2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Marc P.]

I traveled to St. Louis this season as a volunteer (working on Newton, great times there!). I have attended the Championship since 2000, including 2003, (the infamous Houston year), and every year it was held in Atlanta. However, this was my first visit to St. Louis. Here are my thoughts, as a "seasoned" FIRST veteran.

The team I mentor was fortunate enough to have a Dean's List finalist this season, but by no means had a "championship caliber" robot, and so didn't qualify by merit. We do have a team policy of trying to attend the Championship every 5 years (via pay your way/wait list), such that the majority of our members have the chance to experience it at least once in their high school career. We decided for the years between, we would only attend if we met the merit based qualification criteria. Our last trip to the Championship was in 2009, when we qualified via the Rookie All Star award at our local regional. The students who attended the Championship in 2009 were still excited and shared what a great experience they had with younger students right up to their graduation this past year. As per our policy, we decided to sign up for the Championship early this season, being the 5th year since our last Championship berth. With the wait list system working as it did this season, we didn't find out we had a Championship invitation until Wednesday, April 17th. Literally a week before the event. We had made preliminary plans to attend, researched hotels and flight options back in January, but most of that information/early reservations had been cancelled or expired due to lack of commitment. We scrambled, made some late night phone calls, had to split the team between hotel rooms for a night, but managed to pull it off and make it. (Which is why I signed up to volunteer and booked travel plans much earlier).

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

It also means your season is more or less at the mercy of the scheduling gods. This was compounded by the, as Jared put it, teams that weren't Championship caliber issue. I had matches at CMP where my partners put up a combined 6 discs. Is this a championship or is it an exhibition? If it's the former then we need to be a lot more selective.

Our robot? Seeded in the mid 90s in our division. It's probably a safe bet we were one of your partners that "put up a combined 6 discs". Heck, we missed a match because our whole team was at the Dean's List ceremony that went over time. Do we care that our robot didn't perform? Absolutely. Did we try our best to fix it and improve it? Absolutely. Was it Championship caliber? Absolutely not. Were our students super inspired by the atmosphere, walking on the dome floor, seeing and playing with "elite" teams, hearing the roar of the tens of thousands of spectators, learning the iterative design and build processes and stories of other teams? You'd better believe it. These students will be talking about this experience, and using it to improve our team and robots for the next 4 years, until we either qualify with a Championship caliber robot, Chairman's or EI awards, or another 5 years elapses.

Sometimes it takes a trip to the Championships to give your students that extra inspiring kick in the pants to get them motivated enough to really work on designing, building, and iterating "Championship caliber" robots. Would you seriously want to keep teams like mine from attending the Championships so the "elite" can play one or two more matches or be less "at the mercy of the scheduling gods?"

"Is this a championship or is it an exhibition?" It's a celebration. It's inspiring. It's the end of a crazy season. It's both, championship and exhibition. If you want purely performance based competition, that's what IRI is for. The quality robots and teams will still succeed regardless of pairings or match numbers (if scouters actually provide useful information). The rest of us are there for the experience above all else. Or at least, that's what brings me back year after year.

I'd also like to add that I didn't see the Chairman's Award video for The Holy Cows, nor did I see an 1114 follow-up video from last year.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

I'd also like to add that I didn't see the Chairman's Award video for The Holy Cows, nor did I see an 1114 video from last year.

Here's 1114's video, it's one of the best of all time

[Marc P.]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

Here's 1114's video, it's one of the best of all time

I meant the follow up video, I don't know if that has been done for the years CMP has been in St. Louis. I remember in Atlanta, the previous year's Chairman's award winning team produced a video highlighting their impact in the community as a lead up to the announcement of the current year's winner. I have seen 1114's Chairman's Submission video, and it really is one of the most inspiring things. I was hoping for the follow up.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

I meant the follow up video, I don't know if that has been done for the years CMP has been in St. Louis. I remember in Atlanta, the previous year's Chairman's award winning team produced a video highlighting their impact in the community as a lead up to the announcement of the current year's winner. I have seen 1114's Chairman's Submission video, and it really is one of the most inspiring things. I was hoping for the follow up.

Sadly, Paul Lazarus is no longer doing those videos. It's too bad - I miss them.

[KelliV]

Originally Posted by Libby K

Sadly, Paul Lazarus is no longer doing those videos. It's too bad - I miss them.

The 2008 winner was the last to get a video produced by Paul. I miss them as well.

I am totally ok with the team making their own videos (1114 did an AMAZING job) as long as they are shown.

