Mt. Olive 2014 Footage and Match Length Issue

[Cam877]

Originally Posted by Answer42

I'll add my 2 cents in here. I like this game. It's simple and to the point. It encourages elegant design, allows low level teams to make a useful robot, and can still be dominated by a team that builds a sufficiently amazing robot. Seeding is definitely weird, and not fair in the slightest due to the nature of the game. But with good scouting and communication between teams the right alliances end up forming anyways. And it's refreshing to see 1 picks 43 instead of 1 picks 2, 3 picks 4, ect. G40 was awful in week one, but reasonable now. Defense is huge, but I wouldn't say it's the meta-game. Both the the finals of CVR and IE were primarily offensive matches. So really. The only aspect that's disappointing to me here is that we're hearing about this mistake from a third party source. First should have addressed this publicly, and I hope we'll see a blog post soon explaining why it wasn't addressed.

I completely agree with you on the game. The assists, even though most hate them, add a whole new layer of strategy to the game and ensures that good scouting and strategy is being done to take an event home.

[cgmv123]

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...21#post1358521

[Akash Rastogi]

Frank addressed the issue. It has reportedly been fixed in the FMS.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...inst-the-Rules

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Ok, enlighten me - what bigger picture? Because in my opinion that IS the bigger picture. And the fact is, any time anyone is critical of FIRST here we are told to look at the bigger picture. The issue is that the bigger picture is obscured behind a series of blunders that make it very hard to appreciate it.

The bigger picture is obvious. What happens on the field is only a small fraction of what FIRST is about. It's a means to an end, but the end goals are discrete from it. It's about changing culture and inspiring the next generation to appreciate science and engineering. The "political crap" is an integral part of the message and vision of the program. I'd challenge you to find a single student that opts not to pursue a STEM career because of what happened at Mt. Olive, or a sponsor who opts not to support FIRST, or a media outlet that decides not to cover the event, etc. The actual goals of the program, the bigger picture, are barely impacted by incidents like this. Considering nobody noticed this issue until the event was over, I feel confident to say that this did not hamper the bigger picture at all.

You're not merely being critical of FIRST so much as you're being adversarial. You're attempting to enlarge and inflame controversy, and you're being openly disrespectful not only towards the volunteers, but the professionals involved as well. These are still human beings who pour just as much, and quite frequently much more, of their time and energy into this program. This isn't some faceless, nameless Scrooge McDuck that's stealing your $4000 to swim in. It's a group of professionals and volunteers who deserve the basic respect that should be shown to any human being. They are no more happy about the "blunders" that took place than you are. Rather than call them "asinine" and question their common sense (read: the volunteers at Mt. Olive are on teams), perhaps you should reach out and find productive ways to improve the situation. These people feel bad enough as it is, piling on solves nothing.

FIRST didn't attempt to sweep it under the carpet, nor did they sit on it for an extended period of time. There are proper channels that are followed, such as FTA conference calls and FMS updates. Considering that the FMS has already been updated to fix this issue, it's obvious that FIRST gave this issue immediate attention.

If you feel their results are not up to par with your expectations, and that you can get a better bang for your buck that better aligns with how you wish to inspire your students for $4000 elsewhere, I encourage you to do so. We all have the same goals here. Rather than being inflammatory and dwelling only on the negative aspects, be progressive and help improve the product while keeping in mind the end goal.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

The bigger picture is obvious. What happens on the field is only a small fraction of what FIRST is about. It's a means to an end, but the end goals are discrete from it. It's about changing culture and inspiring the next generation to appreciate science and engineering. The "political crap" is an integral part of the message and vision of the program. I'd challenge you to find a single student that opts not to pursue a STEM career because of what happened at Mt. Olive, or a sponsor who opts not to support FIRST, or a media outlet that decides not to cover the event, etc. The actual goals of the program, the bigger picture, are barely impacted by incidents like this. Considering nobody noticed this issue until the event was over, I feel confident to say that this did not hamper the bigger picture at all.

