FRC Blog - Openness and Vulnerability

[DonRotolo]

Frank, we all know you read these, so you have my WORD that if you %#%#%# up in the future, you are forgiven. Completely, unequivocally, and immediately. Just keep doing what you're doing.

Speaking as an adult living in the real world, the best laid plans often go awry. It happens, you just have to roll with it.

[Justin Montois]

I think the Blog title should be changed from 'FRC Blog' to ' To be Frank' amirite?

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[rachelholladay]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

I think the Blog title should be changed from 'FRC Blog' to ' To be Frank' amirite?

Oh goodness thats fabulous. They might want to keep it titled "FRC Blog" for marketing purposes, but he could definitely start his blogs with that catchphrase.

[Bill_B]

"I'll be Frank if you'll be Earnest."

[rachelholladay]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

"I'll be Frank if you'll be Earnest."

Its important to be Earnest as long as you also get Wilde about robotics.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

I think the Blog title should be changed from 'FRC Blog' to ' To be Frank' amirite?

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"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Justin Montois again."

[JoshSmith]

I'd like to just vouch for Frank and his commitment to FRC. Granted, this the only time that I've directly spoken with him but it stood out to me. At one point during the championships this year, FRC Spyder went down and no one from Galileo was able to get score updates. I went searching around and found out that the FIRST website for the Galileo division was also down. After a period of me trying to figure out who to talk to, Dan Green got me over to Frank and I told him what was wrong.

(A bit of side info, but this is right next to the Galileo field while he was running around checking how the matches were going)

He said he wasn't aware of any issues but tried to pull up the Galileo website. Sure enough, it was still down and Spyder wasn't working. Without missing a beat, he told me, "I'll get this fixed immediately" (or something close to those lines) and began making calls. After about 15 minutes (more or less as lack of sleep made times a bit fuzzy), the Galileo site came back online and Spyder picked up where it left off.

Although some people could say that this is just a normal occurrence, I'm still very appreciative of how he dropped what he was doing to help fix a "non-critical" issue. So, two thumbs up there!

The other thing I've noticed is just what he outlined in this post. The openness by FIRST is apparent compared to previous years. It's something I've wished there was more of and this championship it was a common theme. FTAs had no problem explaining various bits that go into the scoring process and how scores are eventually determined, put online, and corrected. I think that keeping things as open-source (on the software side of things) and publicly available, will ultimately help FIRST and avoid issues down the road. Kudos Frank for pushing this.