Marc brings up a good point, it would be cool if teams could do a 1 minute or so follow up video with what they have done since winning the CCA.

[3747Mentor]

As others have said, the number of matches was too low. The complaint of 8 matches at CMP is certainly valid. The low number of matches at regionals needs to be addressed as well. At North Star, the schedule gave us 8 qualifying matches. Like many teams, it was our only regional. My students wanted more of an opportunity to use their robot and to work out the bugs. I feel that, for the cost, they should have had more playing time.

I can get on board with the district argument (or any system that increases playing time). I think there is tremendous inspiration opportunity with increased playing time. The compressed learning/testing/failing/rebuilding/succeeding that occurs during competition is a huge part of what makes my students come back (with their friends!) for the next season. It is also very gratifying to show off all of your hard work to the parents and sponsors.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

The team I mentor was fortunate enough to have a Dean's List finalist this season, but by no means had a "championship caliber" robot, and so didn't qualify by merit. We do have a team policy of trying to attend the Championship every 5 years (via pay your way/wait list), such that the majority of our members have the chance to experience it at least once in their high school career. We decided for the years between, we would only attend if we met the merit based qualification criteria. Our last trip to the Championship was in 2009, when we qualified via the Rookie All Star award at our local regional. The students who attended the Championship in 2009 were still excited and shared what a great experience they had with younger students right up to their graduation this past year. As per our policy, we decided to sign up for the Championship early this season, being the 5th year since our last Championship berth. With the wait list system working as it did this season, we didn't find out we had a Championship invitation until Wednesday, April 17th. Literally a week before the event. We had made preliminary plans to attend, researched hotels and flight options back in January, but most of that information/early reservations had been cancelled or expired due to lack of commitment. We scrambled, made some late night phone calls, had to split the team between hotel rooms for a night, but managed to pull it off and make it. (Which is why I signed up to volunteer and booked travel plans much earlier).



Our robot? Seeded in the mid 90s in our division. It's probably a safe bet we were one of your partners that "put up a combined 6 discs". Heck, we missed a match because our whole team was at the Dean's List ceremony that went over time. Do we care that our robot didn't perform? Absolutely. Did we try our best to fix it and improve it? Absolutely. Was it Championship caliber? Absolutely not. Were our students super inspired by the atmosphere, walking on the dome floor, seeing and playing with "elite" teams, hearing the roar of the tens of thousands of spectators, learning the iterative design and build processes and stories of other teams? You'd better believe it. These students will be talking about this experience, and using it to improve our team and robots for the next 4 years, until we either qualify with a Championship caliber robot, Chairman's or EI awards, or another 5 years elapses.

Sometimes it takes a trip to the Championships to give your students that extra inspiring kick in the pants to get them motivated enough to really work on designing, building, and iterating "Championship caliber" robots. Would you seriously want to keep teams like mine from attending the Championships so the "elite" can play one or two more matches or be less "at the mercy of the scheduling gods?"

"Is this a championship or is it an exhibition?" It's a celebration. It's inspiring. It's the end of a crazy season. It's both, championship and exhibition. If you want purely performance based competition, that's what IRI is for. The quality robots and teams will still succeed regardless of pairings or match numbers (if scouters actually provide useful information). The rest of us are there for the experience above all else. Or at least, that's what bring me back year after year.

This is far more eloquent than anything I have written, and pretty much hits the nail on the head. We were a rookie team this year, and while our robot ultimately did what we wanted it to (scoring ~30-40 points per match), it certainly wasn't able to compete in a strict sense on a championship level. That said, I don't think it would be possible to overstate how much our team got out of this trip, and the opportunity to compete in championships. It was one of the most inspiring, rewarding things I have ever participated in, and the amount of enthusiasm it has given our members for the coming years is nigh-indescribable.

So, yes, I do think that there is a lot of utility in making some sacrifices as to the tightness of the competition to allow teams to attend championships without qualifying based strictly on robot quality. I imagine most people who have attended championships would agree with this. The question is thus how many of these teams can feasibly be admitted before the effect on tournament quality outweighs the benefit. This is, admittedly, a very tough question.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

Our robot? Seeded in the mid 90s in our division. It's probably a safe bet we were one of your partners that "put up a combined 6 discs". Heck, we missed a match because our whole team was at the Dean's List ceremony that went over time. Do we care that our robot didn't perform? Absolutely. Did we try our best to fix it and improve it? Absolutely. Was it Championship caliber? Absolutely not. Were our students super inspired by the atmosphere, walking on the dome floor, seeing and playing with "elite" teams, hearing the roar of the tens of thousands of spectators, learning the iterative design and build processes and stories of other teams? You'd better believe it. These students will be talking about this experience, and using it to improve our team and robots for the next 4 years, until we either qualify with a Championship caliber robot, Chairman's or EI awards, or another 5 years elapses.

