[FRC Designs] Transition Period

[Starke]

Chief Delphi Community,

FRC Designs has had an exciting run over the last five years. It has developed from one college student's idea built entirely in Dreamweaver to a website that is updated each year in Wordpress with new robot designs. It has expanded greatly and seems to have filled a need that is out there. The goal of FRC Designs is to create a continuous improvement of competition among teams in future FRC competitions. This collaborative effort will give teams the ability to innovate on solutions that have been successfully used in previous competitions.

In the last three years, I have begun an awesome job where I am now one of the lead teachers on a FIRST Robotics Team (FRC174 - Arctic Warriors). This teaching job along with an expanding family (first baby due over the summer) has left FRC Designs with a hole that is needed to be filled to keep it going.

I am reaching out to the community to find a group or an organization that would like to incorporate FRC Designs. It is at a good place where is can be taken "to the next level." I would love this website to take off and will be ready to help the transition period and advise where needed.

Please let me know if you are interested and forward this message along as needed. Thank you for your continued support in a great organization for high school students.

Matt

[AllenGregoryIV]

I love FRC designs, I wish we had time to devout to that but we barely run the programs we already have.

If a team/person is looking for a good cause to devote time to, I can't think of a better one.

Thanks for starting this Matt, it's been a huge help to the FRC community.

[Insanity000]

FRC Designs is a great program for the FIRST community! Like many others, I do not have extensive amounts of time to commit. If there is anyone else or a group of people who would also be willing to make this commitment with me to continue the program i would be very interested in this opportunity.

[connor.worley]

Not looking to solely take up this project but I can definitely help with the hosting (free hosting!) for whoever does.

[Joe G.]

My team is likely interested in this. We've been laying groundwork for a project whose ultimate goals parallel FRCDesigns in many ways, and incorporating FRCDesigns would be a natural step. I'm busy at the moment, but I will talk with the other person leading the charge on this project and PM you with more information and questions tomorrow night.

[Starke]

Thanks for the replies. Here is what we I have gotten so far:

Domain Help

- Connor Worley

Website Updaters:

- FRC4639 (CD Username: kailo
- FRC5400 (CD Username: Joe G.)

Would The Blue Alliance, FRC Mega, or Beyond Inspection be interested in a possible merger?

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

Matt

[dubiousSwain]

I don't think I can run it, and I don't have any projects I can incorporate it into, but when it does fall under new management, I would be happy to help out by writing (both articles and code) and with twitter.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Starke

Thanks for the replies. Here is what we I have gotten so far:

Domain Help

- Connor Worley

Website Updaters:

- FRC4639 (CD Username: kailo
- FRC5400 (CD Username: Joe G.)

Would The Blue Alliance, FRC Mega, or Beyond Inspection be interested in a possible merger?

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

Matt

I'll speak for BI: We're currently working on getting new ways to populate site content (it eats a ton of Foss and I's time to do currently) I don't think either of us are in a place to take on more work right now.

I'll check with Foss though just in case it is an approach we want to go down.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by Starke

Would The Blue Alliance, FRC Mega, or Beyond Inspection be interested in a possible merger?

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

Matt

I'm not involved with any of these, but as a consumer, a combination of FRC Designs and The Blue Alliance sounds awesome. Being able to look up a team's record, awards, match scores, (hopefully) match videos, and being able to see and read up on their robot designs all in one place would be pretty sweet.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Hallry

I'm not involved with any of these, but as a consumer, a combination of FRC Designs and The Blue Alliance sounds awesome. Being able to look up a team's record, awards, match scores, (hopefully) match videos, and being able to see and read up on their robot designs all in one place would be pretty sweet.

This is a really interesting proposition, and it actually fits in pretty well with some existing plans. We'd like to iterate on a lot of the media options for TBA team pages (more social integration, for example, so teams can shape how their TBA pages look), and this is might fit in pretty nicely. All we'd really need to add is whitepaper/attachment support, and there are already existing hosting options we can leverage (maybe use CD whitepapers as a backing for all of it). Plus, we already have a way to display all the robot images.

I'm not sure if I have enough free time to write all of this, but anybody who wants to help, get in touch - that's the magic of TBA being open source.

In the short term, Matt, are you comfortable with exporting some data and positing it on GitHub? If it's accessible, we can make a hackathon project out of incorporating some of the data. I know I can write a simple script to import robot images pretty easily. The rest might take some backend changes on the TBA side. I can check with Eugene and Greg and see if this is something they'd like to make it a priority.

[Starke]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

In the short term, Matt, are you comfortable with exporting some data and positing it on GitHub? If it's accessible, we can make a hackathon project out of incorporating some of the data. I know I can write a simple script to import robot images pretty easily. The rest might take some backend changes on the TBA side. I can check with Eugene and Greg and see if this is something they'd like to make it a priority.

This sounds like an awesome idea. Sure, I can export some data and send it your way. Send me some information about what I need to do and I will take care of it. Would it be easier to make another user account on FRC Designs with admin privileges so that you can check out the backend for yourself?

All of the CAD files I have on Google Drive, so sharing them should be easy.

Let me know how I can help.

Matt

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Starke

This sounds like an awesome idea. Sure, I can export some data and send it your way. Send me some information about what I need to do and I will take care of it. Would it be easier to make another user account on FRC Designs with admin privileges so that you can check out the backend for yourself?

All of the CAD files I have on Google Drive, so sharing them should be easy.

Let me know how I can help.

Matt

TBA media care about about associations between a team key (frcXXXX) and a media url. So the best data format would be some massive json list of {year, team, [assoc_type=> url]} mappings. If you could export something in that form and make a new gist, it would be great.

I could also take a look at the backend if you think it would be helpful...

And putting it on GitHub lets anyone help contribute (since my time for hacking around is sadly finite). If anyone wants to help out, get in touch and I'd be happy to walk you through what to do, though.

[Ty Tremblay]

Hi Matt,

I've sent you a PM about this.

Best,
Ty