What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by popnbrown

For the sake of giving you an answer, since you've asked a few times, and because adding more chaos sounds like a great idea. 6 weeks has always been a selling point. We always tell potential sponsors/students/mentors how we build this robot in SIX WEEKS.

While that is a nice selling point, that's mostly what it is - just marketing. With withholding allowances and second robots, plenty of teams keep right on building and iterating past bag & tag. Replace six weeks with eight or ten and it's no less impressive to a potential sponsor or mentor. I fear that the 6 week selling point has been engrained in FRC's culture for so long now that it's basically a non-starter for discussion.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

While that is a nice selling point, that's mostly what it is - just marketing. With withholding allowances and second robots, plenty of teams keep right on building and iterating past bag & tag. Replace six weeks with eight or ten and it's no less impressive to a potential sponsor or mentor. I fear that the 6 week selling point has been engrained in FRC's culture for so long now that it's basically a non-starter for discussion.

The 6 weeks came about also because of the out dated need to actually have FedEx come pick up your robot so they could get it to your competition in time.

We no longer ship our robot why are we bagging it?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

I still haven't read one statement arguing why bag and tag is still necessary other than statements that hint at "It's the way we've always done it!"

It's obviously not the way we've always done it. Back in the day, FRC had a single deadline for crating and shipping the robot. At the very beginning of FRC, that was perfectly understandable, because there was a single competition. As regional competitions came to be, with different dates for some of them, it still made sense to keep a consistent crate & ship date so that every team got the same number of days to design and build their robot. Now that shipping crates to competitions is no longer a universal thing, we get the same effect by having a single deadline for placing the robot out of reach of tools.

So there's the past and the present. Now let's consider the future.

Is it still reasonable to "artificially" end robot work on the same day for every team? I think it is. It keeps the playing field level and doesn't put early-competing teams at a disadvantage by giving them less time to work on their robot. High-resource teams can find ways to make productive use of additional time even without access to the robot, of course, but I believe that to be a team strength that should yield benefits. It is not something that can be easily addressed on the "playing field" front.

Having the six week deadline is also a concept that I know many mentors plan on in order to justify deep involvement with a team during the build. Without it, I myself would definitely cut down the time I spend in a given week, and I am pretty sure I would end up contributing significantly less time in total outside the actual competitions.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Every time I tell someone we built our robot in six weeks, my nose grows a few inches...

Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?

Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.

[Whatever]

My daughter was a Freshman this year and this was her first year of FRC after two years of FTC. She made the comment to me that one of the things she liked about FRC versus FTC was bag and tag.

In FTC, it always seemed like someone would have an idea about how to make this part or that part better. The result was the robot would get torn apart between competitions and it became a stressful race against the clock to get it back together. She liked the fact that the competition bot for FRC was safe in a bag between competitions and the tinkerers had to work their improvements out elsewhere.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

It's obviously not the way we've always done it. Back in the day, FRC had a single deadline for crating and shipping the robot.

The artificial stop build day is what I refer to when I say 'it's always been done this way.'

Back when we shipped robots it made sense - there were few competitions and transit time needed to be factored in. Now we bag and tag for some reason - even though it really doesn't make sense to. There's no need (except international teams) to crate up the robot and ship it anymore.

Why stifle a team's creativity and innovation by making them put their robot into a bag a few weeks before they'll actually compete?

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?

Our robot is built in 16 weeks, not 6. The robot on Einstein was very different than the robot at our first regional. This has been the case for 1678 the past 4 years, just look at our photo albums online.

We build three robots and develop throughout the four month build season. We use withholding allowance to get new parts on the robot. We are not alone.

To say we built our championship robot in 6 weeks/45 days is simply not true.

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.

I do miss the "identical spare parts" wording. That would be very nice for spares.

However, getting rid of withholding means we have to make all of our parts at the regional if we want to upgrade our robot. Don't worry, we would still upgrade our robot between events. CNC router, lathe and drill press in the pit would help make that possible.

Adding more barriers between teams and their robots will make the best teams even better than everyone else. We have the resources to get around every barrier you (or FIRST) can think of. Just stop trying.

-Mike

[Fusion_Clint]

Originally Posted by Whatever

My daughter was a Freshman this year and this was her first year of FRC after two years of FTC. She made the comment to me that one of the things she liked about FRC versus FTC was bag and tag.

In FTC, it always seemed like someone would have an idea about how to make this part or that part better. The result was the robot would get torn apart between competitions and it became a stressful race against the clock to get it back together. She liked the fact that the competition bot for FRC was safe in a bag between competitions and the tinkerers had to work their improvements out elsewhere.