Sometimes it takes a trip to the Championships to give your students that extra inspiring kick in the pants to get them motivated enough to really work on designing, building, and iterating "Championship caliber" robots. Would you seriously want to keep teams like mine from attending the Championships so the "elite" can play one or two more matches or be less "at the mercy of the scheduling gods?"

"Is this a championship or is it an exhibition?" It's a celebration. It's inspiring. It's the end of a crazy season. It's both, championship and exhibition. If you want purely performance based competition, that's what IRI is for. The quality robots and teams will still succeed regardless of pairings or match numbers (if scouters actually provide useful information). The rest of us are there for the experience above all else. Or at least, that's what brings me back year after year.

Thank you for giving this perspective. I can't agree with you any more, because this almost exactly describes my team's situations, aside from that we qualified with RCA. The competition is named "For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" for a reason. I think FIRST has pretty much nailed the balance, even though I know there are plenty of people that disagree.

[sanddrag]

I've been doing this a long time and my only real negatives are as follows:

- I've build a lot of stuff in my day, and I found the pyramid difficult and frustrating to build
- The small frame perimeter was an absolute nightmare to fit everything into, but I'm not entirely opposed to it. After 13 years of robots, we're running out of space.

[Marc S.]

Here's my quick list:

- More wildcard teams, it would be awesome if slots spilled back to previous regionals, at SVR 4 of the six teams in the finals were already going to champs.

- Show opening ceremonies on field screens; there were thousands of people who didn't get to see it because they were trying to save seats for their scouts, let alone be there to scout the first match of the day.

- More matches at champs; someone mentioned adding another day, 5th division, or less teams at champs (my least favorite).

- Music is TOO LOUD! I'm waiting for the day when a safety inspector walks up to the dj and tells them the volume level is unsafe. When it's hard to hear the person next to you, who is yelling, it's too loud. Every competition I have been to has had this problem, apparently FIRST wants us to be deaf engineers.

- Webcasts are pretty bad, if the camera just focused on the field, not individual robots (or people in the stands....), during matches, then it would be easier to tell what's actually going on.

- Einstien had a lot of dead time; maybe FIRST could play FTC matches inbetween FRC matches or give out more awards, with a much faster turn around. I think drag racing is a good example of a sport to emulate in this regards. Also, can we please not have dance breaks, once a song starts it just slows down everything.

[Grim Tuesday]

Speaking of safety, the level of safety theater in FIRST is ridiculous. FIRST needs to tell the judges and safety advisors judging the UL safety award that it isn't about being visibly safe, it's about being actually safe. An escort yelling 'robot', escorting me to my pit does not make anything safer. Posters above the urinals does not make anything safer. What teams do these days to try and win the safety award is just silly and I think FIRST needs to make a statement about it and be clear that they are looking for teams that are truly safe.

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

Speaking of safety, the level of safety theater in FIRST is ridiculous. FIRST needs to tell the judges and safety advisors judging the UL safety award that it isn't about being visibly safe, it's about being actually safe. An escort yelling 'robot', escorting me to my pit does not make anything safer. Posters above the urinals does not make anything safer. What teams do these days to try and win the safety award is just silly and I think FIRST needs to make a statement about it and be clear that they are looking for teams that are truly safe.

I lost count of the number of 'safety' reminders that piled up in our pit. Some were literally a index card size bit of paper with 4 or 5 bulleted of the most vague and unhelpful safety 'reminders' and 'tips' you could imagine. 'Wear safety glasses in the pit'. 'Lift with your legs'. 'Be safe'.

I get that it's all coming from a good place, but a sheet of paper reminding me to wear my safety glasses in the pits doesn't really mean or do anything at all. It's just more clutter and theater. It all just ends up in the trash.

I guess I'd also like to see teams putting less effort into winning a safety award, and more effort in just being safe. My own experience looking at the teams who do win the award is that the judges tend to understand this, and are awarding it to teams that simply have a safe program and an ingrained culture of safety.

[jee7s]

This might be a bit of a sidetrack, but...

