The Quest for Einstein

[Siri]

1640 has the fortune to fall into a bit of a logical loophole in your premise. We've been to Einstein twice, but we're definitely not elite in the Cheesy Poof sense. For those of you playing at home, we rubber matched them in Einstein finals last year.

This is answered in my experience as 1640 field coach in 2013 (Einstein semis) and 2014 (Einstein finals), both of which we made as second pick. It might be more approachable for some teams than what we think about as capital-E elite stories.

Originally Posted by who716

1. money- lots of money

2. engineers- lots of engineers

3. Equipment- lots of equipment

4. populated student body with interest- lots of students.

Yes to students and time; the others are less clear. We do have enough money in the bank by build season not to worry about it constantly (far, far more than we used to). But like most things, money comes after you start winning, not before. For instance, for most of our Championship appearances, we didn't have the cash to actually get to Champs until we won/qualified at MAR...two weeks before. (At which point Sikorsky stepped up. Phew, thank you.) The most important money of than getting where you need to be is the ability to build a practice bot.

Engineers: we definitely don't have a lot of them. We have one, and he's a chemical engineer. For most of those years we did have an awesome computer scientist, and a two or three folks that could only give far (far) fewer hours, although it was especially great to have the electrical engineer and the hobbyist welder at key times. Other than that, the main engineering leaders were a plumber, a machinist, a student (me). We also had some technical day-job people on the non-engineering side, and vice versa.

Equipment: We relied pretty heavily on our student CNC mill, and students welded our chassis in-house, but other than that, it's a lot of band saws and "we're gonna need a bigger hammer". (We also like to lay up our own carbon fiber, which isn't so much an equipment thing but is really great for student interest.) The biggest 'equipment' for us is SolidWorks.

Populated Student Body / School Support: student interest is key, but the phrasing here is interesting. We don't not have a school student body. In fact, we don't have students' schools' support really at all: we're a community team operating out of a district warehouse. This makes access to students both logistically and politically difficult, and we feel the pain from it.

Time: Yes. We have 24/7 access to our build space, and it's used (by at least some people) essentially every day of build season and at only a slightly lower frequency until World Champs. The last part is really the key. With a practice bot and drive space, our "build season" tempo does not end until May.

* Basically my takeaway is that time, money, equipment, and expertise are important, but they're not more important to mid-level competitive teams than they are to the levels above them. They're not the dividing hurdles.


1640's Quest: this isn't comprehensive, but it's what I thought of this morning.
0. Build dedication and an enabling level of money/equipment/access. As mentioned, you don't need to be rich. We went to Einstein in 2013 with 3476, who built in a garage. That said, there are a lot of great teams in FIRST with wonderful, dedicated students who just are not enabled to preform like this. If you're concentrating on surviving from day to day, it's very hard to thrive.

1. Believe. Sounds crazy, right? I was on 1640 since before we realized the judges actually knew we were there. (I actually remember this realization during our fifth season.) But after we won MAR in 2012, we set our sights on Einstein 2013. Which was completely crazy. And then when we made it, and lost the semis in that heart-breaker of a scoring error, our Einstein students (through their tears) said we were coming back next year, and we were gonna do it right. 366 days later, I leaned over my drivers and told them we'd just taken Cheesy Poofs and Las Guerrillas to a rubber match in Einstein finals. You have to believe this is something you can do. There's a lot of psychology in this, all the way from summer practice to unifying your division alliance. (And keeping it there; the scoring mess really pushed our alliance to the edge in 2013, and [IMO] we weren't ready for it--see #2-3.)

2. Accrue experience. This largely leverages mentors due to student turnover. Mentors and students build the team culture though, and inspiring students for these sorts of goals is largely a peer activity. You need to understand FIRST and the many, many, many pitfalls between the end of last year's Worlds and the confetti fall on Einstein. (This is the length of your "season", not that we don't give people breaks whether or not there's confetti in their hair.)

3. Radiate professionalism. This means everything it takes to achieve levels of consistency that were unimaginable to us even with three blue banners in hand. At home, it means planning, preparation and practice. At competition, it means excellent pit processes and experience, and very, very skilled decision-making. You, particularly your coach, drivers/HP, and pit crew, also need to outwardly act this way, because people need to trust you. I say this from the point of view of a second pick who needs to actually get selected from that draft position in a field of 100. However, I can also compare the relative inexperience of our entire 2013 alliance with playing with 1114 and 1678 in 2014, and their professionalism made a huge difference. Watch them work sometime; it was really the highlight of my 2014 Einstein.

4. Be consistent, again. Think for a moment about how many robot actions you need to make to get on that final stage--even to be picked/picking for division elims. You don't have to be the best bot out there (case in point), but you should do what you do better than anyone else available among ~100 of the best robots in the world. This goes all the way back to game analysis at Kickoff. Pick the most valuable part of the game that you're capable of being the best in the world at executing, and do it. Aim for it, refine it, practice, beat it up, practice, improve it, practice, improve it, refine it, practice, and practice. Our season strategy, robot, and competition strategy all aligned to lean heavily on our swerve drive and drivers, because that was our strongest point. That said, we also push our luck, particularly with the 30-point climber in 2013: which, thanks to #0-1 Dedication and Belief (and not #2 Experience), worked basically two days out of the entire season, but it was the right two days.

5. Related to #4: get really, really, really good at something. Anything. (Okay, not anything.) This goes back to consistency. The great thing about FIRST is that there actually are 3,000 ways to win. Find yours, and leverage it. By the time we drove it on Einstein, we were sitting atop our fourth generation of swerve drive, or zillionth generation of code for it, and the best drive team in our history. Your 'thing' doesn't have to be a physical thing; ours is mostly about the iterative design and driving & pit processes that came from swerve rather than the device itself.

6. Play the game. As coach, I'm sorely tempted to put this higher. It's really the goal of half the battle: understand what captains are looking for, and give it to them. From my point of view, this is full trustworthiness and utmost professionalism, absolute consistency, great cooperation, grace under pressure, and very, very smart playing. Be the best (in their eyes) left available in the draft for that, and you've got a case. It means being part of the community, including on a personal level as coach. It means earning attention on the field, and then talk to them correctly off of it. This, like everything, takes practice and experience to hone. I include branding in this category (and also under exuding professionalism); recognition is a big player even with good scouting.

7. Related, participate in the community. At Worlds especially, the thing that gets overlooked is trust. It takes a lot of trust in someone to say their name into a microphone in front of a field of 100 teams and try to go with them all the way to Einstein--especially if they're from the other side of the country/world. We lucked out on this in 2013, getting picked by our MAR buddy where we're known for being a 'second pick wonder'. We then leveraged that Worlds-level recognition in 2014. If all goes well, you and your new friends now need to win as many matches on Saturday afternoon as you played on Thursday and Friday. For reference, winning Newton the first time did feel like winning a regional. By the time you actually get to Einstein, it's nothing like one.