Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative

[Kevin Sevcik]

There is no saving of seats. Nothing beats being yelled at by 8 people saving 30 seats when you're trying to find 5 together for your team that just got eliminated from Carver playoffs. Nothing beats the new black mom on your team being told "you don't belong here" when she's looking for a seat to watch her son in a match.

[TheModMaster8]

FIRST needs to enforce of rules under the robot section,

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by TheModMaster8

FIRST needs to enforce of rules under the robot section,

FIRST also needs to make some rules about interpersonal interactions. Specifically, not being a jerk to people.

[TheMilkman01]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

FIRST also needs to make some rules about interpersonal interactions. Specifically, not being a jerk to people.

I agree to some extent but I don't think people can unanimously agree on what is being a jerk and what isn't. It sounds like a more person-to-person issue that should be resolved as such.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by TheMilkman01

I agree to some extent but I don't think people can unanimously agree on what is being a jerk and what isn't. It sounds like a more person-to-person issue that should be resolved as such.

I'm sure there's a minimum subset of things we could all agree on. Like not harassing people and calling them cheaters, or not cat calling folks. Something along the lines of "try to treat people as if your grandmother were watching"

Wait.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I'm sure there's a minimum subset of things we could all agree on. Like not harassing people and calling them cheaters, or not cat calling folks. Something along the lines of "try to treat people as if your grandmother were watching"

Wait.

Unfortunately the lack of decorum in this year's Presidential campaign seems to indicate we're headed the wrong way.

[rsisk]

Fix the explanation of the bumper rules.

Add an illustration that clearly shows how the dimension of the side of a robot is determined. When explaining to teams, I had to explain how the length of a robot side is determined by FRAME PERIMETER (flip pages to that explanation) then go back to BUMPER RULES to show how a side > 8in must have 8in of bumpers on each corner, BACKED BY PART OF THE FRAME at each end.

One picture of a robot with 6in frame segments with an opening between them (the most common problem I saw) and describing it as NOT LEGAL would have gone a long way to resolve a lot of bumper issues.

[jweston]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Fix the explanation of the bumper rules.

Add an illustration that clearly shows how the dimension of the side of a robot is determined. When explaining to teams, I had to explain how the length of a robot side is determined by FRAME PERIMETER (flip pages to that explanation) then go back to BUMPER RULES to show how a side > 8in must have 8in of bumpers on each corner, BACKED BY PART OF THE FRAME at each end.

One picture of a robot with 6in frame segments with an opening between them (the most common problem I saw) and describing it as NOT LEGAL would have gone a long way to resolve a lot of bumper issues.

Yes, please, very much. We had to make modifications to be event compliant at multiple events this year, including World Championships after passing inspection because different inspectors had different standards. The rhinos made this especially challenging due to their irregular shape.

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

There is no saving of seats. Nothing beats being yelled at by 8 people saving 30 seats when you're trying to find 5 together for your team that just got eliminated from Carver playoffs. Nothing beats the new black mom on your team being told "you don't belong here" when she's looking for a seat to watch her son in a match.

This makes me very sad and disappointed. It is the antithesis of FIRST values. Our team had a run in over seats last year at Worlds. Forutunately it did not happen this year anywhere. Just let people sit with you. You might make a new friend, especially if they are new to robotics. In fact, our team has found it's fun to invite waiting bus drivers (ours and other team's) to sit with us. Most of them have never seen FRC before.

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

* The game piece (boulders) was ridiculously expensive and changed quite a bit after moderate use. 2006 poof balls remain the best foam game piece we have been given.

* This was a really onerous field to build at home.

This a whole bunch! Stronghold is a beautiful game to watch but it puts a huge amount of additional demands on teams which go well beyond the STEM mission in order to properly prepare for competition. I can only imagine the difficulties thinly resourced teams had this year in preparing.

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

I would like to add the large distribution of valid places to find information. If you want to know which Einstein field your team will play on first (Mass or Energy) you need to read the tournament section of the manual, if you want to know which field (Hopper or Newton) becomes Mass you need to read Frank's blog. If you want to know where your team is allowed to sit for these matches you need to read the A-to-Z guide. This is one example of needing to go to three different sources to find the answer to a simple question (Where should I sit?).