Originally Posted by Andy A.

I get that it's all coming from a good place, but a sheet of paper reminding me to wear my safety glasses in the pits doesn't really mean or do anything at all. It's just more clutter and theater. It all just ends up in the trash.

Worse than that are the teams that create unsafe conditions in the interest of "safety" (a la the safety theater mentioned earlier). There's one team (that I have a great deal of respect for and shall remain nameless) that I see regularly at events I attend that love to tape their laminated safety reminders to the floor. Sometimes this is at the entry to the pits with a big laminated print saying "Safety Glasses Required" and occasionally other reminders on the floor throughout the pit.

The problem is that laminated paper is REALLY slippery, especially if it gets wet. I've seen kids slip on these and take a faceplant or twisted ankle in the name of "Safety."

To their credit, this team has gotten a bit more thoughtful about their deployment of these reminders (either on their own or through some Safety Advisors), and now the situation is at least less dangerous.

Also, at the FRC level: Has anyone ever pondered the wisdom of wearing gloves while "working" on the robot? That's in the official safety manual the last time I checked (which is admittedly a while ago). Personally, I NEVER wear gloves while working on the robot. I've seen too many gloves get dragged into mechanisms or caught up in the robot that I'm sufficiently worried about losing a finger. Wear gloves while lifting, sure. But, while working on it? That just seems like too much of a risk should something turn on. I would much rather get a blood blister than have my hand pulled into a drivetrain by accident.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by jee7s

Also, at the FRC level: Has anyone ever pondered the wisdom of wearing gloves while "working" on the robot? That's in the official safety manual the last time I checked (which is admittedly a while ago). Personally, I NEVER wear gloves while working on the robot. I've seen too many gloves get dragged into mechanisms or caught up in the robot that I'm sufficiently worried about losing a finger. Wear gloves while lifting, sure. But, while working on it? That just seems like too much of a risk should something turn on. I would much rather get a blood blister than have my hand pulled into a drivetrain by accident.

I've probably had a safety advisor tell me to wear gloves against OSHA regs at least one every other event. I need to start carrying around that manual. It's ridiculous. Thankfully we've been clear with our team and they know better, but I'm really worried about teams that don't. Condoning theater is one (bad) thing, but mandating gloves in unsafe situations, snagging people's carts so their robots drop, making people run to the front of their cart*...Something has to change with the green shirts. Now. Most of them are quite good, but the bad ones are creating a dangerous culture.


*I literally had an SA tell one of my drivers to run (yes, "run") around our cart in the crowded pit so they could get to the front and yell "ROBOT!" We already had a driver in front of us kindly asking people to move, and it had worked well for several hundred feet.

[jee7s]

Originally Posted by Siri

...Something has to change with the green shirts. Now. Most of them are quite good, but the bad ones are creating a dangerous culture.


*I literally had an SA tell one of my drivers to run (yes, "run") around our cart in the crowded pit so they could get to the front and yell "ROBOT!" We already had a driver in front of us kindly asking people to move, and it had worked well for several hundred feet.

Oh yes, this needs to be highlighted to FRC in general. And it reminds me of a couple things to mention.

Firstly, remember that not every Green Shirt is actually from UL. I wore that green shirt at an event last year, and I've never worked for UL. I think the sponsorship and logos lead people to that false impression. I know Siri didn't say that, but I've seen it mentioned elsewhere.

Secondly, I've found that Volunteer Coordinators sometimes make the Safety Advisor role a place to put a professional that is more technically inclined but not necessarily familiar with FIRST. At that event last year, I was the ONLY SA with any FIRST experience at all. We had a "Lead SA" who was a UL employee, but hadn't even been to an FRC event before. We also had a couple of safety folks from the venue (it took place at a University). But other than the four of us, the other SAs had little safety experience over all, much less safety in FIRST. I found myself having to bring all of those SA colleagues up to speed on FIRST and the safety culture. They were receptive to it, and I'm flexible to fill needs when they need to be filled, but that wasn't exactly part of my role description.

And the yelling "Robot" thing just has to stop. It's rude, unprofessional, and distracting. Thanks to one of the Mentors on my team, we consistently counter the yelling of "Robot!" with a loud but not quite yelling retort of "Human!". Remember everyone, humans always have the right of way. If you're moving a robot, it's your job to manage the traffic to clear a path. Yelling "Robot!" doesn't cut it in my book, and if you yell at me louder when I don't/can't move out of your way, I'm just going to be less inclined to get out of your way.