Lack of passion in scouting

[Lisa Perez]

If you have the amount of people, but there seems to be a lack of interest, make shifts within a designated scouting group, so that those scouts know that they have a job to get done, but are also given the chance to take a break from sitting that long. You'll get a lot more response from someone whose shift is 1 hour as opposed to 6 hours.

As applies for any other subteam, it helps a lot to have one or two students completely enthusiastic and willing to lead the scouting group to begin with, because the scouts will look up to their peers (as opposed to what they will do if they are just told to record information).

Ask your scouts to pretend they are creating strategy for a sporting event. Chances are, they'll have a better idea of what needs to be recorded. I know that when I was new to my team in high school, I had no idea what scouting was. If I had been able to make a parallel between robotics and sports, I would have been MUCH better as a scout.

It might even help to point out where scouting helped your driveteam make decisions in matches: "Hey, we played defense on that robot there because that's where they typically score from, and look how well our alliance did", etc. etc. It'll show those scouts that their work really did pay off, and will help them to be proud of their work.

[cziggy343]

Originally Posted by Rich Ross

Just to give heart to the scouts out there. You scouts WILL be the difference on your team. When you scout matches and that data is successfully complied, it helps you pick well, or if you arent ranked it helps you see what the better teams are doing.

My Scouts did a really nice job and i hope yours will too. Don't look at scouting as a chore, because its not. I scouted a bunch, and i enjoyed every minute of it.

i no that scouting is important on our team. being the main student scouter, i got to be the representative . and i got to speak into a microphone and say a big word like "graciously"

[Kims Robot]

Another thought is to find a way to make scouting more fun...

We do both Pit & Match scouting (although echoing others here, match scouting gets more weight than pit... anyone can say they can score 20 tubes in a match, to see them do it is another).

Our pit scouting was developed by one of our mentors who knows labview really well, and he created this really awesome GUI with the help of our strategy/drive team. In a way, it makes scouting fun They have a visual way to add tubes to the rack, they can type in notes on teams, and indicate extra points, penalties etc, all through a computer interface. In the end, they hit submit, and we can pull from a master database all the information about exactly what the team did during the match. (look for this to be released for other teams to use soon - almost done working out kinks).

Pit scouting is a good way for students to see other teams, perhaps they dont know everything about every robot in existance, but I have to echo Ben's thoughts here... help them LEARN. This is not about being the best at everything you do, its about learning. Maybe they dont seem to care because they dont understand, or maybe their passion is animation and they are just trying to help out the team. Who knows... take a minute, and educate instead of getting frustrated.

[Taylor]

A couple thoughts -
1. Remember that as a scout, you are a representative of your team. If a scout comes to my pit and asks how high our ramps go (it's quite obvious we have no intention of having any ramps), I may (mistakenly) assume the rest of that scout's team is as naive as him or her. Serve your team well. Think things through.
2. As a scout, if you see a feature on another team that would work well with your strategy (or vice versa), tell them! Plant the seeds of possible alliances as much as possible.
3. Scout in pairs. That way you have a friend to talk to, someone who may pick up things you may miss, another pair of eyes and ears. If you're very strong on game knowledge, pair yourself up with a weaker teammate. If you don't know very much about the game, grab a knowledgeable partner. You both will benefit from the shared knowledge, as well as any strategies other teams may use.
4. Concentrate on specific robots. If each scout is very smart on 5 or 10 robots, and can explain those 5 or 10 robots very well, it would serve the team better than one scout who knows a little about all robots. This also works well for match scouts - if they only have to concentrate on a couple robots then watching matches become less tedious.
I hope you found these helpful, and I hope 1529's scouts serve as great ambassadors for our team at Purdue.

[pyrome]

Originally Posted by IMac

I don't really have much say in this yet since I haven't attended my regional yet, but I know we've been trying to better the scouting process. I started a collective spreadsheet online that all teams can modify and check out. This'll give people a good view of all the bots before even going. This'll help out rookie teams especially too, teams who are too small to spare a scouting team or too inexperienced. It's only set up for philly so far, but I think it's a good idea for the future.