Similar to this, I would have liked a one-stop time/place schedule at Worlds for each of FLL, FTC, and FRC separately. It took a bit of searching around to put Wednesday's day 0 schedule together for us, such as figuring out the 1-4pm 5 person pit load-in restriction and field measurement times. We frequently had trouble answering simple questions for our team members regarding the schedule such as where and when should our team migrate. It's a good thing we have volunteer friends. If such a schedule exists, it was impossible to find.

[rsegrest]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

There is no saving of seats. Nothing beats being yelled at by 8 people saving 30 seats when you're trying to find 5 together for your team that just got eliminated from Carver playoffs. Nothing beats the new black mom on your team being told "you don't belong here" when she's looking for a seat to watch her son in a match.

This. I have had something similar to this happen at a regional event. I have had parents who have driven 2.5 hours to attend a regional to support their child only to have adults from another team get ugly about seats. Most of the time these are not FIRST team mentors they are parents there to watch their kids play too. Maybe that's our problem, we aren't educating our parents on the application of gracious professionalism in the stands at competition...it seems like I hear 'Blue alliance', 'Red alliance', less and less.

Now to

The FIRST web-site...I do not like it in any way shape or form. The search function is so bad I refuse to use it anymore. Heck, even getting to TIMS to log in is a chore.

[Munchskull]

Personally it think that there needs to be less speakers at Championships. These speakers all say the same things, nothing new has been said that is worth hearing. The are preaching how great first is to the choir.

[The Swaggy P]

If there's one thing I hate the most in FRC, it's the website.
I mean, they've clearly tried to make it newbie-friendly, but at the same time, they've completely messed up routines for the thousands of people already involved in FIRST.

That, and they need an official FRC forum browser on the site itself, instead of the current 3rd-party forum system.

[TDav540]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

There is no saving of seats. Nothing beats being yelled at by 8 people saving 30 seats when you're trying to find 5 together for your team that just got eliminated from Carver playoffs. Nothing beats the new black mom on your team being told "you don't belong here" when she's looking for a seat to watch her son in a match.

Yeah, that's terrible. I wish we could do something like pre-register for Einstein seating or something. There are only so many good seats, and so many people.........but if we were more efficient about it, I feel like we'd get a better solution for everyone

I'm gonna give a quick shoutout to team 329. They booked it up to Einstein after doing a great job in Tesla, but then when we needed seats for Einstein, they were nice enough move over a few rows and give us the seats we needed to make it work. I'm not sure I really said thank you enough, so if anyone on 329 is reading this, all of 1648 is really grateful.

[TheMilkman01]

Better PR, clearer and more consistent communication, and just overall less ambiguity. Those are my big three.

[Kai Hefner]

I found that the pit announcer got increasingly annoying. He would repeatedly advise individual people to stop running but every time he did, I would cease conversation with my team and await the end of the announcement because it was just too loud. Furthermore, the announcer wasn't kind at all. He was usually mad about people not following the rules or not completely filling out a form and that attitude usually carried out throughout the rest of the day. Also, when he would say, "Who loves zipties? Yell zipties!" I understand how he was trying to "hype up" the people in the pit but he didn't approach it at the right angle, it was unfortunately just annoying.

Note: I'm not saying this announcer is bad, he may of just had a bad couple of days or something, I'm simply suggesting that the announcing needs a new approach.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Kai Hefner

I found that the pit announcer got increasingly annoying. He would repeatedly advise individual people to stop running but every time he did, I would cease conversation with my team and await the end of the announcement because it was just too loud. Furthermore, the announcer wasn't kind at all. He was usually mad about people not following the rules or not completely filling out a form and that attitude usually carried out throughout the rest of the day. Also, when he would say, "Who loves zipties? Yell zipties!" I understand how he was trying to "hype up" the people in the pit but he didn't approach it at the right angle, it was unfortunately just annoying.

Note: I'm not saying this announcer is bad, he may of just had a bad couple of days or something, I'm simply suggesting that the announcing needs a new approach.

I thought the opposite and thought it was the best pit announcer I've ever heard. Usually they're so bland that after 3 days I don't listen anymore, but I found myself still listening even Friday afternoon. Never had a pit announcer make me laugh before - 'You! No Running! You in the Green Shirt! You're still going! Stop! I can still see you doing it!" Pure gold.