I agree 100% with this!

I even plan on making a bag and tag rule for my FTC teams this upcoming year to help manage teenage procrastination and the tinkerer syndrome.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Adding more barriers between teams and their robots will make the best teams even better than everyone else. We have the resources to get around every barrier you (or FIRST) can think of. Just stop trying.

And if you don't have them, you can get them. Thus denying either those resources or time you could have given to teams in need.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint

I agree 100% with this!

I even plan on making a bag and tag rule for my FTC teams this upcoming year to help manage teenage procrastination and the tinkerer syndrome.

What some people negatively refer to as "tinkerer syndrome", others positively refer to as "continuous improvement".

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?

Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.

Speaking as head coach of a team that's spent three years consciously working towards being highly competitive (observing and interviewing top teams, and emulating them)... limiting withholding to identical spare parts or removing it entirely wouldn't particularly have an effect on our ability to work outside the six weeks and within the rules. We rebuilt a significant portion of our robot at one of our events this year (state champs) and when we ran out of withholding allowance we simply designed mechanisms that we could build from raw materials & COTS, during the practice match period, and with equipment we can reasonably fit in our 10x10 pit. We built up the new mechanisms once or twice at home to make sure we knew what problems to expect, used the practice robot to do dry runs of tearing mechanisms down and rebuilding them to improve speed, and then left all that at home and packed up the raw material and COTS to do it all over again. From week one of build we planned our season around continuous iteration through World Champs. District #1 goal was breach & score low, District #2 goal was breach and score high, State Champs goal was vision tracking auto (spectacular fail, busy rebuilding everything else), and World Champs goal was add scaling (also fail, turns out it's hard to do much in the 10 days between states and worlds).

Per the original topic on what HQ can do to remove barriers to continued participation... reduce costs, particularly in registration fees. I guess I've always assumed that the initial registration fee is a marketing decision (it's like a fancy car, would lose prestige if it were lower) but I'll give HQ benefit of the doubt and say that the current revenues are justified and well utilized. What would we be willing to go without in exchange for reduced initial registration fee and/or reduced district champs/second regional registration fee? Kit of Parts? Personally I'd probably give up KoP if it meant a few thousand saved.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint

I agree 100% with this!

I even plan on making a bag and tag rule for my FTC teams this upcoming year to help manage teenage procrastination and the tinkerer syndrome.

Except for the fact it is both easier and cheaper to completely rebuild a FTC robot compared to an FRC robot.

Arguments about teams having a lack of self control and knowing when to take breaks or not do something to their robot are BS. Its not up to FIRST to control how and when your team meets or how much work your team puts in. If you don't have the will to stop when your burnt out then that's your problem.

B&T only costs teams money, time, and heartache. It does not level the playing field. It does not save people/teams from them selves. It does not inspire. It does not do anything of benefit.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Except for the fact it is both easier and cheaper to completely rebuild a FTC robot compared to an FRC robot.

Arguments about teams having a lack of self control and knowing when to take breaks or not do something to their robot are BS. Its not up to FIRST to control how and when your team meets or how much work your team puts in. If you don't have the will to stop when your burnt out then that's your problem.

B&T only costs teams money, time, and heartache. It does not level the playing field. It does not save people/teams from them selves. It does not inspire. It does not do anything of benefit.

The poster even noted how they were implementing a similar rule in FTC. Note how they didn't have to change the rules of FTC worldwide to impose that restriction on themselves! They just decided to use self control and to limit themselves by their own choice.

Getting rid of B&T doesn't stop anyone who wants to stop working from doing so. They are still free to put their tools down on ship day. Sure, nobody else who is competitive (and able to keep working) will stop working on ship day, but they already weren't stopping anyway. I bet for most of the top teams in FRC, their meeting schedule doesn't even change after bag day.

[PayneTrain]

Gentlemen! Congratulations on a fantastic thread so far. I have been hesitant to enter the fray up until this point, but the discussion is just so riveting and well reasoned, I finally stopped bloodying up the wall at my desk with my head to post this. The bag and tag <SNIP> has never been so incredible to bear witness to.

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Well, damm. Please 'splain to me in small words how bag and tag kills teams.

At this point you are either trolling or refuse to read the thread. On the first page of the thread, a poster made this comment on it:

Originally Posted by Tim Sharp

It hits on the most obvious way to improve sustainability immediately, reduce the logistical and financial barriers to entry. Bag and tag creates artificially high barriers that are too much to overcome for many teams who operate near the margins.

So if the inverse was true, bag and tag in his eyes increases logistical and financial barriers to entry.

