[FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by dirtbikerxz

I really agree. When pitching FRC to my peers or strangers, and I show them our bot, they always ask "how long did that take you guys to build? several months?" The expression they have when I reply with 6 weeks is awesome.

Being able to challenge ourselves, and doing everything possible to get every last bit built within that time period is just plain fun. I mean sure, we are still working after build season end, but those "6 weeks" are truly super fun and worth it. I would not want to get rid of it.

Even if you expanded the definition of the build period to the start of competition season (because at that point, your robot should likely be "built", maybe just not working perfectly yet) even if you still allowed unlimited access, you could still say "8 weeks" and I would bet the reactions would not be that much different. It wouldn't be an entirely inaccurate thing to say to people, and I don't think any reasonable observer expects teams to NOT make improvements to their machines as the competition season progresses.

In reality, if you define build season as "when you stop all work on the robot", build season, as the rules work today, runs from January till your last competition, as late as April.

[dirtbikerxz]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

Even if you expanded the definition to the start of competition season (because at that point, your robot should likely be "built", maybe just not working perfectly yet), you could still say "8 weeks" and I would bet the reactions would not be that much different.

Note, I never said that we need to have exactly a 6 week stop build date. I am not stating an opinion on whether or not to MOVE the stop date. I just don't like have NO build date at all, and being allowed to work as much as we want directly on the bot between regionals.

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by dirtbikerxz

Note, I never said that we need to have exactly a 6 week stop build date. I am not stating an opinion on whether or not to MOVE the stop date. I just don't like have NO build date at all, and being allowed to work as much as we want directly on the bot between regionals.

That is sort of a separate issue though. My response was more geared towards promoting FRC with people not familiar with it already.

All I'm saying is that if you did have unlimited access from kickoff through competition season, you could still market it as, an "8 week build season", without much impact on the reaction it elicits from newcomers.

[Taylor]

Teams with a small amount of mentors tend to have a low OPR.
Teams with a small amount of mentors tend to be victims of attrition.
Teams with low OPR tend to be victims of attrition.

Solution: Let's fix the OPR problem by allowing teams more plays and/or unbag time.

Possible result: already thin-stretched mentors get more burnout faster, and the attrition actually increases as fringe teams fall away.*

OPR is a symptom, not the disease.

Perhaps this is an example of a conflation of symptoms at which gblake and others have been hinting.

(And the small number of mentors example is one of a myriad of possible challenges teams face. Please don't take my example as a one-and-only offering.)
(Also please don't take this as an opinion of my being pro- or anti-SBD. I honestly don't know where I stand yet.)

*Paradoxically, by dropping some of the low-performing teams, the 'product' will get better and more media friendly. That's a tangent for another day (and another thread methinks)