2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

My perspective was from the Information Booth, aka, the crossroads of the worlds. Over the past 5 years - I believe I have heard every question there is out there dealing with team questions, volunteer questions, spectator questions, family questions, venue questions, first aid questions, and FIRST program questions (on and on).

We invite spectators in. We advertise the event at every Metro link stop and throughout St. Louis. Bring the kids! See robots!

Well...maybe. On Sat. at noon badging was packed up and moved out. But the throngs of people and lots and lots of kids came pouring in. We invited them! But think about this. What is there for them to do on Sat. afternoon.? FLL was closed. The pits were closed to the public. The Innovation Faire closed at 2. And FRC, if you found your way to the Dome - was it a 2 hour break???The Student Ambassadors were also packed up. And Union Station was shutting down.

What are we showing exactly?

And it was interesting that badging, which was SUCH A PRIORITY, on all the other days, causing some mentors and teams to stand in horrible lines on Wed. for 2+ hours (until it was decided to call off the required badging, BUT required to resume on Thurs - so teams would not miss the 5pm drivers meeting) and then it took at least 5 minutes to fill in the information for each badge, print it out, put in in the sleeve, put on the lanyard if the person is not pre-registered. But suddenly it become a non-priority on Sat. at noon. Boom. BUT how does that information get out to all house people so they know the change in status and that badges were no longer needed? It was a bit bumpy.

And suddenly, how do the VIPs get badges, and find their way to the VIP area and get access?

So the volunteers in the Info Booth are doing our best to give out the right info, and come up with suggested activities and actions and explaining what FIRST is.

Speaking as a spectator, I can say Jenny is 100% on the mark.
We wanted to experience the CMP, but didn't want to take time off work or our kids out of school. So my wife, two boys, a fellow mentor, and I stayed Friday night in Collinsville and went to the event on Saturday.
We arrived about 8:45 local time, were instantly told we weren't allowed in without proper identification. We made our way to the information booth, said hi to Jenny, and waited some time* for personal badges to be printed.
We went to the pits, which were a ghost town. (apparently this was during alliance selections, but ev-ery-bo-dy was gone).
We tried to watch some matches, but event staff didn't let us through to the EJD.

The best part of the day was our lunch at OverUnder.

As I said before, if the flagship world championship bores 6- and 3-year-old boys to tears, it's not doing it right.

I will not be taking my family back to the CMP as Saturday spectators.

*I don't know exactly how long it was, but it was enough time for my pregnant wife and 3yo boy to go to the bathroom, which isn't a fast feat.

[JesseK]

I forgot a pretty frustrating snippet from this season, and it started back at Day 0.

The game manual web viewer was worthless. Absolutely not worth the electric energy, bandwidth and time it took to load it. It wouldn't load at work, for whatever reason. It wouldn't load on my phone. At home when it did load it didn't have a search function. Search is critical when trying to vet a creative idea. I magically found the button for keyboard shortcuts though, phew! There was no skimming to a page easily recognized by its graphics for a quick reference because each page had to load individually. There was no section-by-section reference or TOC. It was impossible to directly link to a rule in an online discussion.

The rules are tough enough to follow given the cross-referencing of definitions, graphics, blue boxes and actual rule text in the manual. 2013 & 2014's online manual were great. 2015 was definitely a step backwards. While I wouldn't say it was as bad as the Champs Hotels website, it definitely ranks pretty far down on my list of unusable websites.

The PDF worked fine, but had to be re-downloaded every Tues/Fri after updates.

[Taylor]

When the manual app did work (not often), it would not zoom or display landscape.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by JesseK

I forgot a pretty frustrating snippet from this season, and it started back at Day 0.

The game manual web viewer was worthless. Absolutely not worth the electric energy, bandwidth and time it took to load it. It wouldn't load at work, for whatever reason. It wouldn't load on my phone. At home when it did load it didn't have a search function. Search is critical when trying to vet a creative idea. I magically found the button for keyboard shortcuts though, phew! There was no skimming to a page easily recognized by its graphics for a quick reference because each page had to load individually. There was no section-by-section reference or TOC. It was impossible to directly link to a rule in an online discussion.

The rules are tough enough to follow given the cross-referencing of definitions, graphics, blue boxes and actual rule text in the manual. 2013 & 2014's online manual were great. 2015 was definitely a step backwards. While I wouldn't say it was as bad as the Champs Hotels website, it definitely ranks pretty far down on my list of unusable websites.

The PDF worked fine, but had to be re-downloaded every Tues/Fri after updates.

Seconded. In Wholehearted agreement.

[Qbot2640]

I've just thought of two, that have been pet peeves for several years now:
(1) Create at minimum one controlled horizontal dimensioned drawing of the entire field with all the basic measurements (wall to platforms, wall to staging boxes, lengths, widths etc.) and put it in the game manual, so we don't have to analyze several different game drawings to figure out how far to move in auto (for example). Additional vertical drawings with the heights of the tote chute, the step, scoring platforms, etc. would also be nice - with the emphasis on putting as much as possible of this vital data into a single drawing in the manual.
And
(2) Some tweaks were made to TIMS registration with respect to youth protection, but I still have had to sit down next to parents and members and work together in some cases to get their registrations completed...and I still have potential members that create registration accounts then decide not to participate, thus I have a bunch of incomplete non-members that I would like to just completely delete from our roster ("rejecting" a request does not remove them from the roster). FIRST needs to give team leads the ability to create and delete accounts, then have the members and their parents log into them to fill in the information.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

(1) Create at minimum one controlled horizontal dimensioned drawing of the entire field with all the basic measurements (wall to platforms, wall to staging boxes, lengths, widths etc.) and put it in the game manual, so we don't have to analyze several different game drawings to figure out how far to move in auto (for example). Additional vertical drawings with the heights of the tote chute, the step, scoring platforms, etc. would also be nice - with the emphasis on putting as much as possible of this vital data into a single drawing in the manual.