Whether or not you choose to believe that line of thinking is not on me, but you aren't doing yourself a lot of favors by complaining that people do not understand one side of the argument when you seemingly blatantly are ignoring the already existing replies on the topic. I would applaud such a breathtaking troll job but I fear you are sincere.

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

It may not outright kill teams, but it sure isn't doing us any favors when trying to grow & sustain FRC teams.

I've personally witnessed team success drive team sustainability. Many argue that robot performance does not matter at all, that it has zero bearing on if a team will succeed or fail long-term. I believe that this is false and that long term sustainability and long term improvement - both on and off the playing field - share a common link.

A team that plays well and to the best of their abilities and has some measure of success at a competition is an inspired team. They're excited, they're happy, they're proud. The students, mentors, & sponsors feel good because all of the time and effort they put into their teams paid off in some tangible way. Not an intangible "we really learned a lot this year, have a pat on the back" way but "wow, we programmed 3 autonomous modes that worked in 90% of our matches and won an award because of our consistency, and made it to the elimination rounds."

There are teams that never have that second moment I just described, ever. And at some point enough is enough - the students, mentors and sponsors don't see the students getting excited and they as a team aren't feeling inspired. Those are teams that fold after repeated years of feeling not so great after competitions.

Could ending bag and tag help improve the above scenario? I'd argue yes, it very well could for many teams. It gives teams a little more time to have that 'ah ha!' moment and get things working. It doesn't punish teams that can't build an extra drive base to put their 30 lbs of withholding allowance on to continue to practice and iterating. If we can raise the bar even a little bit for the lower and mid-tier teams, isn't that worth it?

Look to the VEX robotics competition if you want an example of how it should be done - no bag and tag. Constant robot access for iteration, improvement and practice. Would VRC be half of what it is today if they had a tools down / bag & tag policy? I'd argue no.

I still haven't read one statement arguing why bag and tag is still necessary other than statements that hint at "It's the way we've always done it!" I'm sorry, but that's not a good enough reason to continue to do it. There were plenty of people who shot down the district model because it was different. Now it's the future of FRC.

As a community that's supposed to be innovative and trying to drive culture change, we sure are afraid of trying anything new.

I think people can argue over whether there is direct causation of team sustainability coming from on-field success, but I hypothesize that 95% of teams who make eliminations in one year make it to the next year, and the number is significantly lower for those teams who do not. There is a correlation there worthy of investigation.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the 365 day season of VRC is not necessarily all sunshine and roses. I'll spare this board the invoking of BnS or asking the rhetorical questions like "Why does 118 wait until right before VEX champs to unveil their VEX bots publicly?" but I do not think the design convergence would happen to the same extent in a 15 week FRC season.

**ATTENTION CDENIZENS: PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT TALK ABOUT DESIGN CONVERGENCE'S RELATION TO BAG AND TAG IN THIS THREAD**

My favorite part about FIRST is how that more often than not, people like to argue things that make sense when grouped together into a philosophy or other school of thought, but when using a point in favor or against one thing in the group of opinions, it betrays another part of the philosophy.

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

B&T is the epitome of doing something just because we always have. FIRST is about innovation and inspiration. Removing B&T has a huge ability to do both.

For example here, I totally agree with you, but some yahoo is going to have an opening here to tell you about why you should like the ending of the singular cmp for the two postseason expos is an example of change people don't like. Then we can circle back to stuff like "Why aren't we all just buying stuff out of the Small Parts catalog from Amazon?" and we'd be talking about the 10 regionals Michigan has.

However one of the most interesting things about this round of the b&t bout is that those who are against its removal seem to be avoiding arguing for how bag and tag improves sustainability. It's been hit on, but not for the sake of telling you how bag and tag keeps the playing field level. I don't give a flying fish about the playing field being level if we are having a problem keeping teams alive. CONSTANTLY DYING FRC TEAMS CAN BE WORSE THAN NO TEAMS. I've been fortunate to be part of only a few totally DoA seasons and they suck and make everyone feel sad. That's not the competitor in me, that's me seeing upset students and worn out mentors. I don't understand why we want to keep putting that on people unless it's a masochism thing.

The internet has evolved into "meme culture". However, one of the OG memes is not something like Rick'Rolling or SANDSTORM DARUDE, but the 6 week build season.

The entirety of my 8 years in FIRST, this line has become more and more farcical.

Originally Posted by popnbrown

For the sake of giving you an answer, since you've asked a few times, and because adding more chaos sounds like a great idea. 6 weeks has always been a selling point. We always tell potential sponsors/students/mentors how we build this robot in SIX WEEKS.

