Mythical Six Week Build Season

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

Interesting...we don't spend money on this stuff. And we're one of the bigger fish in our small pond.

I guess you can find fault with the game, or you can find fault with how you play the game?

Seems like your implying that inspiring excellence in students is a fault in how one plays the game?

[gblake]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

Interesting...we don't spend money on this stuff. And we're one of the bigger fish in our small pond.

I guess you can find fault with the game, or you can find fault with how you play the game?

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Seems like your implying that inspiring excellence in students is a fault in how one plays the game?

Adam,

MrForbes can certainly answer for himself, but if I can be allowed a guess ... I think he might be saying that "less" can be "more" (much more) .

To my way of thinking, I want to jump on his bandwagon and suck every bit of wisdom that I can out of his team's approach, before I even think about copying the rushed shipments, and two-three robots approach(s).

The JVN vs Copioli contests, MrForbes' comments, and other related evidence, tell me that the search space for ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce) contains a heck of a lot more dimensions than just the calendar-days that a build-season lasts.

That evidence also strongly suggests that those other dimensions might be much more important than adjusting how long the current build season lasts.

Blake

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

We are going to build three robots (1 comp and 2 practice) for 2016.

Why?

The competition season is longer than the build season.

We will do more development and iteration during the competition season than the build season.

We want two robots to iterate faster during the competition season.

I think its clear that the gap is wide between us and low resource teams because we have the money to buy 3x of robot parts, and get to play with two robots post-stop build, and low resource teams get to play with zero robots post-stop build.

You make the call if the gap shrinks when low-resource teams get to play with their one and only robot while we're playing with our two or three robots.

We meet 4 days a week.

-Mike

I will point out that the $ cost of building a 2nd and 3rd robot is not substantial. Our robot build budget has not changed substantially as we add robots. Our increased budget has gone into other capital equipment purchases, stocking a set of new classes, and increased team members.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Seems like your implying that inspiring excellence in students is a fault in how one plays the game?

Probably not...but I might be implying that inspiring excellence in students does not require spending lots of money.

[Rick]

Here's another argument to the end of bag and tag: The monumental waste of resources.

FIRST put a lot of focus on recycling in the last year across all of their programs. You could argue however, that to be a top team, you had to use so many extra resources.

• Think of all the raw materials that get wasted on building a second robot.
• Think of the thousands of giant bag and tag plastic bags that get used once or twice and then thrown out.
• Think of the miles of wire, the tons of metal, the blood, sweat and tears wasted across FRC because you are separated from your robot after build by a few mils of plastic by an arbitrary rule.

A removal of bag and tag would help middle tier and low tier teams the most and save so much money, time, and material resources across the program.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by gblake

Adam,

MrForbes can certainly answer for himself, but if I can be allowed a guess ... I think he might be saying that "less" can be "more" (much more) .

To my way of thinking, I want to jump on his bandwagon and suck every bit of wisdom that I can out of his team's approach, before I even think about copying the rushed shipments, and two-three robots approach(s).

The JVN vs Copioli contests, MrForbes' comments, and other related evidence, tell me that the search space for ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce) contains a heck of a lot more dimensions than just the calendar-days that a build-season lasts.

That evidence also strongly suggests that those other dimensions might be much more important than adjusting how long the current build season lasts.

Blake

Blake,

You are completely right, there is an overwhelming evidence that adjusting the days on the calendar is not the only dimension for "ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)".

My question is:

Will removing stop-build be one of the many "ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)", or is it one of the "ways-to-NOT-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)"?

I am proposing this:

Removing stop-build is simply one of many "ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)"

I believe discussing other "ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)" is tangential to this thread.

-Mike

[AlexanderTheOK]

http://i.imgur.com/Nr7t7WZ.png?1

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by gblake

MrForbes can certainly answer for himself, but if I can be allowed a guess ... I think he might be saying that "less" can be "more" (much more) .

"300 points and we could have done... less?"

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Blake,

You are completely right, there is an overwhelming evidence that adjusting the days on the calendar is not the only dimension for "ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)".

My question is:

Will removing stop-build be one of the many "ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)", or is it one of the "ways-to-NOT-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)"?

I am proposing this:

Removing stop-build is simply one of many "ways-to-improve-build-seasons (and the students and the robots that build-seasons produce)"

...
-Mike

A) because I believe lengthening the build season is so unlikely (for an overwhelming majority of the teams) to affect the root causes and symptoms that people are hoping to affect, and
B) because I focus on FIRST's as a program that uses competitions, but doesn't exist to *be* competitions; I think we should park lengthening-the-build-season in the examined-but-rejected-because-of-very-low-ROI pile.

