F4 - Connect (The new way to get help)

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by asid61

Instead of flaming F4 Connect, please try to post constructive criticism or words for improvement.

I feel like the area connect may want to shift towards and that Chief Delphi current does not serve as well is long-term/in-depth advice. Simpler questions with more of a 'correct' answer are pretty well covered already. Connect could be used as an extension of much of what already happens at competitions. Many students spend their time at competitions going around the pits offering advice and assistance to struggling teams. I know that I have spent a lot of time at competitions helping teams fix problems with their robots and even helping them plan future improvements.

I see Connect as a place less experienced students and teams could go as a place to be 'connected' to someone who is not necessarily an expert, but is reasonably proficient in their area of concern and can work with them long term as essentially a consultant (or a sort of mini-mentor).

An example: A team is looking to design a custom drive train for the first time. They are connected to someone who has worked on custom drive train design for their team for the last few years. Over the course of a few weeks, the team exchanges CAD files and other design ideas with the person, who provides some feedback and shares some of the lessons and tricks he has learned from his own prior experiences designing drive trains. Would the advice provided be perfect? No, and it shouldn't be expected to be. However, I would say it would be reasonable to assume that the final product would be better than without advice.

Ideally, you would be connect with someone geographically close to you, so you could interact in person and at competitions as well as just digitally. It does not necessarily have to be students, though I think that students would be able to provide reasonable quality assistance. Essentially, it could be a way for teams with less mentor-resources to receive some focused mentoring and for more experienced and passionate students to take what their mentors have taught them and pass it on by mentoring themselves.