2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive

[RyanJK]

From a FRC Alum/Team Head Mentor Perspective:

-AWESOME game. There were a lot of different approaches, the game was exciting almost every match, and you could build a defensive robot and be a top-tier competitor
-The KOP was really good this year. I liked the switch to belts for the stock frame, and the sheer amount of documentation and support made available by AndyMark, NI, and more was awesome
-The game element wasn't a ball! The FRC game element has been a generic ball for several years now, and it was great that FIRST mixed it up and made teams think differently this year. By the time Rebound Rumble rolled around, everyone knew how to pick up and manipulate a ball well - this forced teams to throw out all that knowledge and start from scratch
-Einstein was handled very well. A mistake was made, but it was caught and made right.
-Team's responses to the Einstein mixup were good. I was terrified that people would blow the mistake out of proportion and make it a much bigger deal than it was, but everyone is showing their gracious professionalism and realizing that we all make mistakes, and it doesn't really matter as long as they are caught and made right.

From a Volunteer Perspective
-Adding the ability to log to the Driver's Station was AMAZING. I was a Control Systems Advisor at a few regionals and at Worlds, and having those logs made it so easy to help teams. The logs helped show teams that 99.9% of problems are not related to the FMS and are, in fact, issues with the robot, and also made it super easy to diagnose whether or not the issue was software or hardware related. Troubleshooting was a breeze due to the logging!
-FIRST did a really good job making sure that all of the volunteers had the resources and training they needed to do well.