[FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey

[aciarniello]

I have to admit that when I received this survey, I was concerned that some hidden negative effects might outweigh the obvious positives of eliminating the Stop Bag Day. HOWEVER, after reading through all these arguments and Jim's excellent paper, I'm feeling pretty well convinced that an elimination of SBD would be net positive for FRC.

That being said, it seems like a lot of the potential positives of #banthebag rely heavily on the well-resourced and experienced teams reaching out to the lower-resourced teams in their communities and making sure that all are able to fully realize the benefits of eliminating SBD. The good news is that FRC teams already have that mentality in place. Wouldn't it be great, though, to have a #banthebag activities guide to give folks a good baseline?

So, I'd like to take a moment to spur a brainstorming of what events/activities teams could host if SBD is no more. Here are things I've read so far:

- Scrimmages
- Bumper builds
- Pre-inspections
- In-season demos with competition machines to "Make it Loud"
- In-season workshops

If you're a team that's already working past SBD, surely not having your competition machine in a bag will free up some time and resources. How can you leverage those for your community?

-Andy

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by efoote868

I will give you an example using my team's numbers:

My team has about 120 students. During the build season, they're required to meet 3 hours per day, every day, after school to be considered on the team. Keeping all students occupied and out of trouble is a huge undertaking in itself.

After stop build day, there are about 20 dedicated students that will continue to meet or work on robotics, but the work is infrequent and not mandatory for everyone.

If stop build day is removed and our build season is extended, I doubt we'd keep a "team-only" stop build date. Our build season would be extended just like everyone else's, and that would significantly increase the amount of work - 300 student hours / day. Those 300 hours could be spent on schoolwork, athletics, jobs, other activities.

Not to mention, the school's coach of the robotics team is compensated extra the same as an assistant cheerleader coach. If the build season is extended any longer, we would have a very hard time finding teachers to sponsor the team.

Other than the size of my robotics team, I don't think my team is unique in how it would treat no stop build date.

I guess at the end of the day I find myself still incredibly puzzled by your plea to keep stop build day in place. You discuss how the potential removal of it could negatively affect your team. However, none of the issues you state are necessarily involuntarily out of your control as a mentor.

The current rules package for FRC robot fabrication causes my team, and many others, to have to adjust way out of our comfort zone to to meet everything from routine schedules up to overarching goals. Have to shut down fabrication for almost 1 out of 6 weeks during build season for midterm exams? "Sorry, that's out of your control as a team, but you have to work around it." We do. Live in a place where they shut down schools and virtually padlock the doors to keep you out over the threat of snow? "You'll come up with something! It's all part of THE PROCESS™." However, these problems are out of our control and as team leadership, we have made it a priority to not let problems out of our control define how we achieve success as an organization.

When it comes to potential removal of stop build day, your core fear seems to be that you and the rest of your team leadership will fail to adjust for, finalize, and maintain objectives and expectations that could affect the sustainability of your program. Does the mentorship of the team have no say in how often meetings are held? Do students hold your family members hostage with guns pointed to their heads until the student leadership feels like they have had sufficient meeting time?

No one on this board is going to make the decision to keep or end stop build day but each of us has the opportunity to set the guidelines for our teams concerning how we handle either approach.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I guess at the end of the day I find myself still incredibly puzzled by your plea to keep stop build day in place. You discuss how the potential removal of it could negatively affect your team. However, none of the issues you state are necessarily involuntarily out of your control as a mentor.

The current rules package for FRC robot fabrication causes my team, and many others, to have to adjust way out of our comfort zone to to meet everything from routine schedules up to overarching goals. Have to shut down fabrication for almost 1 out of 6 weeks during build season for midterm exams? "Sorry, that's out of your control as a team, but you have to work around it." We do. Live in a place where they shut down schools and virtually padlock the doors to keep you out over the threat of snow? "You'll come up with something! It's all part of THE PROCESS™." However, these problems are out of our control and as team leadership, we have made it a priority to not let problems out of our control define how we achieve success as an organization.

When it comes to potential removal of stop build day, your core fear seems to be that you and the rest of your team leadership will fail to adjust for, finalize, and maintain objectives and expectations that could affect the sustainability of your program. Does the mentorship of the team have no say in how often meetings are held? Do students hold your family members hostage with guns pointed to their heads until the student leadership feels like they have had sufficient meeting time?

No one on this board is going to make the decision to keep or end stop build day but each of us has the opportunity to set the guidelines for our teams concerning how we handle either approach.

Furthermore, he's on a team that competes in a district and thus enjoyed substantial unbagging time this season.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Furthermore, he's on a team that competes in a district and thus enjoyed substantial unbagging time this season.

And has made the argument that his kids end up working past SBD anyway. He only wants SBD so he can trick people into thinking that the season ends after 6 weeks.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by EricH

I'm inclined to agree that the level of play will probably go down (if witholding is eliminated). The question is, will it go down simply from "elite" to "really good", or will it drop even farther, and how much of a drop in play can we tolerate?

