New FIRST competition structure in Michigan

[Zflash]

Let me begin by saying I believe this pilot program is a necessary step for FIRST and I also believe MI is a great proving ground for it. I am just voicing some concerns so that when it possibly does go national I won't have any complaints. It is sort of like not voting and then complaining about who is in office. With that said I would like to point out one more difference that I see. It is both advantageous and a disadvantage to both sides I will let you all form your own opinions on the matter.

Practice Day:
•Michigan teams get 8 hours of their at home shop work possibly full or half practice field to themselves or nothing at all (team dependent).
•Non-Michigan teams get 8 hours of a shared shop if regional provides and a shared field and possibly a shared practice field if regional provides.

As I have stated there are advantages in this structure for MI teams and disadvantages for them as well.

[Jim Zondag]

To quote Dean Kamen:

"Over the years FIRST has aggressively taken steps to invent new programs and reinvent existing programs to find new ways to take our message to ever more participants. The district event pilot in Michigan is an important opportunity to help reinvent FRC, our flagship program. It holds the promise of making FRC more accessible, thereby moving us closer to the day when every high school student has an opportunity to participate. Team members should be able to play more and play closer to home, all at a lower cost."

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Zflash

Practice Day:
•Michigan teams get 8 hours of their at home shop work possibly full or half practice field to themselves or nothing at all (team dependent).
•Non-Michigan teams get 8 hours of a shared shop if regional provides and a shared field and possibly a shared practice field if regional provides.

As I have stated there are advantages in this structure for MI teams and disadvantages for them as well.

Disadvantages there... Non-MI teams get MORE than 8 hours of shared shop/field/venue time. Practice day starts before 9:00 AM and ends at 8:00 PM.

The advantage could go either way in that case.

[Zflash]

I forgot practice day was that long it is actually 11.5 hours our team just never had to use it.(knocks on wood) Thanks for the correction. I know that if our team had the choice to skip practice day and stay at home my vote would be we would.

Pros: Everyone on team can work on robot or parts and programming. Often when we travel not all team members come along. We could be more productive because of this.

Cons: We can not practice with or against other teams before qualifications on a full size field. We don't have a full size field ourselves so we will be missing out on that as well.

To each his own I guess. If your team had a full size or even a half size field or knew a team that could share then staying home on practice day may be benificial to you.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by EricH

Disadvantages there... Non-MI teams get MORE than 8 hours of shared shop/field/venue time. Practice day starts before 9:00 AM and ends at 8:00 PM.

The advantage could go either way in that case.

It's an advantage and a disadvantage.

It's going to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

254 would gladly take 8 hours at home vs 12 at the event. We are fortunate enough to have access to mills, lathes, a CNC, etc. We could do WAY more at home than at the event.

The inverse is true of the teams that need the practice day the most-they don't have a huge shop to work at. They're lucky to even get a broom closet at their school. At the event they would have 12 hours to work with other teams who can help them, as well as the regional's machine shop.

At home they'll have nothing, plus nobody to help prep them for inspection throughout the day. That's what concerns me.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

People seem to have lost sight of the fact that this is a pilot. Of course you don't launch it everywhere at once. You have to see if it will work.

OK, nobody should be fooling themselves here. This is a "pilot" program in the same way that the first flight of the Airbus 300 was a "pilot" test flight. The real, full deployment is going to happen after this "pilot" program and there is not a lot that will be allowed to stand in its way. This model is going to be continued, whether this first year works or not. It is going to be spread across the rest of the country, whether the other states want it or not.

Why do I say this? One simple reason: no one is actually interested in the "success" or "failure" of the pilot program. It appears that it has been pre-ordained that the pilot program will be a "success."

If this were a legitimate pilot program, a well thought out set of goals to be achieved by the pilot program would exist, and be readily apparent. The criteria for a successful experience would be carefully spelled out in a set of thoughtful, objective, and complete, test conditions that would determine whether those goals were achieved or not. Those test conditions would be well-rooted in a legitimate business model that looked at the appropriate areas of impact on the teams, the region, the state, and the national organization. The FIRST board of directors would know those criteria, and approve them. And the criteria would NOT be written by the people charged with executing the pilot, but by objective third parties who have no stake in the outcome.

However, those success criteria do not exist. And they don't exist because no one wants them to. Because if there is no standard against which you determine success, then you can never fail. Instead, history will be re-written retroactively when the pilot program is over, with the success criteria suitably defined at that time to correspond to the actual events.

Then, the same political forces that shoved this pilot program through the system will demand that the "successful" model be adopted across the country. The same concerns that tried to counter how this pilot was structured will be unable to stop this next effort. And two years from now, we will all be playing at district events, whether they are appropriate for our states or not.

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

To quote Dean Kamen:

"Over the years FIRST has aggressively taken steps to invent new programs and reinvent existing programs to find new ways to take our message to ever more participants. The district event pilot in Michigan is an important opportunity to help reinvent FRC, our flagship program. It holds the promise of making FRC more accessible, thereby moving us closer to the day when every high school student has an opportunity to participate. Team members should be able to play more and play closer to home, all at a lower cost."

Sorry, but that smacks of "well, if Dean says so, then it must be right, so we can all stop talking about it now." I could not disagree more. The whole reason this thread was started was to get people talking about the pros and cons of the new idea, to see the reaction, and understand the concerns. If, as I suspect and discuss above, this is going to become the new national model of how the entire FRC program will be structured in the future, this whole topic needs a lot MORE discussion, not less.

-dave


.

