2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive

[Libby K]

-Frank Merrick as (Acting?) FRC Director has been nothing short of fantastic. Communicative, open to new ideas, and really cares about this community. If the 'acting' part still exists in his title, it should be dropped. FRC definitely needs him to stick around to keep things in a positive direction.
-Wildcard system, as already stated, has been really great.
-Ultimate Ascent is my favorite game in a long time. Diverse options for teams.
-Volunteers have (mostly) been really friendly and engaging at events.
-Suppliers and vendors like VEXpro and AndyMark gave teams so many options to work with.

I'm really happy with how this season has gone, for the most part.
2013's been good.

[Anupam Goli]

The length of this compared to the negatives thread doesn't dictate how much FIRST has done right this year. FIRST has gone above and beyond previous years to ensure we have a great experience.

• Obviously Wild cards are one of the most well received things FIRST has ever done. Seeing championships and the competition level was just amazing
• The game. FIRST has knocked one out of the park again. It's exciting. It's engaging. It requires strategies and tradeoffs in design, and most of all, it's spectator friendly. Thank you GDC, for making this game so enjoyable
• Frank's blog and his openness has gotten rid of the black box image of HQ. Thank you for listening and showing us why hard decisions are made.
• The resources that FIRST has provided has allowed teams to go custom for much cheaper. Thank you again for all of these COTS vouchers.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by Libby K

-Ultimate Ascent is my favorite game in a long time. Diverse options for teams.

Out of curiosity, what would be THE favorite game, of all time, then?

[Thad House]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Out of curiosity, what would be THE favorite game, of all time, then?

Alot of people pick 2004 as THE favorite game of all time for many of the same reasons is people like this years game. These 2 games all required major strategy decisions, and everything bots were next to impossible.

[JesseK]

I hope it's not 9 more years before we see another game like this one

[Oblarg]

My favorite game, hands-down, was Overdrive. Line violations notwithstanding, of course. Those sucked. But the game was awesome.

[Peyton Yeung]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Remove "AM" from that statement, and I agree completely.

We (4464) had some bad experiences with AndyMark hardware this year...

Did you let them know? I know the customer service at AndyMark is very nice and will try their hardest to make the customer happy.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Tubatroopa

Did you let them know? I know the customer service at AndyMark is very nice and will try their hardest to make the customer happy.

Oh, their customer service was great, and had they not been we probably would not have fielded a functioning robot. But, that said, about half of the hardware we purchased from them this year, from gearboxes to shaft collars (which we should have purchased from McMaster, yes, we know) to wheels, was defective.

[thefro526]

The 2013 Season has been the best one in a LONG time...

- The Game. Ultimate Ascent ranks high up on the 'best' games of all time list, and would more than likely have been the 'best' game of the Three Team Alliance era had the climbing rules been a tad less restrictive. The deceptive ease of scoring frisbees is exactly what we needed after the last few games. Just about any team could build an upper middle tier robot in terms of disc scoring with parts bought from Home Depot/Lowes/Etc (#BucketAlliance) and some smart thinking.

- The Rules. They're definitely getting better at making the games easier to follow and call. Now if only we could have a game where 'intent' wasn't a factor....

- Motor Allowances. I'm a fan of 6 CIM's, 4 Mini-Cims/BAGs, 4 550's, 4 9015's and the rest. We should do this again.

- Starting Volume. The Perimeter method is definitely the way to go, makes inspection so much faster and easier.

- Versa Wheels. Cheap, Light and Grippy - can't ask for more in a wheel. The piloting may have been a tad overhyped (or they didn't plan on someone piloting 4 parts together) but it works well for doing sprocket to wheel connections.

I'll probably have more stuff eventually.

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Oh, their customer service was great, and had they not been we probably would not have fielded a functioning robot. But, that said, about half of the hardware we purchased from them this year, from gearboxes to shaft collars (which we should have purchased from McMaster, yes, we know) to wheels, was defective.

I believe this topic would be better discussed in the '2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative' thread...

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by thefro526

- Motor Allowances. I'm a fan of 6 CIM's, 4 Mini-Cims/BAGs, 4 550's, 4 9015's and the rest. We should do this again.

