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Unread 05-05-2013, 18:38
Tom Ore Tom Ore is offline
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

I guess I'm still not seeing that an open build season would help in the long run.

An increase in performance of the lower teams will push the mid level teams, which in turn will push the high performance teams even more. The highly competitive teams will still put in a very high effort to stay at the top.

Also, the GDC deliberately designs games that are difficult to accomplish in the time available. If the games became easy to accomplish because more time is available, they'll make the games harder. Look at it the other way, the GDC could design easier games now - but they choose to design difficult games.
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Unread 05-05-2013, 19:00
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

I'm not convinced one way or another on this question, particularly with regards to relative competitiveness. (I think lessening burnout would require a culture change in addition to a timebox change.) I do have one (new?) positive for the full-season build, though:

I remember when 1640 was a single-event team. We'd spend 6 weeks building a not particularly impressive robot, go to a single regional, get completely creamed, and then go home. We were terrible, we couldn't figure out how to get ahead, and we really didn't see a point in trying longer given the results. Even when we did two events, consistently running over ourselves (literally) did not provide much time for me to step back and feel myself grow.

Running the full season in those days, until mid- or end of March, would have made it more like a sport. I think it would have had a better impact on me. Of course, we weren't racing for the top at that point. (Our first two event season, I remember going 2-9 at Pittsburgh and then 5-6 at Philly.) But I think we would have enjoyed having a sports "season" in which to experience FIRST rather than 6 weeks and a couple tail-kickings. Off-seasons in MAR were a reasonable analog of this for me then, though more would have been better and I know may places do not benefit from as many off-seasons. (I think we did 5 last year.)


For my own team now, I think I'd prefer no bag & tag. Build season runs at least to April at this point--we had something like 14 nights off between Kickoff and Worlds. It would really just save us having to build a practice bot, which is painfully expensive, and keep us from working through practice matches. I'd be amenable to like 12 or so hours "out of the bag" per week instead, though. I do see the fear of copycats, though. This would be tough.
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Unread 06-05-2013, 09:42
DjScribbles DjScribbles is offline
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Ore View Post
An increase in performance of the lower teams will push the mid level teams, which in turn will push the high performance teams even more. The highly competitive teams will still put in a very high effort to stay at the top.
Isn't that the goal of this organization?
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Unread 06-05-2013, 12:23
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by DjScribbles View Post
Isn't that the goal of this organization?
I don't think that's ever been an explicitly-stated goal of FIRST. I believe it's a community-derived goal. The idea of Coopertition is what drives it. However, I've yet to hear Dean say anything along the lines of "Man, I wish more robots worked well at this Regional".

Which brings us back around to the whole goal of FRC to begin with. The robot & competition are the vehicles of changing a culture. Yet for FIRST to become a real culture-changer we need to see better competition at a macro level, where even the kids who get pummeled one year are inspired enough to get back up and come back better the next year. For teams to be more competitive, they need more time with the technical side of the robot. For that to happen without burning through a team's primary resources (sponsors & mentors), it would appear that this thread has presented a very good case for an extended build season. I would also venture to say that extending the build season would allow for tighter inter-team partnerships to develop -- where the mentors of one team are more willing to lend mentors' time out to another team which lacks expertise in a technical area.

Many top-grade teams have presented great viewpoints over the years that getting to a highly competitive state is in and of itself a vehicle for student learning and inspiration. This, I totally agree with. Even winning RCA/REI was nothing compared to making it to Finals at Regionals or Elims at Champs. Winning FTC Worlds was even better. After reading all 100-something posts over the last few days, I could be convinced that extending the build season will not increase stress levels over what they've been in the last 3 years (we built a practice bot). However, I don't think my 'vote' matters unless we hear more from FIRST.
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Last edited by JesseK : 06-05-2013 at 12:26. Reason: need to go back to 3rd grade grammar lessons....
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