TIMS Down - 2/19/14

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by Madison

Ah -- thanks. I thought that might be the case, but it wasn't clear.

I'm glad to see that someone got there before I did. Relying on me to beat deadlines before 10am is never a good idea.

It's good you got it in when you did Madison... it was a 9:00 am deadline.
(for us west coast types at least)

I did write to FIRST and ask them to consider an extension for teams on the west coast that tried for a long time last night to get in and could not...
I had already gotten ours in this morning...so this was not for our team...

Here was the response from them:
*****************************
We understand that last night’s technical issue negatively impacted teams, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience. We thank you for sharing your feedback about this, but we will not be considering a deadline extension as the Dean’s List Award was open for submissions from November 14th-February 20th.

******************************

interesting and not what I expected... but I understand their point....
If I did not extend a deadline in my classroom after I was the one that had problems accepting an assignment on the last day that the assignment was due...... I would have major problems....

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

It's good you got it in when you did Madison... it was a 9:00 am deadline.
(for us west coast types at least)

I did write to FIRST and ask them to consider an extension for teams on the west coast that tried for a long time last night to get in and could not...
I had already gotten ours in this morning...so this was not for our team...

Here was the response from them:
*****************************
We understand that last night’s technical issue negatively impacted teams, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience. We thank you for sharing your feedback about this, but we will not be considering a deadline extension as the Dean’s List Award was open for submissions from November 14th-February 20th.

******************************

interesting and not what I expected... but I understand their point....
If I did not extend a deadline in my classroom after I was the one that had problems accepting an assignment on the last day that the assignment was due...... I would have major problems....

I am a little disappointed with this response from FIRST.
While our team submitted a week ago and recently had added/revised a few parts with success, I hope others didnt miss the deadline due to this.
The build season is a big factor when considering students. I fail to see how any good writeup, especially for a 1st year student can be done during the November 14th opening when school isnt even 1/2 way through yet nor was the experience of the student in an FRC program at its peak during build season.
Some of the posters here are also mentors who help build robots. Its not like they are procrastinating with so much free time to spare.
My only suggestion would be to extend it the same amount of time that it was unavailable for teams to submit.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

It's good you got it in when you did Madison... it was a 9:00 am deadline.
(for us west coast types at least)

I did write to FIRST and ask them to consider an extension for teams on the west coast that tried for a long time last night to get in and could not...
I had already gotten ours in this morning...so this was not for our team...

Here was the response from them:
*****************************
We understand that last night’s technical issue negatively impacted teams, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience. We thank you for sharing your feedback about this, but we will not be considering a deadline extension as the Dean’s List Award was open for submissions from November 14th-February 20th.

******************************

interesting and not what I expected... but I understand their point....
If I did not extend a deadline in my classroom after I was the one that had problems accepting an assignment on the last day that the assignment was due...... I would have major problems....

I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation that FIRST's systems would function as intended -- particularly near the deadline. It's a little silly for them to pass the blame onto others (You could've done this when it wasn't broken!) rather than admit culpability and atone for it.

I knew it was a 9AM deadline; I usually don't get up until after 9 because I'm both lazy and lucky that my employer is awesome. Expecting me to function before 10 is a bad idea. I happened to wake up earlier today because build season wiped me out and I fell asleep at 7 last night.

[TKM.368]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

Here was the response from them:
*****************************
We understand that last night’s technical issue negatively impacted teams, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience. We thank you for sharing your feedback about this, but we will not be considering a deadline extension as the Dean’s List Award was open for submissions from November 14th-February 20th.

******************************

I guess waiting to get feedback from mentors busy building and programming the robot until after the robot was bagged turned out not to be a good thing. They could have just shut it down on Kickoff Day and said "you had since November."

Sad. Very sad.

[magnets]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

It's good you got it in when you did Madison... it was a 9:00 am deadline.
(for us west coast types at least)

I did write to FIRST and ask them to consider an extension for teams on the west coast that tried for a long time last night to get in and could not...
I had already gotten ours in this morning...so this was not for our team...

Here was the response from them:
*****************************
We understand that last night’s technical issue negatively impacted teams, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience. We thank you for sharing your feedback about this, but we will not be considering a deadline extension as the Dean’s List Award was open for submissions from November 14th-February 20th.

******************************

interesting and not what I expected... but I understand their point....
If I did not extend a deadline in my classroom after I was the one that had problems accepting an assignment on the last day that the assignment was due...... I would have major problems....

Sorry, but this is totally unacceptable and completely unprofessional. This sort of response makes the organization look like it is being run by a bunch of clowns. I am extremely angry about how FIRST handled this situation. Imagine if they told teams "Sorry, but only robots bagged before week six may compete, you had from the beginning of build to make robots, and those who did not submit early can't submit at all." It would not work out.

FIRST was unable to run their website, which can be an understandable problem, but was just too darn lazy to address the problem.

[Snapshot]

As a west-coast team, I know that our team missed the deadline because of the networking issues and TIMS. It made a lot of people very upset (myself being one of them). I do hope they reverse the decision on not having an extension.

[Carolyn_Grace]

This is not the first time that servers have crashed around Awards time. FIRST has sent out multiple reminders about when Dean's List projects are due. In college, most of us are taught that deadlines mean hard deadlines. It's real life. There was plenty of time to submit early. I expect my students to submit essays before the deadline (goal is a week before, though this year one team did them the day before and another team did them 12 hours before).

If I had not gotten my Dean's List submissions in on time because of server issues, I would have to go to my team and say, "I had time to write these essays early and submit early, and I failed to do that. I'm sorry, but it is my fault that these did not get submitted." It would be embarrassing to do this, but it would also show students the right way to apologize for something, instead of blaming something/someone else. It's frustrating, yes, but the servers crashing are ALWAYS a possibility around awards submission times.