What is the website?

[AznPrincess3089]

I have to agree. One team came up to our pits during LA regional and didnt even know what the autonomous mode was! I'm doing prescouting for Silicon Valley Regional so if any teams going there want to PM me so I could ask some questions about their robot, please do. I think the drivers, whenever they could should do scouting, because they're the ones who are going to have to integrate the information during matches.

[Brandon Holley]

Coming from a kid who started as a scout, you have to understand that not every scout is the same as you.

Whoever mentioned the "3 gears" thing...think about that from THAT kids perspective. He's told he has an important job to do...he is to go out adn collect information on all the teams that are at this regional, and this information is going to be used to form strategies. They tell him, go out and ask teams these exact questions on this sheet and write down their answers.

To the kid that wrote the scout sheet "gears" makes sense...its a term used all the time to name the "speeds" of cars and other things. To the kid reading it, he may not know what it means...to you, you hear "gear" and think of the spurred tooth friend found in 99% of drivetrains and offer your response of 3 per side. Who is at fault in this situation??? No one, your as much to blame/not blame as the kid who is writing down the information, and the kid who wrote the scout sheet.

Please be understanding of the kids that come down to ask your questions. They may not be as passionate about scouting, or even robotics as you are, but if they seriously dont know what somethign on their own scout sheet means, than explain it to them. Maybe them seeing they can actually learn a lot will spark that passion. It can be very intimidating to join a club where it appears everyone around you has an abundant amount of information about robots. Some kids may shy away because they feel they can never reach that level.

Respect the scouts, respect each other, and most of all help them learn, and I bet you may learn something yourself...

[Graham Donaldson]

One of the biggest problems I see (I'm unofficial head scout/strategist) with our scouts is the lack of enthusiasm. They're told to sit there and watch a robot. Essentially, they say, "I don't care, I'm not going to do this." We've tried to make it easier for them (intranet-based databases on laptops, forms that make it really easy for them to know what they have to do, etc...), but they still blow it off. So I pose this question, because I haven't figured out the answer yet: How do you "inspire" your scouts? How do you get them excited about it? How do you focus them? We bring our entire team (~35-40 people) to NJ. ~10-15 are down in the pits at any one time. So, we have 20-25 people available, and we only need 6 at a time, but I sometimes have trouble finding people. Everyone runs when I see them, or says "I just got here, gimme a break", or "I just did it", or "I'm going in like 5 minutes". How does everyone get their scouts interested in what they're doing?

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by robotcanuck1676

One of the biggest problems I see (I'm unofficial head scout/strategist) with our scouts is the lack of enthusiasm. They're told to sit there and watch a robot. Essentially, they say, "I don't care, I'm not going to do this." We've tried to make it easier for them (intranet-based databases on laptops, forms that make it really easy for them to know what they have to do, etc...), but they still blow it off. So I pose this question, because I haven't figured out the answer yet: How do you "inspire" your scouts? How do you get them excited about it? How do you focus them? We bring our entire team (~35-40 people) to NJ. ~10-15 are down in the pits at any one time. So, we have 20-25 people available, and we only need 6 at a time, but I sometimes have trouble finding people. Everyone runs when I see them, or says "I just got here, gimme a break", or "I just did it", or "I'm going in like 5 minutes". How does everyone get their scouts interested in what they're doing?

The inspiration comes as a general team attitude. My old team (11-MORT) became very large in the 4 years I was there. By the time I was a junior there was no way we could fit even a quarter of our team in the pits. When you have that many people not directly hands on with the robot, you have to get them something to do, something they will ENJOY doing.

