Proposal: A New Way to Run FIRST Choice

[Jared Russell]

Each team gets assigned a random number, 1...27xx.

Each team created a prioritized list of things they would like to order (in qty 1). Ex:

1. Talon
2. Talon
3. Talon
4. Talon
5. Drill
6. Video card
etc.

The system automatically goes through a serpentine draft, assigning one item at a time. First pick in the first round is last pick in the second, etc.

Draft continues until all lists are empty, all credits are spent, or all stocks are depleted - whichever comes first for each team. The whole draft would take seconds.

After the draft, each team is presented with a voucher for the products they were assigned along with shipping information. At this step, a team has a chance to remove any products they no longer want from their order and then check out.

A couple days after the draft, FIRST Choice opens up ala yesterday, with a free for all to spend remaining credits on remaining merchandise. But without some teams getting 11 Talons and others getting stuck with low value items.

[JohnChristensen]

Originally Posted by apalrd

-What happens if they run out of the sidecar half way through the second round? How do you rank which teams get them? Do you claim that item out of stock for everyone in that round, and save the extra for next year, or do the current auction system for the excess?

My original thought process was to have a draft order and if the part is available when your team number is up you get the part.

Originally Posted by Andy A.

The 'auction' lasts a week. You place your bids up to some maximum (say 100 points). At the end of the week the items are 'awarded' to the teams who bid the highest for that item. Ties are broken randomly. The process then goes into another round of bidding, with teams allowed to redistribute their remaining points if they lost a bid.

Another idea was to start all teams at 0 points, and start adding them over time- say 10 points a day, such that each team might be able to afford one 'high value' item a day. really desirable things, like a class mate or Crio might cost a couple days allowance.

I saw that in the other thread. My issue is yesterday I had to miss a college lecture to order parts. Now if everyone gets new points at 12 PM EST for a week, I have to miss a week of lectures to get parts. I really think FIRST needs to look to a system that allows for the adults on teams to work our day jobs during the day.

The auction system would be interesting, but I think there would be the potential for a lot of items to go unclaimed. If I bid 35 credits for a cRio and the next lowest bid is 25 credits, I lose out on 10 credits and can't get a second item. If this was implemented, I think the auction would need to play with the same rules as the clearing of US national electric grid on the regional ISOs.

No matter what happens, I still believe we need an updated system. As much as we call for gracious professionalism, the prisoners' dilemma will still exist because of the secrecy surrounding the current system. I think it is fair to say someone got 11 talons yesterday, but no one knows who they are. Without that knowledge being public, calling for gracious professionalism will do almost nothing.

Just my two cents...

[BrendanB]

I think we would be better served with an introduction of lower points pre-season (we still have 24 credits we picked what we wanted) and quantity limits. One cRIO, one Classmate, four Talons, etc. We all have needs and desires for our teams but with limited quantities available, limits should be in place.

[cgmv123]

The simplest solution is to convince Cross-the-Road to give every team 8 Talons in the kit. That's not going to happen, but...

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

The simplest solution is to convince Cross-the-Road to give every team 8 Talons in the kit. That's not going to happen, but...

That takes us back to the old days when the KOP provided the same elements to everyone but as we grew a supplier providing 10,000 (4 per kit) was a large investment to make especially in this economy. Additionally, as more and more products have developed and been introduced to FRC less teams use whats in the KOP.

When I first started we only used Victors. Now we can use Victors, Jags, and now Talons. Many teams use one and one only either trading them for other parts or throwing them up on a shelf.

[Jon Stratis]

The best solution to the problem we face has to avoid the time crunch. I don't really care what the algorithm is - auction, draft, limits, whatever. But we need a sufficiently broad time window (lets say 24 hours) to let teams log in and indicate their choices, without giving preference to the teams that log in first.

[Kevin Sevcik]

The random draft proposal sounds really good, actually. It's not that complicated of an idea to explain to people, and if you really wanted, you could run a mock draft sometime in November or something to both test the system and familiarize people with how it works. Heck, you could even send reminder emails to people who haven't submitted their draft list yet.

There's a potential problem/benefit, however:
Teams that aren't fully paid up can't participate in FIRSTChoice. There's a fair number of teams already this year that missed out on this initial rush because grants haven't cleared or similar. If the draft system moves the date up, even more teams will be left out. On the other hand, the less rushed nature of the process might mean that you could push the dates back a bit to give more teams a chance to participate.