You're not merely being critical of FIRST so much as you're being adversarial. You're attempting to enlarge and inflame controversy, and you're being openly disrespectful not only towards the volunteers, but the professionals involved as well. These are still human beings who pour just as much, and quite frequently much more, of their time and energy into this program. This isn't some faceless, nameless Scrooge McDuck that's stealing your $4000 to swim in. It's a group of professionals and volunteers who deserve the basic respect that should be shown to any human being. They are no more happy about the "blunders" that took place than you are. Rather than call them "asinine" and question their common sense (read: the volunteers at Mt. Olive are on teams), perhaps you should reach out and find productive ways to improve the situation. These people feel bad enough as it is, piling on solves nothing.

FIRST didn't attempt to sweep it under the carpet, nor did they sit on it for an extended period of time. There are proper channels that are followed, such as FTA conference calls and FMS updates. Considering that the FMS has already been updated to fix this issue, it's obvious that FIRST gave this issue immediate attention.

If you feel their results are not up to par with your expectations, and that you can get a better bang for your buck that better aligns with how you wish to inspire your students for $4000 elsewhere, I encourage you to do so. We all have the same goals here. Rather than being inflammatory and dwelling only on the negative aspects, be progressive and help improve the product while keeping in mind the end goal.

The bigger picture is being obscured by this series of avoidable blunders. Blunders FAR larger than the Mt Olive situation. This was merely the latest in a series of incidents that have led me to believe FIRST needs to take a step back and reevaluate whether it should focus on this "small fraction" because they clearly don't have a handle on it. We have a game that is impossible to ref. We have "potential sponsors" insulting high school students. We have a game where teams can barely play because they spend the entire match being rammed. Yeah you can bet your rear end I'm going to be adversarial.

I'm not attacking the volunteers. The refs, the scorekeepers, they are doing a great job. I don't fault the Scorekeeper at Mt Olive one bit. I fault FIRST HQ. I fault the folks that are PAID to deliver a product. Yes, you may see that product as only a small part. But it is the critical part of FIRST's mission. There are dozens (if not more) groups advocating for STEM education. FRC is the key differentiator between FIRST and Generic STEM Org 4. So, I'm going to have to disagree with the entire premise that your bigger picture is more important than missteps that make FIRST look like it has no clue how to run an event thus undermining anything it says.

And regarding professionals and volunteers. This may come as a surprise to you but I am one of those volunteers. I asked about a problem I saw and was told that there was a lack of experienced folks to do a job. So I'm doing it. If FIRST comes out and says "we don't have enough folks properly vetting our software" I'd do that too. If they need help they need to ask for it. FIRST is probably the only organization I'll willingly write software for and not expect any sort of compensation.

About the professionals - I'm a professional software engineer. You know what happens when I put out a product with a sloppy user experience? My department head comes into my lab, yells at me for 20 minutes, and I hear about the screw up for the next year. And that's assuming it's only a minor screw up. You don't want to know what happens if I screw something major up.

So, as a professional engineer, I'm going to show these folks the same respect I'd ask they show me. The respect to say that you can do better. I've had the pleasure of meeting a large number of folks who work at FIRST, I know they can do better than this. If you can't, what do you need to do better? Because I really DO want you to.


And my aside about the 2012 coopertition bridge - Political crap. Total idealogical crap. Did it foster collaboration? No. It fostered lying and manipulation to screw over teams.

So, even though you didn't ask for it I'm going to give FIRST some simple advice that I think would fix a lot of this sort of problems - Whatever your QA process for your software is, change it. Get some automated unit testing. Hire a UX expert (not UI, UX!). And last but not least, the second you verify that something like this happened? Shoot out a blog post saying "Hey crap happened, we're investigating fixing it and will keep you posted".