[TKM.368]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

It would be embarrassing to do this, but it would also show students the right way to apologize for something, instead of blaming something/someone else. It's frustrating, yes, but the servers crashing are ALWAYS a possibility around awards submission times.

I'm sorry... Sorry that I trusted FIRST to be the gracious professionals they ask everyone else to be. When the government shut down, NASA graciously extended their deadline to submit for their grant even though there was time prior to submit. When snow storms affected numerous teams, FIRST graciously upped the withholding allowance even though, apparently, you can build a whole robot in three days.

If I told my students they had a deadline to turn something in and then I had a substitute on the day it was due who, for some reason, wouldn't collect their assignments, I would graciously accept their work the following day to accommodate for the unexpected circumstance rather than tell them too bad.

Yes, this is the real world. Graciousness abounds in the real world. I'd expect FIRST, of all organizations, to live up to those ideals in this situation, and I'm sorry that in this case they are not.

[Carolyn_Grace]

Originally Posted by TKM.368

If I told my students they had a deadline to turn something in and then I had a substitute on the day it was due who, for some reason, wouldn't collect their assignments, I would graciously accept their work the following day to accommodate for the unexpected circumstance rather than tell them too bad.

Yes, this is the real world. Graciousness abounds in the real world. I'd expect FIRST, of all organizations, to live up to those ideals in this situation, and I'm sorry that in this case they are not.

The difference in your scenario is that the substitute refused on the SINGLE day the students were told to turn in an assignment.

The site has been open to accept essays for MONTHS now, giving us mentors plenty of days to submit before the 18 hours it was due. PLUS, the site came back up with at least 3 hours to spare.

I've had many teachers, professors and bosses tell me, "This is the deadline. Get it done early and turn it in, and that's fine, but I will not accept it after the deadline, no matter what," and they stick to that.

[TKM.368]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

PLUS, the site came back up with at least 3 hours to spare.

Three hours to spare in Indiana, no problem. Three hours to spare in Hawaii? The site was closed before I was even able to wake up.

Kudos to you and all those who submitted early. However, you dismiss cold heartedly a number of extremely worthy students that are being denied an opportunity for recognition that they deserve. If it wasn't about the students, I, and I'm sure many others, wouldn't be so upset.

[Taylor]

I'm thoroughly confused by all of this. We know that FIRST has trouble handling big server loads. Game Manual on kickoff day. FIRST Choice. Chairman's due date. It's been well-documented that these are common problems, and we need to be proactive to mitigate the repercussions.
Besides, it's like Carolyn_Grace said, the site was up and running and accessible at the time of the deadline. So, no, it's not analogous to the government shutdown or a sub who wouldn't accept work. Because when FIRST said it was due, they took it.

Having said this, I agree the system needs work. It's not acceptable. But it happens.

Logistically, let's look at the situation. If FIRST had given an extension, they likely would not have had time to properly process the Dean's List nominations before Week 1 events. So even if they really really wanted to, I suspect in this case, their hands were tied.

[Carolyn_Grace]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Having said this, I agree the system needs work. It's not acceptable. But it happens.

The system definitely needs work. That's undeniable. I agree.

That said, if I was in a position where I needed to post essays by a certain time, I would set five different alarms to make sure that I woke up an hour before the deadline to try at least one more time. I'd do everything in my power to make it happen, and THEN if it still didn't work I would complain about the system. In fact, I've done this with online university classes more than a couple times.

[Bald & Bearded]

I work as a government contractor. Now that most proposals are submitted through web sites or email the government puts all kinds of notices in the RFPs that contractors need to submit early and that the government is not responsible for delays caused by technology.

That said, I have seen them waive or extend dealines when the technical issue was clearly on their side and something they could have addressed.

What this tells me is get a decent draft submitted early and update the submission often.

Although in this case, I think FIRST either needs to have 24x7 IT support for those servers (so the problems can be fixed quickly) or be prepared to extend what is in effect and artificial deadline.

[Bob Steele]

Submitting a draft early is certainly something that could be done but it was plainly stated on the website that your submission would not be evaluated until the submission was finalized. So doing a draft is nice but it would not have counted.

I am also an educator and I would find it totally unacceptable REGARDLESS of statements made previously if as a professor, I would not have been in my office the day something was done or had arranged to have someone there to accept those assignments.

I think it goes both ways...

I don't think anyone was asking for a week extension or anything.... just enough time yesterday... say until the end of the day... to be able to turn in the document.

Mentors and coaches were all under the gun to get a robot in the bag the night before this.... so on the West Coast we had exactly one night to finish up the Dean's List nominations and get them in because some of us have day jobs.

Granted we might have done it early but the fact remains that we all plan our time out and schedule activities....

It was unfortunate that it happened....but it could have been fixed...

[Snapshot]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

I don't think anyone was asking for a week extension or anything.... just enough time yesterday... say until the end of the day... to be able to turn in the document.

This is precisely what we wanted. Even just a couple of hours open to give teams that missed it enough time to turn in their final submissions would be greatly appreciated.

It seems that the topic is incredibly divided between opinions of the East-coast robotics teams and the west-coast robotics teams. I just want to remind people that, with the deadline that currently exists for Dean's list, teams that are incapable of determining team members to be nominated for Dean's list until near the deadline find the time a lot harder to turn in essays at 9 AM in the morning, as opposed to noon on the east coast.

I know our team missed the deadline, and our Dean's list nominees (I myself, a junior and one of our team's nominees), parents, and coach are upset, but I can't help but feel even worse for the likelihood that some rookie team on the west-coast had been denied the opportunity because of issues with TIMS.