[arizonafoxx]

I don't like that as a mentor I am doing a crazy thing like WORKING when FIRST Choice opens up. I don't like being penalized because a meeting runs over and I am late logging in by 30 minutes. That has always been my gripe about this system. This year it looks like that technically would not have mattered because we probably would have had a problem anyway if we logged in right on time. I am also glad I am helping a team that got the standard KOP it seems like the voucher system is going to hurt some teams since they were not able to buy what they wanted to buy. Hopefully lots of restocks happen between now and kick off.

I agree there has to be a better way. I think the draft system sounds interesting and again gets us closer to a real sport. Just think if football teams got the best player based on who was able to login first and click submit. There also has to be a limit on items for the first week. It is not fair for a team that logs in right away to snatch up all the Talons and not leave any for a rookie team that logs in at 12:30 or 1p. I think every week until kickoff you should be able to have another order if you want more but only be able to get one or two of each item per week. I think after kick off having the limit lifted could be OK but who knows maybe the first week after kickoff have a limit as well so that the non-voucher teams can't sweep all the Talons off the shelf.

Lets hope that the next few weeks smooth out for this process I would hate for teams to be at a disadvantage just because a new system was unprepared for FIRST Onslaught. Reminds me of looking for lunacy balls the day after kickoff. Man that sucked.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Hallry

One must remember, there are now 2,500 teams in FIRST. This would require employees of FIRST to dedicate much time towards this, instead of other possible work.

Exactly.

Do you know how many people work at FIRST, on staff?
I think they MAYBE hit 100 total employees this year.
(Source: I interned in the Marketing department this summer).

That divides many ways, into each of the programs (Jr.FLL, FLL, FTC, FRC), and then things like HR, IT, Volunteer Resources, Marketing, Finance, and the list goes on...

There's not a whole lot of people who actually WORK FOR FRC.
When people get fired up about change not happening fast enough (this is not to say that change doesn't need to happen, I absolutely agree- FRC needs some fixes...), I think this point needs to be brought up:

Please remember that the FRC staff is smaller than the average FRC team.
There are 2500 of you, and one of them.

When you (the royal 'you', not anyone in this thread specifically- I'm talking really generally, here) say that that 'FRC ISN'T DOING THIS RIGHT', you're not calling out some big corporate structure. You're literally calling out a group of ...15, 20 people, maybe? Who all work REALLY hard at their jobs. Implementing any big change requires a lot of work from those 15.

I'm all for improving things and making changes, but you've got to remember you're dealing with humans on the other end of this. Human beings who work really hard on their jobs and quite frankly could use a lot more 'thank you's' than they currently get. Piling more work onto their plates isn't a great solution, unless FRC were to suddenly hire 15 more people. (I've always said FIRST could use a cloning machine - so many great and ambitious people, so little time.)

That said, I like the draft system idea - and I definitely think the current method needs some change! It would just have to be developed and implemented in a way that doesn't bog down FRC staff with more stuff to do in such a crazy time of year. (Also keep in mind, just because it's a computer system doesn't mean it can just be ignored - someone has to keep an eye on that too- computers aren't perfect.)

[BigJ]

(Also when you say something like "that is an easy software fix/feature".... it usually isn't in practice )

[JohnChristensen]

Libby,

I know that FIRST HQ is not staffed like a large corporation. I don't know how much time was spent yesterday and overnight to fix FIRST Choice and get things running again. I am guessing most of the work was handled by the AndyMark team, but I am sure that things were upset for a while in NH as well... They had to issue two official responses. That limits time to do things which need attention.

My goal with this proposal was to do two things: (1) To propose a solution that would take less human capital to run (teams time and schedules as well as AndyMark/FIRSTs) and (2) propose a solution that would limit the public exposure to things going wrong. With a draft, the orders can be checked and then released publicly.

Finding a complicated solution to a problem is easy, solving the same problem with a simple solution takes a great deal more thought. This change (if FIRST is even interested) would have to be an offseason change. I would personally volunteer to help out with the project (I am serious). I am not trying to criticize anyone from the teams, to AndyMark, or even FIRST. I am only trying to improve the system for everyone in a way that does not overly burden anyone.