[AlecMataloni]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

The bigger picture is obvious. What happens on the field is only a small fraction of what FIRST is about. It's a means to an end, but the end goals are discrete from it. It's about changing culture and inspiring the next generation to appreciate science and engineering. The "political crap" is an integral part of the message and vision of the program. I'd challenge you to find a single student that opts not to pursue a STEM career because of what happened at Mt. Olive, or a sponsor who opts not to support FIRST, or a media outlet that decides not to cover the event, etc. The actual goals of the program, the bigger picture, are barely impacted by incidents like this. Considering nobody noticed this issue until the event was over, I feel confident to say that this did not hamper the bigger picture at all.

If I'm trying to bring outsiders into FRC, how can I, with a good conscience, recommend them to be a part of something with major issues, and expect them to forgive the flaws just like that?

I'd be embarrassed if I sung the praises of FRC and drew people to volunteering, only for them to have a sub-par experience. This is personally why I care so much. If I'm putting my name out there supporting an organization like FIRST, I'm expecting FIRST to live up to the amazing experiences I've had in years past. I want newcomers to see FRC how I see it. Currently, with all the blunders and mishaps in 2014, It's difficult for me to justify going out in the community and getting people to invest their capital in an organization which doesn't have a cohesive product.

[StevenB]

Originally Posted by magnets

As previous people have pointed out, FIRST is a massive organization with extremely bright people, and a decent amount of money and sponsors. They are capable of holding an incredible number of competitions and organizing the massive championship event in St. Louis, and other fantastic accomplishments, but they can't seem to test the FMS, the magical closed source networking nightmare of complexity.

Hold on. FIRST is not a massive organization. It's actually a pretty small operation, in terms of full-time paid employees. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the FMS software is basically written and maintained by one or two people - who also have other things to do. Moreover, they do test the FMS with real robots before week zero. The problem is that the people testing it are the people who wrote it, and the fact that certain things are unintuitive naturally go unnoticed. Then suddenly you run a few thousand matches with dozens of fields and scores of new volunteer users, and you're guaranteed to find problems.

I'm not suggesting that it's ok for FIRST HQ to be sloppy. Last weekend was my first time driving the FMS, and I'll admit, it is not a pretty piece of software. The UX design is somewhere between confusing and awful. It could definitely be better, and I would love to see parts of it open-sourced.

But this outpouring of rage is unnecessary. I'm sure Frank, Matt, and the other folks in Manchester feel terrible about this. They pushed a software fix for this week, and they're doing what they can. Competition season is pretty intense for the FRC staff. Let's work to support them and help them do a better job, not tear them apart.

[techhelpbb]

We'd all like to think that volunteers can address all the issues.
Truth is that there are limits to what we can and are allowed to do.
Our access is limited in many ways as well.
During matches we all have multiple responsibilities.
In a game with this much human attention required for scoring it's easily distracting for people on the field.

If it makes people feel better to fault volunteers for falling in the holes and complexity left for them to stumble over feel free. It's like mocking a team for robot problems. Anyone here want to pretend you've never had robot problems?

Just like robot problems a team can let this pull them apart or they can put the politics and egos aside and work the problems.

This being said: project management *IS NOT* and *WILL NEVER BE* about cleverly roasting the assigned resources with negative feedback. That's not project management and that's not team leadership. What that is, is what happens when you have an organization with issues, a lack of appropriate skills and resources to solve those issues and too many chefs.

I respect the people that know from personal and professional experience that the field systems need work. I respect and acknowledge that we as teams and volunteers have had several painful examples that should not be ignored. However let us lead by example. If I was one of those one or two people that maintain FMS (I am not) all this would do is demotivate me not motivate me. It's wonderful that FIRST has acknowledged this issue and corrected that bug. However it is pretty clear that the follow through on this sort of stuff in the future is uncertain. As I wrote before, and I write this with respect is it possible FIRST that you could explain to your membership what is going to be changed in the future to make this a better experience?

Changing the game isn't going to fix a process that produces the support technology for the game.
Getting the interface fixed doesn't address the other technical issues.

What's going to change to heal this process so that what comes out of it does more to inspire and less to aggravate?