Lack of passion in scouting

[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-

[65_Xero_Huskie]

Originally Posted by 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-

At GLR we had some computer->printer probelms so we couldnt print. Me and an engineer went out to circuit citys and best buys trying to find a driver for our computer (wanted to charge us $30....) So after about 2 hours of nothing, we finally come back and ask the staff at the venue if they could print something for us. they printed a copy and we made copies off of those. a few of our members were stressed out to the extreme because we couldnt get it to work. Our team has alot of passion for scouting because we believe that this is the reason matches are won. I know that last year at nationals scouting helped us win our first elimination match. I really hope people take scouting seriously becasue it is one of the most important things in FIRST competitions.

[themagic8ball]

I haven't had time to read the whole thread but, in my experience, the best way to boost enthusiasm in scouting is to prove how important it is on the field. I have done the MARRS program the past 2 years for Team 537 and we get our scouts to know the importance of the scouting by putting it to good use. Scouting is useless unless your drivers use it.

Here are some tips:
-Make the scouting sheets simple (numbers, circle the option, etc...) and use a program like MARRS or even just Excel to crunch the numbers.
-Make scouting fun! Let your scouts participate in the stands and the music.
-Give your scouts breaks. Rotate different teams in every few matches.
-Give your scouts kudos when they do a good job.
-Finally, if your team is winning, make sure to thank the scouts, because it really is their hard work that helps you win.

[Zyik]

One of the student leaders saw that the drive team was lazing about, just goofing off, not doing any other work. We're a team of maybe 12 students, if we're lucky. I don't have a lot of scouts to send out, and at a competition like SVR where there are 47 other teams, we're stretched. Having the drivers do it takes some of the load off. But because the leader said that they had to scout 4 teams before going on the field... we ended up with a lot of bad scouts. At Davis I'm going to make it so that the sheet had better be filled out correctly before they are allowed any other job. I apologize in advance if this gets you a scout that comes back to you four times with the same questions, cause they need to learn their lesson, and I'm sorry you had to be the one to suffer.

[115inventorsam]

Yeah, some of our scouts weren't too passionate about it, I noticed that their notes were not satisfactory when I took a scouting sheet of a team that they had scouted before. But we were pretty selective of who was supposed to scout, so that didn't happen too much.

But overall, it was pretty cool for me, I was actually kind of disappointed when the scout leader gave me Friday afternoon off from scouting, but of course we had enough scouts to go around.

[team 1094]

we didn't have that much of a problem are porblem was more along the lines of miss commcation.

[Dinger]

Going off of what my teammate mike (themagic8ball) was saying, it does take some work to get scouts enthused. i was partially in charge of scouting for our team this year, and i ran into some problems that people have mentioned.

one of the ways to keep scouts enthused is to use scouting as an award. for our pit scouting, that was an excuse to get out of the stands, and look around the pits. so, only those who had proved themselves scouting matches got to go to pit scouting. this ensured that we didnt have people who didnt care wandering around the pits makeing our team look bad.
also, really emphasize the importance of scouting. i think a thanks to the scouters was mentioned durring every little pep talk our team had. before our first regional we explained to everyone who was new to the team, or scouting for the first time that we consider our scouting system a huge leg up on other teams and that its essential to our strategy. in sum, make the scouts know that they are important. someone who feels important will do a better job than someone who doesnt.
we had to pull one member off of scouting duty for awhile because they werent taking it seriously. this was a serious mark of shame and the whole team knew it. scouting was a privilage, although a work intensive one, we showed that if you dont care, we dont want you.

also give the scouts structure. our scouters sat in one area when the scouted and they enter information onto standardized sheets. this keep them focused and if they had a game question there were 7 other people around who they could ask.

breaks are important too, to prevent scout burnout. we had 4 scout teams at buckeye who rotated. each team was run by a scouting lead who would check the scouting forms to make sure that everything was filled out and who would also fill in if one of the scouters needed a break.

most importantly, keep scouting fun, and keep scouting cool. if its not someones turn to scout, let them do whatever they want as long as they are back in time to scout thier matches. if someone is doing an awesome job at scouting give them a public shout-out. if someones lagging behind, tell them waht they need to do better and emphasize that they are needed. everyone loves to be needed.

[MasterChief 573]

I understand how some people can see scouting as a demotion but it really isn't. Scouting is one of the most important things you can do at a competition. On my team we make sure that it's important that they give the job their all, to do it completely and with a passion. There are two types of scouting the way we see it: pit scouting and match scouting. There are so many benefits to scouting. You get to learn about other teams robots, you get to make friendships with other teams, you get to make a good impression on behave of your team, and it helps you learn what robots you want to be with in eliminations. Ultimately scouting is one of the most important things you can do to have a successful competition, and it should be treated as such.