Definitely agree here. Having this much power available was fantastic.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

My main complaint is with the Toughbox Mini, whose quality was far too unreliable to warrant being included as the KOP gearbox. Something like half of the units we purchased over the season were defective, usually due to gear spacing or angle being off.

Huh. We used eight of them between our robot and practice robot, and had no issues whatsoever.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by thefro526

- Motor Allowances. I'm a fan of 6 CIM's, 4 Mini-Cims/BAGs, 4 550's, 4 9015's and the rest. We should do this again.

Only change I would like to see is 4 Mini-Cims and 4 BAG motors be allowed. They are so useful and don't really need to be combined.

[dag0620]

Time for the positives, and there is a lot!

• Overall amazing season!
• Frank Merrick and the transparency from HQ. Getting to speak Frank myself, he really does care about what the teams think. I too will add with Libby that I hope the acting get's dropped from his title and that he will become the permanent Director of FRC. He's taken FRC in such a great direction in just a season, and I think the program will be in amazing places under his leadership for the long term.
• The Game: At first I wasn't crazy about it, but I have fallen in love with Ultimate Ascent. Bravo to the GDC for making another amazing one.
• Champs in general! It was my first time ever going and I had an amazing time. I'm looking forward to returning in 2014 as a Volunteer!
• The Volunteers were incredible. I've always had amazing luck with FIRST volunteers, but this year they seemed extra special (I want to give a shout-out to the women who was working FRC Safety Glasses at Championships. I have never seen someone have so much fun working safety glasses before.)
• Getting to be a Volunteer! It was my first year as a volunteer in the on-season, and I loved it! I can't wait to get even more involved next year.

[MrJohnston]

My team and I had an outstanding experience at Nationals:

* Looking at some of the best robots in the world and learning from the kids and mentors how they were built.

* Competing with the best and realizing that there is nothing stopping us from joining them.

* The game itself was fantastic.

* The venue was wonderful - especially with the immediate access to our hotel and plenty of food options.

[Nawaid Ladak]

1) From an outsiders prospective, this game was excellent: I've noticed that the games in the odd numbered years tend not to be as exciting for the spectators as the games in the even numbered years. (Triple Play vs Aim High, Rack N Roll vs Overdrive... etc). This year brought a pleasant change to that concept. For some reason, I thought this game would be boring and some teams would find it difficult to score and climb. Then again, I haven't played frisbee in a few years.

2) I still prefer regional events over districts. While districts are great for some regions. other regions simply lack the team involvement, quality of play, or volunteer base to implement a program similar to MAR or FiM. I do think that districts are great for the ares that may be able to support them in the near future (New England, Minnesota, California, Texas, DMV...)

3) This was the best Championship Event I've attended in St Louis. The program was really well put together. aside from the paper planes, everything went great. Sure Einstein was long, but you had nine matches with a recount for one of those matches, what else was there to expect?

4) I for one did not find any of the speeches too lengthy, maybe its' the ten years that I've been involved with FIRST. Maybe I've finally gotten used to this format.

5) Preliminary Schedules = AMAZING!, Please do this again, let regional events try this out if they can as well.

6) This was the first year I truly thought that the FRC portion was truly a World Championship. Three of the top six ranked teams on Galileo and Curie were teams from outside the United States. This really goes to show how much this program has grown outside our borders. I'm hoping this trend continues.

7) The FIRST Robotics Conferences being free this year was a treat. While I wasn't able to attend the seminar that I wanted to go to (I'm sure there were about 150-200 others that found themselves in a similar predicament...) Just seeing the buzz surrounding the conference halls Wednesday night around 6pm was something I didn't expect and was presently surprised by. I hope they give Karthik 3 hours and the auditorium next year.

8) Providing special seating for Volunteers was something new that was added this year. The seats were great and I'm sure a lot of other volunteers were really appreciative for this arrangement (As someone who was helping with handing our awards on Galileo as the main lights for the dome shut down, I'm happy i got the seats i got instead of being up in the nosebleeds or having an obscure view of the field somewhere else).

(DISCLAIMER I wasn't really involved with my team this season as I was busy trying to get my career off the ground)