R.C.]

Matt,

Honestly if anything, spamming people and hounding them is the worst approach.

IMO, the best approach would be probably to create an "E-book". Then either have an open or private invite of teams/robots. It would require people ,like JVN stated above, that could take information and present it well.

-RC

[dtengineering]

The books are amazing souvenirs and gifts. There is something about the physical book, however, that sets it apart from an e-book.

Perhaps most significantly, however, what makes the Behind the Designs books awesome was the editing and layout.

I'm not sure that kind of effort is available on a volunteer basis... but, on the other hand... wikipedia exists, so I may be underestimating the awesomeness of volunteer editors and writers.

It may also be possible to combine an e-book with a limited edition print run. It may also be possible that as the number of teams has grown, so has the potential market.

I'd probably buy a hard copy... and I'm not even building FRC bots any more.

Jason

[Siri]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Unfortunately, being unofficial (i.e. not an official FRC award) and not actually publishing the submissions in a book detracts from the prestige that attracts people to submit. Perhaps those interested could fund the book through a Kickstarter campaign?

Or is there another way to renew the prestige? Might FIRST be convinced to get behind it again somehow? Even if it's just adding it to the MC's speech when they announce technical awards or offering some other endorsement. A popular, high-quality, well-used resource like this would still be good publicity for FIRST and great practice and publicity for the teams, even if it's not actually published in hard copy. I bet you could also get STEM magazines to run articles about it if that could help with prestige. (We've gotten covers before for things not nearly as large as this could be.) Have you [[EDIT: Sorry, Starke, not DampRobot]] talked to FIRST at all about this?

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by Siri

Might FIRST be convinced to get behind it again somehow?

Basically you have a great idea called 'incentivizing the team to make a submission'.

Let's try this idea.

Invite teams to make a quality submission to the editors. The top ten or so entries are then handed to traditional magazine editors. The magazine editors might then consider covering the design at the Championship for publication.

Several things will happen. 1) the e-book editors and the FRC design website gets content, 2) The magazine gets content, 3) FIRST gets coverage, 4) the submitting team gets coverage.

As an example, consider this article for Popular Mechanics

There were some print articles with teams in them last spring that had projects related to the FIRST Future Inventors Award. The is no reason not to cover interesting FRC robotics.

Nothing like a little incentive to get things done.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by ebarker

Basically you have a great idea called 'incentivizing the team to make a submission'.

Let's try this idea.

Invite teams to make a quality submission to the editors. The top ten or so entries are then handed to traditional magazine editors. The magazine editors might then consider covering the design at the Championship for publication.

Several things will happen. 1) the e-book editors and the FRC design website gets content, 2) The magazine gets content, 3) FIRST gets coverage, 4) the submitting team gets coverage.

As an example, consider this article for Popular Mechanics

There were some print articles with teams in them last spring that had projects related to the FIRST Future Inventors Award. The is no reason not to cover interesting FRC robotics.

Nothing like a little incentive to get things done.

FIRST's "Behind the Design" will be returning.

Earlier this year, we ran it through official FIRST channels and got approval to begin work on a new "Behind the Design". We used a few simple metrics to invite a number of teams to submit. Unfortunately, we've only received a small number of submittals from the teams who originally were interested in participating.

We still intend to publish this year in some manner, though I suspect it may end up being a free document due to the amount of content. We originally were going to charge a nominal fee and donate the proceeds to charity under the participating team's names. (E-book format, published through all the normal outlets).

I believe our struggles on this are our fault in the way we went about gauging interest. Instead of putting out feelers asking which teams would be interested to the entire FIRST community, we went after a select group of very competitive teams who are also quite busy during the summer. I believe we'll fix that issues in volume two next year. It's better to have too much content rather than too little. So next year we'll ask teams FIRST-wide for submissions, then pick those that go into the publication.

As for a very abridged volume one, expect it out later this year. It will return next year, bigger and better. I suspect we'll be looking for guest editors as well, because if submissions are open to the whole community I'm betting we get a "large" response.