Bad Weather Affecting Teams

[JamesByrne]

One other problem that first would have to deal with is the closeness of the 1st regional. If they were to extend my guess is they would extend for everyone, and ship date being the 21st and the first regional starting on the 1st of march.

If they were to extend by this five day period then fedex would have like 2 days to get all these crates to this regional. it is doable but I doubt they would like to push it this close.

we lost 4 or 5 days also where is Washington state, and i know where you guys are coming from. But i agree with the reasoning FIRST gave.

[Goldeye]

It would be pretty impressive if FIRST extended the ship date for all teams by the average time lost for all teams: [(estimated team-days lost)/(total (all >1000) teams)].

It would be a pretty fair way of doing it. The teams that lost a lot would have that chance to overcome serious lost time. However, the short length of that extension, and the fact that all teams get it, would maintain fairness for all teams.

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by Tonya Scott 476

I have been sending letters from various Oklahoma Teams to FIRST regarding details to missing worktime at the beginning of build season.

I would hope that they would express sympathy to teams that invest so much time and $$$$ to participate in this program. I also feel that the "real" world does evolve around weather---just try to order robot parts during snow storms---it will not be delivered on time. That is very real.

Here is the reply I rec'd from FIRST after sending numerous letters from schools that missed a lot of time building robots.

At least they sent you a reply, and showed they understood what you're asking for, and why. In fact, they did express sympathy. But they made their decision based on principles other than sympathy.

Originally Posted by Goldeye

It would be pretty impressive if FIRST extended the ship date for all teams by the average time lost for all teams: [(estimated team-days lost)/(total (all >1000) teams)].

It would be a pretty fair way of doing it.

Actually, I don't think it would be fair. Here in southern California, the weather is still being TOO nice. Extending the ship date for us would be unfair to the teams with snow days. (Of course, we would be happy to use any extension FIRST gave us. )

I think possibly FIRST could assess the "team-days" lost on a statewide basis, based on the requests they get from teams in each state. Then they could average the snow days for those states. But they would still have to consider the timing of the regionals. The math wouldn't be too hard this way. But what will always be impossible is to convince everybody that whatever FIRST decides is "fair."

If, in fact, past extensions have been granted based on bad weather on ship date, then I think the snow-impacted teams are out of luck. Next Tuesday seems to have a low probability of snow around the country. In fact, the weather is supposed to be beautiful at FIRST headquarters. So work hard shoveling snow, and get your shipping crates ready. Showing up with a half-built robot will be better than showing up with none.