The average regional event (I cannot speak to district events) featuring a random sampling of 6 teams on the field varies between "unwatchably bad" to "struggles to complete the game objectives consistently", to "good". In no case would it be considered elite or even really good on average. The bar is currently set MUCH lower than it seems you consider it to be. That on field quality would be very bad if rules changed to make the robots actually be built in 6 weeks.

Originally Posted by gblake

What is the metric? Something along the lines of introducing students to enough positive STEM experiences to open their eyes to the possibility that they might enjoy a STEM career. To do that you don't even need to have competitions. You might choose to use competitions, but they aren't required.

FIRST wants FRC to be the vehicle that leads to culture change. You cannot change the culture with a science fair. I don't think that can even be up for debate. It just won't happen. Competition is what makes this cool for kids that don't self select as science geeks. Competition is literally in the name, so clearly FIRST does think competition is crucial to achieving their goals.

Originally Posted by efoote868

After stop build day, there are about 20 dedicated students that will continue to meet or work on robotics, but the work is infrequent and not mandatory for everyone.

Could you elaborate on what your competition season looks like? You are from Indiana and 868 seems to be an upper tier Indiana team. Are you not taking advantage of unbagging windows? Do you not plan any upgrades for your robot? Do you just unbag to practice/test software? Do you iterate on mechanisms? What are you working on (or not working on) each week between the last week of February and CMP?

Not trying to be obstinate, just trying to understand your very strong pro SBD stance while you currently exist in a district environment which is the closest thing we have to eliminating SBD.

Jim's paper had a very reasonable intermediate step of giving everyone FRC wide 8 hours a week (every week, not just weeks you're competing) unbag time. I've seen almost no discussion of this, just the posts about how the sky will fall if we eliminate SBD and the opposite posts that it's insane we continue to have SBD. This intermediate step is unbelievably easy to implement, saves those who need saving from themselves, and gives huge benefits to all teams at very little cost.

It would be SO much better than the current system for teams like us and teams who can't afford a practice robot. There are so many things teams like ours could do to help those with less resources if such a plan were implemented. We could host scrimmages, we could help teams fabricate upgrade parts, we could do pre-inspections and help teams correct issues with their robots in our shop with the benefit of all our raw materials, components, and tools. The list goes on and on.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by efoote868

If stop build day is removed and our build season is extended, I doubt we'd keep a "team-only" stop build date. Our build season would be extended just like everyone else's, and that would significantly increase the amount of work - 300 student hours / day. Those 300 hours could be spent on schoolwork, athletics, jobs, other activities.

This is how your team runs during the build season. I know of teams who have daily or weekly requirements for participating on the team and how that impacts if they can attend events/travel but that doesn't apply to most teams.

Come up with a new solution for how your team views those six weeks? Take two or three days off in the first few weeks of build to properly digest the game and develop concepts offsite and remove "groupthink" which often hurts teams.

Advocating that no stop build day automatically increases or doubles your team's work hours is ridiculous. Only you have control over when you meet as a team and no one is forcing you to meet more or less.

If you don't want to get "burned out more" the solution is easy... don't. There were a few seasons I got severely burned out as a mentor along with the team. We made decisions as a team to reduce our hours and I learned too take it a step further by taking my own time off.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Furthermore, he's on a team that competes in a district and thus enjoyed substantial unbagging time this season.

Did I not already address this?

Originally Posted by efoote868

I'm not arguing against unbag windows, heck give every team 168 hours of unbag time per week during competition season. But I want the stop build day because it's a natural time for teams to reorganize and provide relief for casual participants.

[emphasis added]

I don't want a 12 week build season. Removing the stop build day automatically creates a 12 week build season. I want the FRC available to new or casual participants, and a 6 week build season makes it easier for new or casual participants to get involved.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by efoote868

Did I not already address this?


[emphasis added]

I don't want a 12 week build season. Removing the stop build day automatically creates a 12 week build season. I want the FRC available to new or casual participants, and a 6 week build season makes it easier for new or casual participants to get involved.

But...stop build day means nothing if you are allowed to have the robot out of the bag 24/7 after stop build day. I really don't get how you see that as a solution that's different than eliminating stop build day.

[Tim Sharp]

Originally Posted by efoote868

I don't want a 12 week build season. Removing the stop build day automatically creates a 12 week build season. I want the FRC available to new or casual participants, and a 6 week build season makes it easier for new or casual participants to get involved.

I have found exactly the opposite to be true. Condensing the build into six weeks creates such an intense schedule that it is very difficult to convince the marginal mentors to dive in and participate. If we had the option of spreading the work out over a longer period of time we could create a more flexible schedule for those who aren't willing to completely devote their life to the team for six straight weeks.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Cory

But...stop build day means nothing if you are allowed to have the robot out of the bag 24/7 after stop build day. I really don't get how you see that as a solution that's different than eliminating stop build day.