So while I can't argue it's necessity, the value it does provide is a universal limited time frame that's apparently significantly shorter than real world projects. I view it as a really really good opportunity to learn about project/time management.

I find the idea of telling mentors and students you build the robot in six weeks to be interesting. How many mentors do you keep when you tell them what is essentially a giant lie up front? How many families? Maybe your team literally does nothing outside of the competitions after you bag it. If not, you're lying.

When it comes to sponsors, we actually talked to our key sponsors this year about our plan to run a true 16 week build season. We talked about how we can improve student engagement by planning a season around building two robots and competing at 5 events over 16 weeks. How did they respond to us wanting to double our build load and triple our competition load? They doubled our money. I'm not saying you get this from every potential sponsor, but taking the opportunity to show them what value we get out of extra events and extra robots really excited them.

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Every time I tell someone we built our robot in six weeks, my nose grows a few inches...

Pretty much. Ever since we stopped saying it, student and sponsor retention has gone up!

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Is it still reasonable to "artificially" end robot work on the same day for every team? I think it is. It keeps the playing field level and doesn't put early-competing teams at a disadvantage by giving them less time to work on their robot. High-resource teams can find ways to make productive use of additional time even without access to the robot, of course, but I believe that to be a team strength that should yield benefits. It is not something that can be easily addressed on the "playing field" front.

Having the six week deadline is also a concept that I know many mentors plan on in order to justify deep involvement with a team during the build. Without it, I myself would definitely cut down the time I spend in a given week, and I am pretty sure I would end up contributing significantly less time in total outside the actual competitions.

The sphere of thinking that concerns B&T enabling a level playing field requires some mental gymnastics to get to the idea that B&T aids sustainability. One alliance wins a given tournament but all FRC teams have a chance to chase their own success and catch inspiration along the way. How much success can a team catch if they can't drive their robot?

As far as I know, no one is putting a gun that could shoot you in the head in the same bag and tag as the robot your team builds. No one makes me show up to a 422 meeting. I think FIRST would be better off instituting a weekly hours limit with no bag and tag. I am hanging that one out there so someone can tell me its unenforceable.

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Why is that? Surely you don't work on the robot between the time you bag it on the prescribed date and the time you regain access to it for your first competition. Are you nitpicking the difference between 42 and 45 days? Or are you bagging an unfinished robot and counting on a withholding allowance to let you build the rest of it outside the official build time to bolt on later?

Instead of removing bag & tag, I would very much like to see the withholding rules go back to the "identical spare parts" wording, or even go away entirely.

I hope you are in the same trolling academy as GeeTwo. 1678 has to compete like hell to get into worlds in the state of California, as they have to compete in the regional system with no rolling pre-qualifiers to the championship or the new postseason expositions. You're welcome to gum up machine shops at regionals under your proposed rule change. That'll earn a lot of fans.

Although we are guaranteed to get at least 30 more posts in this thread over a bunch of freakin' garbage bags, Andrew did us the favor of putting the horse down already:

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Is B&T actively killing teams? No. Absolutely not.

Is removing it going to make FRC harder for at risk teams? I don't have evidence to believe so.

Is keeping it making life harder for those same teams? I believe so.


What benefit does B&T really bring to our program besides an artificial constraint? And is that artificial constraint important to the goals of the program?

I eagerly look forward to what I can only imagine to be <SNIP> that is more circular discussion of a bunch of plastic bags!

----

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

What is so bad about attrition as long as the FRC pool of teams continues to rise? In essence - some teams die on the vine and others flourish. This is not a reflection on FRC but an exercise of Darwin's 'natural selection'. Teams that have what it takes can make it - and others do not. FIRST and it's sponsors have already done their work by spreading out their resources to teams that may need it - but how have those teams used these resources?

Or are we in a place in FRC that we all need equal access to all resources?

Yes, my team wants to have what the best of the best have - but we are confined to the resources in our area. And I will be honest with you, I believe that we have enough resources to compete with the 'best of FRC teams'. We feel that our greatest resource is 'time' with 'talent' being a close second.

I think the argument about what you are saying comes down to whether or not you believe the primary growth model of FRC should be shotgunning rookie registrations and seeing what happens. As far as I know, there is not a double digit loss of high school lacrosse programs every year. I would like to believe the powers that be know what is best for growing FIRST, but with each passing year I doubt the "shooting the money wad" strategy more and more.

I think how you approach the challenge of sustainability in FRC depends on your answers to at elast these two questions:

Is the current "money shotgun to rookies" growth model still the primary way we should be growing FRC?

Is a bad FRC team better than no FRC team?

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

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