My sophomore year of high school was the game known as stack attack. I was the human player of my team so I was in the pit. A couple of other kids in my grade decided they wanted to get involved so they grabbed pieces of paper and started scouting the pits. Eventually more people joined in. By the time we got to nationals we had a solid scouting database going.

The next year...we go to NJ, now our team is getting quite large. The same guys decide to head up the scouting team again, but this time theyre going to recruit a few of their friends to help them out. All it takes is 1-2 people that are passionate to get scouting going.

I didn't spend a lot of time scouting because of human playering/coaching/driving the robot and being in the pit...but the few times I did, i cant tell you how much fun we had. Everyone would be in the stands laughing, telling jokes, sharing stories, and SCOUTING. Eventually scouting became THE thing to do at competitions, and our team started doing a lot better, the robot was performing beautifully.

Lead by example....show people that scouting can be fun, and is possibly the most important thign you can do at a competition. From a coaching standpoint, I can tell you...the coach is NOTHING without valuable scout information. If the coach is nothing, the robot is NOTHING. It all starts from teh scouts...get your kids to see this.



Pascack rules!

[pafwl]

One of the reasons you may have lack of passion is the scouts do not see any results from what they are asked to do. A few years ago I asked one of our scouts what he thought about the robot he was assigned to. He went for 5 minutes. I do not think I had spoken to that kid that much in all the years he was on the team.

The point is instead of just relying on the numbers ak those scouts to be part of the discussion when confronted with or allied with a robot. After all they have seen them run. Then they feel more part of the team and you are asking their opinion.

I also have them decide to pick the "Best Bot" waward winner for a team award we give out on Friday evening. The all know this is theri responsibility.

We alos have certian studentd we call SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). When we see teams rising in our rankings the SMEs are sent to investigate those teams and the robots. They ask the questions. These folks have a much better understanding of the robot and the game.

Show the less passionate scouts that what they say matters and you will see it turn around.

[JBotAlan]

Originally Posted by robotcanuck1676

Essentially, they say, "I don't care, I'm not going to do this."

You know, this is a great point. I don't...really have an answer for this...

I would need to talk to one of these kids and ask them why they are on the team at all to figure out what I need to appeal to. I'll try this tonight if I can get my mentor off my back long enough (I've got loads of software to re-write and we're taking a fix-it tonight, so I need to get to work ) so I can talk to some of these kids.

I do want to say that I am not trying to ridicule scouts. I know that many are forced to do their job (and that's partially why I created this thread) and that it isn't much fun for some. I try to help out scouts. But one of the points I want to make is that a 1-5 form is pretty much strategically useless, IMHO, and the other point is that without a little bit of education, a scout can be misled by a team's responses--not something the head of strategy wants when choosing someone to pick.

JBot

PS: I'll post back if I get a glimpse into the heads of the not-so-eager scouts tonight.

[rockit science]

Just a word of advice from my experience - pit scouting is fine and is good for team PR. It also gives INTERESTED students the chance to check out the other machines up close. That being said, I believe the scouting from the stands offers much more valuable info. I don't particularly care if a machine has two wheels or six, one motor or five......all that really matters is how well they can play the game and what strategies work best for them. Most of the students enjoy just sitting in the stands and watching the matches when they aren't busy with other things, so we give them a sheet with each team number and a box in which they can take some notes. Near the end of the qualifying rounds we gather the sheets and compare notes between them to figure out who does what and how well. Also, at the last team meeting prior to the competition, I stress the importance of performing this task. We always seem to have plenty of volunteers. Just my $0.02.

[karinka13]

A quick story:

When I was a freshman on the team, I got really involved during build season, so I had never even been to an off-season competition or gone to kick-off. At Drexel, my first regional, is was given the job of "scout" along with some little sheets of categories. Other than that, i had free reign. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing; at one point, I even asked a few teams, "Do you have a human player?" (Add that to your terrible questions list) As I went along, I got angry or exasperated looks from some people and helpful hints from others, and by the end of Thursday I understood what exactly I was supposed to be doing. On Friday and Saturday, I was able to be a (semi) good scout.

