Mythical Six Week Build Season

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I'm glad you build a lot of robots every year. Even if the season was twice as long as it is now, my team (and many, many others, probably well over 1/2 of FIRST) wouldn't have the funds to do so. I still don't see, however, how this plays into the length of the build season or whether we should have a stop build day. Even with a stop build day, what's stopping you from going year-round and building 20 robots each year? If getting MORE the the required number of robots done in 6 weeks is possible, why is that 6 week limitation a problem?

You can, and as I pointed out previously the team I mentor soon will be, in a position to go year round in some fashion. However you can't build a robot before the official start of kickoff without knowing the challenge and after that you only have 6 weeks unless you buy enough parts to make at least a second robot.

The issue is we need to build a 2nd robot, and sometimes per team (we have 2) to be competitive and have time to train the drivers on that year's robot even with 20 years of experience in how to build FRC robots. That's at least 2-4 control systems cost and the load of both this work on the mentors and the contributions on the local community. To some level that scales with the number of participants and to some level it does not.

Also it's one of motivation. Once the season ends you've quick burned the time. Mistakes are being made you can't undo and you burn your resources out. Plus when you go to your respective work leaders and tell them it's merely 6 weeks you are not being honest. It's not really 6 weeks. If you go year round you have a side job you probably pay to work. If you go less than year round it's very likely more than 6 weeks. So how would you expect those mentor employers to react to your mere 6 week engagement turning into 10, 12, 16 weeks when they expected it to end?

I know that if I start doing this year round - I am trading the sprint for the long term vision otherwise my coworkers will rightly ask which is my real job.

Originally Posted by aldaeron

The main thing I worry about with regard to the 6 week build season limit is newer teams that compete for one or two season and then fold. The first year I mentored we failed spectacularly (caused by our lack of knowledge of "what works in FRC" training resources). While it was a great "learning experience" for the kids, most of them did not return the following year.

...

Similarly, 2nd year teams that performed poorly in their rookie year could apply for an extra week and FIRST could allow this on a case by case basis.

I am assuming a bad experience is the primary reason teams do not return, though it can also be loss of funding/sponsor/teacher/etc. I also realize the logistics of this proposal could be significant. I am confident CD can help shape this into a better idea.

I know that when we started FRC11 (which was FRC8 the first year) that we all thought that a poor showing would work against our ability to find the funding to continue. A poor showing worked directly against our personal motivations to pour our personal funds in to secure the resources we couldn't get funded by sponsors. It also enabled any detractors to argue we were less than capable making the problem much worse. It is not 20 years ago but these human problems are still the same human problems and that is still the same 6 week build season.