We/FIRST have better/bigger fish to fry. YMMV

Blake

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by gblake

A) because I believe lengthening the build season is so unlikely (for an overwhelming majority of the teams) to affect the root causes and symptoms that people are hoping to affect, and
B) because I focus on FIRST's as a program that uses competitions, but doesn't exist to *be* competitions; I think we should park lengthening-the-build-season in the examined-but-rejected-because-of-very-low-ROI pile.

We/FIRST have better/bigger fish to fry. YMMV

Blake

Mike, Myself, Jim, others (as far as I can tell) aren't advocating in lengthening the schedule at all, just skipping bagging.

Any team that doesn't want to use more doesn't have to.

Elite teams are already working in this time anyway.

By keeping the status Quo FIRST is essentially endorsing a full open season for high resource teams, and a 6 week build for low resource teams.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by gblake

I think we should park lengthening-the-build-season in the examined-but-rejected-because-of-very-low-ROI pile.

How did you go about determining this was a lower return at a higher investment? Is it not a plausible scenario where it is a greater return on a lower investment?

[gblake]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

... just skipping bagging. ...
Elite teams are already working in this time anyway.
By keeping the status Quo FIRST is essentially endorsing a full open season for high resource teams, and a 6 week build for low resource teams.

Well, I propose moving in the other direction and working to shut down the egregious post-44-days modifications (not easy to do, but worth the effort, I think) (fixes are one thing, wholesale rebuilds are another).

It's certainly not a forgone conclusion that what I'm calling competition-creep is the right direction to move the FIRST programs. While many folks seem to think that is the right direction, I'm advocating going in the other direction.

Intelligent people can reach different conclusions. These are my opinions.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

How did you go about determining this was a lower return at a higher investment? Is it not a plausible scenario where it is a greater return on a lower investment?

The long answer is long.

The short answer is the prima facie evidence supplied by the highly-visible "build a robot in a weekend" fun stunts, and by the posts written by folks like MrForbes.

I don't see a strong (certainly not strong enough) correlation between the length of the build season and a team's ability to successfully participate in the tournament part of inspiring students. Other factors appear to dominate, and I would much rather see the organization and the community of participants focus on those other factors, instead of on build-season-length or on creating/enhancing a second build season by eliminating bagging (if I understand the intent of eliminating bagging).

Blake

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by gblake

The long answer is long.

The short answer is the prima facie evidence supplied by the highly-visible "build a robot in a weekend" fun stunts, and by the posts written by folks like MrForbes.

I don't see a strong (certainly not strong enough) correlation between the length of the build season and a team's ability to successfully participate in the tournament part of inspiring students. Other factors appear to dominate, and I would much rather see the organization and the community of participants focus on those other factors, instead of on build-season-length or on creating/enhancing a second build season by eliminating bagging (if I understand the intent of eliminating bagging).

Blake

Per my first post in this topic:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=57

The inability of FIRST to grasp the evidence of the imbalance of their time/cost/quality pyramid (the top is scope) has driven me personally to decide that the 6 week build season means - literally nothing to me.

So I am preparing to make it so I have the ability to mentor any student in FRC that wants to do it and can make it there, in a mobile way eliminating the location access roadblocks, for CNC and programming. To put it bluntly: I can certainly run a makerspace with these tools even if FIRST disappeared. I can do it year round and I can therefore budget the costs (time, money, resources, etc).

I've already spent far to long, going on 20 years, watching people dance around this limit. If this was a job and similar passion had nothing to do with it: I would have quit because the cost to me is being utilized poorly. Actually in retrospect I have left 3 jobs for this sort of activity which would have held back my career had I stayed.

Keep in mind - I will still:
FRC - Mentor & Volunteer: CSA/FTAA/Small parts
FTC - Judge
FLL - Judge at NJ State level

However 20 years of FIRST, since I was basically 20 years old, have taught me if people won't move - do what's right.

[T^2]

Originally Posted by gblake

Well, I propose moving in the other direction and working to shut down the egregious post-44-days modifications (not easy to do, but worth the effort, I think) (fixes are one thing, wholesale rebuilds are another).

It's certainly not a forgone conclusion that what I'm calling competition-creep is the right direction to move the FIRST programs. While many folks seem to think that is the right direction, I'm advocating going in the other direction.

Intelligent people can reach different conclusions. These are my opinions.

You're advocating removing the ability to improve robots between events? Would that change make the FIRST experience reflective of an actual engineering process? I'm just an ignorant student, but I was under the impression that engineers don't usually just throw their first prototype out the door, without testing in real-world conditions, and then later decide not to make improvements when they are able to.