Now, it could be said that it was terrible of my team to leave me, poor freshman, on my own to figure out scouting. But I disagree. I made a lot of great friends and contacts, regardless of my embarrassment as I realized the stupidity of some of the questions I had asked, and I had a lot of fun. The freedom I was given made me fall in love with robotics. I learned through experience, which is exactly what FIRST is about.

I'm not saying that giving scouts a book and nothing else is the way to go. On my team, we have small "squads" of scouts, who all have different topics to talk about with other teams, some of which aren't even robot related. However, they don't have specific questions. We recognize that it really isn't important to know how many wheels a robot has, or what their exact speed in feet per second is. What is important is that our girls, especially the rookies, are out there learning as they go and having fun.

"Bad" scouts don't deserve all this. Most likely, they are new and learning. Just because they don't know exactly what they're talking about does NOT mean they are not spirited or passionate. If someone berates them for not knowing, though, it's likely they won't become passionate. Perhaps it is just a job to keep people busy, but I personally can't think of a better job to give people just standing around than to go out and learn.

Plus, look at me. I went from a clueless scout my first day of competition to President and 1st driver of my team. I'd call that an improvement through experience.

(Sorry for the long post, didn't realize I had that much to say.)

[falconmaster]

Originally Posted by JBotAlan

Hello,

I just got home from the first day of GLR, and after meeting quite a few scouts, I have noticed a general correlation.

Most of the scouts I talk to seem to have no passion whatsoever towards the game, their team, scouting, or FIRST in general. Why?

Today, I had a scout ask me if we had a ringer. I guessed that he meant to ask if our robot could hang ringers, but when I asked to make sure, he replied with a hesitant "I guess...". This person did not even know what every entry on the scouting sheet meant!

So here's the reason for my post: teams, please make sure your scouts are educated about the game, and that they care. Don't assign scouting just because the freshmen have nothing to do. Don't assign scouting just as a punishment.
Scouts, please, put a little passion into your work! I love to talk to people who are excited and truly interested in the robots and the teams, but it is IMHO a waste of both your time and my time if you are just filling out a list of 1-5s on a scouting sheet. Those 1-5s don't reflect truly on anyone's robot or performance. Don't mumble; don't give me "I...guess..."s. Be confident! You have a very important job--make friends and get to know people! Don't muck it up because you have to fill out "all those stupid scouting forms"--that's not what it's about.

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir here; scouts on CD are probably very dedicated and this post probably doesn't apply, but I just thought I'd post this here.

Just my 2 cents that I figured I should share
JBot

This might help. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hlight=logging
Its a data recording device we came up with. We are testing now, AZ reg, San Diego reg and Vegas Region, Nationals. Hopefully for sale next year.
If you are at one of these regionals, check it out. Its like reverse game play, something happens and then you hit the button. The data can then be downloaded and put into an excell spread sheet.

[nikeairmancurry]

I for one worked my tush off scouting , by the end of the first day i had every team scouted for the Great Lakes Regional. I also had about 80% of pictures of all the different bots. i did notice some teams having no idea what things on there scouting sheets meant and also teams that weren't prepared and just had a lined piece of paper to write on. To the fact of a lack of passion for the game and for the team... if a person is scouting and dosn't show any enthusiasm then it really affects the look of the team. I am from team 326 and I express my concern in this field. Scouting is a major part of the competion and w/out it, really gets rid of the spirt and dedication to all of FIRST. To all of you who didn't care about scouting and showed no enthusiasm. I am appalled by the teams that came up to me and admited they had no idea what stuff on their scouting sheet meant. Not to undermine any teams but a lot of teams sent out people who weren't doing anything and were just there to mess around. U are right to say that a lot of teams showed no effort but there were a select few who did and i thanked. By scouting u represent your team and the inspiration of FIRST.
-Adam-