To be perfectly honest, having a completely arbitrary and meaningless day called "stop build day" that you're allowed to ignore one way or another might actually placate people on both sides of this one. People on teams that they want to make stop building can follow it and people who don't want to can choose to keep working. The official-ness of this arbitrary day lets everyone keep their favorite 6 week build season lie going if they want, and lets any individual team do what they want.

The issue is that it would be a meaningless term that would confuse less aware FRC teams who would think you would be required to totally stop working then. I would hope we could all move to a system where we don't have to do anything as silly and nonsensical as making a "stop build day" that means nothing, but come to think of it, it isn't substantially different than the current system other than avoiding resource duplication.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

I think the only way to effectively move towards this in a fair manner would be to eliminate the long time period between stop build day and the first week of competitions. I'm open to suggestions for other policies that might have the same effect without the logistical issues, but I can't think of any and don't recall ever coming across any feasible ones.

I would argue that the culture you warn against already exists, in large part, and to the extent that it doesn't exist among lower-resource teams, its absence is mostly explained by the regressive impact of stop-build-day.

Sorry, have to argue this one. We do Week 1 events and we barely have enough time to get our robot and our team prepared to the event. Some of us still have to fly to events, including our robot.
Normally our robot is shipped out either on the last day of build season or the next.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by Cory

Could you elaborate on what your competition season looks like? You are from Indiana and 868 seems to be an upper tier Indiana team. Are you not taking advantage of unbagging windows? Do you not plan any upgrades for your robot? Do you just unbag to practice/test software? Do you iterate on mechanisms? What are you working on (or not working on) each week between the last week of February and CMP?

Carmel High School has about 5200 students. Approximately 120-160 students will show up to the call out. We require students during build season to meet every day after school, meetings usually last 3 hours (last season MWF was 3:30-6:30PM, TTh 6:00-9:00PM, this is for the teacher that sponsors the team). Sometimes we will have meetings Saturday, late in the build season we may meet Sunday as well. These weekend meetings don't count for attendance.
We require attendance to let students miss school for competitions. You can understand what would happen if there was no time commitment required to be "on the team," especially with a school of that size.

After stop build day, student and mentor participation is reduced significantly, and those that do meet it's voluntary and not counted on attendance.

Managing a team our size is no small feat, and an official "SBD" makes the team draw down very easy. I understand and appreciate wanting to work on the robot during competition season, but without an official end of the build season would strain our mentors, particularly the teachers. It's not hard to imagine it's the same elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Cory

Jim's paper had a very reasonable intermediate step of giving everyone FRC wide 8 hours a week (every week, not just weeks you're competing) unbag time. I've seen almost no discussion of this, just the posts about how the sky will fall if we eliminate SBD and the opposite posts that it's insane we continue to have SBD.

I've posted 3 times on CD that I support this, and entirely separately (before all the discussion or Jim's white paper) I gave that as my feedback to FIRST.

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by efoote868

After stop build day, student and mentor participation is reduced significantly, and those that do meet it's voluntary and not counted on attendance.

Managing a team our size is no small feat, and an official "SBD" makes the team draw down very easy. I understand and appreciate wanting to work on the robot during competition season, but without an official end of the build season would strain our mentors, particularly the teachers. It's not hard to imagine it's the same elsewhere.

The thing people aren't getting is how you can't set this same schedule for yourself without it being mandatory for everyone.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Sorry, have to argue this one. We do Week 1 events and we barely have enough time to get our robot and our team prepared to the event. Some of us still have to fly to events, including our robot.
Normally our robot is shipped out either on the last day of build season or the next.

Oh, I'm not defending that as a viable option, at all - the logistical problems are likely insurmountable.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by efoote868

Carmel High School has about 5200 students. Approximately 120-160 students will show up to the call out. We require students during build season to meet every day after school, meetings usually last 3 hours (last season MWF was 3:30-6:30PM, TTh 6:00-9:00PM, this is for the teacher that sponsors the team). Sometimes we will have meetings Saturday, late in the build season we may meet Sunday as well. These weekend meetings don't count for attendance.
We require attendance to let students miss school for competitions. You can understand what would happen if there was no time commitment required to be "on the team," especially with a school of that size.

After stop build day, student and mentor participation is reduced significantly, and those that do meet it's voluntary and not counted on attendance.

Managing a team our size is no small feat, and an official "SBD" makes the team draw down very easy. I understand and appreciate wanting to work on the robot during competition season, but without an official end of the build season would strain our mentors, particularly the teachers. It's not hard to imagine it's the same elsewhere.

I appreciate the response, but I was hoping you could give some insight into what you're doing between the end of the 6 weeks and CMP. Are you saying you do not utilize unbagging windows prior to your events? You cease all robot related work?