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by MasterChief 573

I understand how some people can see scouting as a demotion but it really isn't. Scouting is one of the most important things you can do at a competition. On my team we make sure that it's important that they give the job their all, to do it completely and with a passion. There are two types of scouting the way we see it: pit scouting and match scouting. There are so many benefits to scouting. You get to learn about other teams robots, you get to make friendships with other teams, you get to make a good impression on behave of your team, and it helps you learn what robots you want to be with in eliminations. Ultimately scouting is one of the most important things you can do to have a successful competition, and it should be treated as such.

You get all of the power when you're discussing a strategy with your alliance as well. Every alliance should be listening to the team that has the facts on how a team performed on the field. A team can say whatever they want in the pits (we're guilty of giving false information), but it will most likely differ from how they perform on the field.

Students on 166 feel the same way about not wanting to scout. I try and tell them over and over that scouting is infinitely important.

Here's some ways we get them to do it:
We assign shifts so they aren't constantly scouting
We have a pair of leads and a mentor to make sure they are doing it
It's very organized. We have the shifts, the sheet is easy to work with, it's easy to do

Boilermaker was the best scouting we've ever done. We just need a bigger binder so all of the teams are in the same binder...

[MasterChief 573]

Originally Posted by InfernoX14

You get all of the power when you're discussing a strategy with your alliance as well. Every alliance should be listening to the team that has the facts on how a team performed on the field. A team can say whatever they want in the pits (we're guilty of giving false information), but it will most likely differ from how they perform on the field.

Students on 166 feel the same way about not wanting to scout. I try and tell them over and over that scouting is infinitely important.

Here's some ways we get them to do it:
We assign shifts so they aren't constantly scouting
We have a pair of leads and a mentor to make sure they are doing it
It's very organized. We have the shifts, the sheet is easy to work with, it's easy to do

Boilermaker was the best scouting we've ever done. We just need a bigger binder so all of the teams are in the same binder...

I agree with your outlook and your system mirrors ours in a few ways. I also agree with your idea of talking to future alliance partners before a match to dicuss strategy ahead of time. In fact at GLR I would go before a match to talk to our alliance partners in the pits holding little meetings to discuss strategy. I found it very affect and I think that it contributed to our success, it was very affective.

[Dinger]

Originally Posted by InfernoX14

We just need a bigger binder so all of the teams are in the same binder...

try entering all the information onto a computerized database. then you can just chuck the scouting forms when you are done entering them. no need for a binder, and its not like your team isnt gonna be ever without a laptop (we are proud geeks for goodness sakes)

[cire]

Another story from 2006 I thought I might add in..

Last year we seeded 11th at GLR, on Friday I realized that we may be in the top 8 so I explained to our scouting team that we needed a list in order of the best alliance choices. I decided that I was gona be the person to go up and pick our partners if we did get picked because nobody else knew what was going on. When the time for picking rolled by, there wasnt any list made so one of the parents quickly wrote down the top 24 seeding teams. I was the last person to make it to the field for alliance picking (sorry everyone). When I got there I couldnt read any of the numbers on the list and it was a nightmare, I was too frantic to start marking down teams that had already been picked and all too soon I was getting called up to be the 8th alliance leader. I was like @#$!. A nice girl nearby told me that it was ok and she told me who the next team on her list was, team 65 I believe. So i went up and asked them to be our partners. They accepted. Then I asked their person who a good team was real quickly before I picked my next partner. We lost out in quater finals (against the winning alliance).

It was probably the most Nerve racking thing ive ever had to go through (in FIRST), I didnt want to walk up there and ask for a team that had already been picked, or didnt exist in front of 1000s of people.

Moral of the story - Scouting is imporant and organize things before the regional so that you have that list made up!

[rc616]

I think that the biggest problem with match scouting is fundamentally a problem of personality. The fact is ( at least for our ( rookie ) team ) is that the people who join the robotics team are not the sorts of people who enjoy watching tedious match after tedious match. Instead they would rather either:
-Work on the robot, which is normally exciting
-Play line rider

After thinking about this, it seem obvious to me that we either need to make scouting more interesting or get some future accountants to join our team.

I don't know if other teams are having this same problem, or if it is just us.

[MGoelz]

Originally Posted by rc616

I think that the biggest problem with match scouting is fundamentally a problem of personality. The fact is ( at least for our ( rookie ) team ) is that the people who join the robotics team are not the sorts of people who enjoy watching tedious match after tedious match. Instead they would rather either:
-Work on the robot, which is normally exciting
-Play line rider

After thinking about this, it seem obvious to me that we either need to make scouting more interesting or get some future accountants to join our team.

I don't know if other teams are having this same problem, or if it is just us.

First of all, does your entire team scout? Or do you have designated people scouting? What is your process for scouting as of now?

[Cooley744]

Scouting would be soooo much easier if each team had a peice of paper with all their information on it. Then you could set up a file box that has a file in it for every team. That would be AWESOME, so instead of running around endlessly trying to find out information about 50 different teams, you could actually enjoy yourself while you scout (aka meet new ppl and enjoy the comeptition). When you need information on a team, you could just go to that file.