John

[AlexD744]

Libby,

I don't believe that the OP was intending to insult the hard-working people that make FRC happen, I think he was merely trying to suggest a possible improvement to the system that is in place. I think we are all very grateful for what they do, and don't say thank you enough. So THANK YOU FRC staff!

Most people would probably agree that FIRST Choice as a concept is a really good thing, and has a lot of tangible benefits. However, there were many perceived problems with the implementation this year. The technical problems were handled very professionally by AndyMark, however, the underlying problems with the system are the current concern.

The OP is trying to help FRC staff by adding an idea that may or may not solve the problem. I for one think that it is good when the Chief Delphi community begins to brainstorm a problem, as often time a solution is found. It's no secret that at least one person in FIRST leadership reads these forums (Frank). And if I were running a company, I would find it very helpful to know what my customers were dissatisfied with. Here, however, we don't just have people complaining (well, sometimes we do ), but we have people trying to help generate solutions. Will every solution work? No. Is every solution feasible? No. But, the OP posted here so that he could get other points of view, which could possibly point out flaws in or improvements to his proposed system. And to be fair, the OP probably didn't know how few people work in just FRC; I sure didn't.

To get back on topic though, I like the idea behind the system, but can see significant hassle in actually maintaining this. Others may know of simple ways to implement it though. I still am in favor of a slower release of credits, quantity limits, or more accurate pricing on high demand items, all of which I see as positive tweaks to the current system (and all of which have been debated in other threads). Feel free to disagree! In the end the decision comes down to FIRST and AndyMark.

$0.02
Alex

Edit: Well I clearly missed the boat on this one! haha

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by JohnChristensen

Libby,

I know that FIRST HQ is not staffed like a large corporation. I don't know how much time was spent yesterday and overnight to fix FIRST Choice and get things running again. I am guessing most of the work was handled by the AndyMark team, but I am sure that things were upset for a while in NH as well... They had to issue two official responses. That limits time to do things which need attention.

My goal with this proposal was to do two things: (1) To propose a solution that would take less human capital to run (teams time and schedules as well as AndyMark/FIRSTs) and (2) propose a solution that would limit the public exposure to things going wrong. With a draft, the orders can be checked and then released publicly.

Finding a complicated solution to a problem is easy, solving the same problem with a simple solution takes a great deal more thought. This change (if FIRST is even interested) would have to be an offseason change. I would personally volunteer to help out with the project (I am serious). I am not trying to criticize anyone from the teams, to AndyMark, or even FIRST. I am only trying to improve the system for everyone in a way that does not overly burden anyone.

John

John,

The original post I made (which has now been edited quite a few times) certainly sounded a little more "stop picking on them, they try really hard." That's not what I meant, AT ALL. Hopefully, I've changed it to be closer to my point.

Take Two: "Productive changes are awesome, but FRC isn't as big as some of us think - it takes some time."

I love the idea of changing things and improving, and I actually really like the idea proposed - it seems like you've got something here. Some of the later posts in the thread (as well as PM's I've been sent on this subject, as well as others) was "FIRST could totally do this, why haven't they changed it yet, it's so easy."... That's what sparked my first reaction. I've learned over my years on CD to write a post, walk away, and read it later before posting - but I guess I didn't wait long enough. Thank goodness for the edit tool.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by BigJ

(Also when you say something like "that is an easy software fix/feature".... it usually isn't in practice )

As a software engineer I understand what you are saying. But these are pretty well known solutions. Truth be told, I probably have code I could repurpose fairly simply sitting in one of my hard drives. From there it'd be more a function of writing test cases and probably a decent UI... I'd be willing to say it's about 80 hours of work for someone familiar with the tools. Probably a little more if you want to make it enjoyable to use.

[Nemo]

I like the draft option, and I bet the FIRST community would be able to do a good chunk of the technical work. If creating a new system isn't a good option, it's possible to quickly improve the existing system in the following ways:

1) Point values that more accurately reflect the value and utility of items (this would have solved a lot of the problem by itself... example, classmate computer costs 100 points - automatically it becomes more of a decision and less of a race)
2) Fewer points available in the early round of shopping
3) Passwords given out early for people to test; add credits to accounts to "go live"

That still doesn't eliminate the time crunch element of this process, though, and I agree that it would be highly desirable to fix that problem.

I'll say this again: I really like the concept of more choice in the Kit of Parts, so I hope this trend can continue in the future despite the problems we've experienced this year.