And publish official CAD of the arena (or at least the field).

[Mr. Tatorscout]

I'd really like to understand what the logic is behind the badges. They don't ask for ID. So any schmoe could walk in and say his name was Engelbert Humperdink and get a badge made. Boy, kids, doesn't that make you feel safer?

My nephew visited and had to carry his kid all over the place after being told three different locations to go for the badge. Then they just asked his name and made a badge. The entire premise was ridiculous.

[Qbot2640]

Originally Posted by Mr. Tatorscout

...So any schmoe could walk in and say his name was Engelbert Humperdink and get a badge made. Boy, kids, doesn't that make you feel safer?...

I didn't have to look into the post header to see you were a team mentor. Referencing "Engelbert Humperdink" dates you around my age. Thanks for the smile!

How many Engelberts did you encounter in Saint Louis?

[JB987]

I heard one of the purposes of the badges was to try and provide a more accurate head count...requested by representatives of the new Champs local organizers/supporters.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by JB987

I heard one of the purposes of the badges was to try and provide a more accurate head count...requested by representatives of the new Champs local organizers/supporters.

If you stuck around for the closing ceremonies/finale, Don Bossi was able to give an attendee count to the nearest person. I don't know how accurate it was, but it was certainly precise.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

If you stuck around for the closing ceremonies/finale, Don Bossi was able to give an attendee count to the nearest person. I don't know how accurate it was, but it was certainly precise.

When I counted heads, I got nowhere near his number, so I think a bunch of teams must have left due to the delay of the finale....

[SteveGPage]

I've read through about 25% of the comments, and finally got to the TL;DR point. I know that Frank and FIRST HQ take what is said here seriously, so to add the aggregation of the previous comments, here are my thoughts.

I kept saying that I was sure this season would eventually win me over, as other seasons have - to some degree, I even came to appreciate Lunacy. This season never did. Granted, it was a unique engineering challenge, and I believe that our students, from that perspective, learned a great deal. But FIRST isn't just about the robots (although, I will come back to that concern in a moment), we did this to change the culture. We want to raise up the next generation of Scientists, Technologists, Engineers and Mathematicians - AKA, STEM. Warehouse demos aren't going to get us there. As I sat in the stands watching what was supposed to be the pentacle of the season, the finals on Einstein - I couldn't get excited about it. I was happy for the teams who were there, but the competition had no excitement. There wasn't that level of tension that previous years had. Visitors, friends, and family members who watched it, only would watch it when my team was playing, because it couldn't hold their attention either. I am worried how many students, mentors - as well as perspective new students and mentors we lost in the last 4 months. I have heard from several who won't be back. That makes me very sad.

I said above that FIRST isn't about the robots, but to change the culture. Just as the finals on Einstein celebrates the achievements on the building of the robot, the Chairman's Award is the celebration on how teams have done changing the culture. I know that the finale was supposed to be where that took place, it's own stage, and as much as there was good intentions to do so - that absolutely did not happen. It felt as if the it was being shoved to the end, when so few were there to celebrate with them. That's just wrong. We, because of our arrangements, had a charter bus to catch and tried to stay as long as we could - hours after the award should have been given, but in the end had to leave before the announcement was made. FIRST should consider itself fortunate that the winning team was still there.

FIRST needs to re-evaluate how things are done, and if they align with their core values and mission. This season didn't feel like it did.

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by Rachel Lim

- Mecanum. We've done it once, and I hope we never do it again. It's confirmed what I thought, and much more. I never would have expected us to get sucked into the "mecanum trap*," but we did, and it wasn't fun. I'm looking forward to the return of defense so we won't do this again. That said, it was nice to see it well implemented by many teams.
* My name for the idea that omni-directional movement is important enough that spending time on a drivetrain that we've never tried before, and will spend a significant amount of time on, will help us in the end. (Okay, it's just team-specific, but it was something I learned this year...)

we got sucked into the H-drive trap... While it was a lot of fun to have a drive train different than tank for the first time ever, it prevented us from bringing the totes inside the robot as far as possible, making our stacks a bit less stable (although a variety of things played into that). it also weighed a lot for something the drivers have said they probably could have done without

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by Hot_Copper_Frog

You may not be, but you have to understand that in the spirit of broadening the audience of FIRST and "ramping up" the cool factor of the Championship event, it's not a bad idea. While it wasn't executed in the best way possible, I can see the vision that FIRST is aiming for, and I think it has merit.

Many people attend championships for reasons other than robots. The high level of energy. The intense and grand atmosphere. The feeling that you are a part of something greater than yourself. Meeting people from all over the world. And yes, seeing and possibly meeting some big name individuals.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with that. Please remember this in the future.

It still would have been nice for me to have all the awards happen and then go off on the concert & whatever: I had not realized the time and I was really hungry during the DJ time, and I also got a headache from the excess of bass (and other audio problems from ee-ee-arlii-ii-iier)

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by Andrew Y.

but guys...it's not about the robots. it is about the students....

as a student I want better video quality so I can watch more robots