[Rich Kressly]

There's a good point Dave makes about this being called a "pilot". While the new structure has possible merits and I'm thrilled for the MI teams that will get to play an additional event and most likely more matches in each for a little less money, I'm not so sure what "success" will be measured against either.

I'm also concerned that no matter how successful in MI this might be that the infrastructure required to make this system scalable might not exist at all. How many volunteers will this require over a local "season"? How many fields, FTAs, robot storage facilities? How will this work in regions where the nearest "rival school" is already 3 hours away? Will this solution really change much for them? MI may be able to clear these hurdles, but look at the FRC strength that already exists there.

I'm not trying to be a wet blanket here, I think this is an idea born in MI that may work for MI. Even with events and a slightly less expensive entry, I still don't know how many folks nationwide and globally are able to jump right into starting an FRC team and build a big robot. As an advocate for intermediate-sized programs, to me this plan is missing an integral piece that could get teams and communities interested in a way that initially costs far less in human capital and expertise.

Unless we can see a real "plan" with proposed goals and desired outcomes, I'm sure we'll be having much the same conversation after these events with little more than anecdotal information about who liked what and what some people thought worked, etc...

...just my little log for the fire
namaste

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by dlavery

... this whole topic needs a lot MORE discussion, not less.

-dave


.

You are right.

I applaud what FIRST in Michigan is attempting. As John said earlier, there are great people in Michigan who will move heaven and earth to make this approach work -- in Michigan.

Whether it can work elsewhere is a proper subject for discussion by everyone who cares enough to commit time and treasure to the mission of FIRST. I hope the discussion will stay active, and gracious.

[Pat Major]

Top ten reasons FIRST in Michigan system with events being held at high schools is an improvement over the current FIRST model:
1) Expose more students to FIRST.
2) Expose more teachers to FIRST.
3) Allow your sponsors to “stop by a competition after work”.
4) Allow student’s parents to more easily attend an event.
5) Reduce the cost of participating in FIRST.
6) Increase teams ROI.
7) Reduce the time mentors have to be away from work.
8) Reduce the time students have to miss school.
9) Reduce expensive time consuming travel.
10) Money that was paid to event planners can now be used to sponsor more teams.

[Jason Morrella]

Originally Posted by Pat Major

Top ten reasons FIRST in Michigan system with events being held at high schools is an improvement over the current FIRST model:
1) Expose more students to FIRST.
2) Expose more teachers to FIRST.
3) Allow your sponsors to “stop by a competition after work”.
4) Allow student’s parents to more easily attend an event.
5) Reduce the cost of participating in FIRST.
6) Increase teams ROI.
7) Reduce the time mentors have to be away from work.
8) Reduce the time students have to miss school.
9) Reduce expensive time consuming travel.
10) Money that was paid to event planners can now be used to sponsor more teams.

And that list (which is even missing some big pros/advantages) is precisely why so many regions and teams will be at a disadvantage and consider this upcoming season to have two separate values and sets of rules.

I don't post much anymore, but I don't have a high pain tolerance and I want to stop biting my lip.

As someone said earlier, the entire point of this "pilot" is to provide a better value and return for the cost. And it does that, there is no doubt:
- no one can debate that two events for $5,000 is a substantially better value than one event for $6,000 or two events for $10,000
- no can debate that having 6 or 7 events in a state makes it easier and cheaper for more schools to participate in
- no one can debate that saving $5,000 gives teams a huge advantage in either time/energy/stress saved in fundraising or in the ability to build a practice robot, buy a new control system or attend an extra regional
- no one can debate having your robot in your hands during the fix it window, being able to drive it, being able to add parts to it and so on is much more advantageous than just working on parts and bringing them to an event

IRI and many other great off season events have already proven teams will have a great time and great experience at lower cost events, done in 1 or 2 days, that they get to bring their robots to. There's no question that it's a better deal and a better value, and there certainly isn't any "pilot" needed to prove it. It's all been proven already - which leads to the questions/concerns many have as to why this pilot is needed if it gives some teams these benefits but not others.

The problem is, this pilot effectively sets up two different competitions this year. One set of rules and a substantially better value for teams from one state, and a different set of rules and a lesser value for teams from the rest of the country/world. This has nothing to do with "which teams" or "which state" is getting the advantage - this same issue would exist no matter where it was happening. If this was happening in Florida, California or New York - the issues would be no different, so I don't have any issue with Michigan teams wanting to save money or get a better return for their efforts. The price/value needs to get better for all teams in all areas - and anyone who has participated on an FRC team knows that.

The issue is that for the first time ever, there will be one set of teams getting a substantial discount over others, that's the part that makes little sense (especially since registration fees don't go towards paying for the cost of any FIRST regional events anyway). If this pilot was truly designed to give teams more plays at a better value, then it seems it should be done in states that don't have multiple regionals already (Hawaii, Colorado, Oklahoma, Louisiana, etc...), those are the states it could truly make the biggest impact and help the most teams who can't compete twice in the existing system IMHO.

One of the great things about FIRST is that is has always been one great community - my fear and concern for this pilot is that this upcoming season will now have a fractured community: FIRST in Michigan at one price/value, and FIRST everywhere else at a different price/value. Any pilot that can in any way potentially fracture the great community everyone has built in FIRST needs to be handled very carefully and in a way that is fair to all.

My 3 cents.

Hope everyone's having a great summer!

[Rich Kressly]

Alright, when I posted earlier I hadn't read Beth's pdf about the shipping situation. Is this verified as true? Even without the pilot structure in my state is there any good reason for my team to have to ship its robot? It seems to me we could save a whole lot of money (not to mention the colossal headaches) for teams and FedEx, if the free FedEx shipping was just ued in situations where teams couldn't drive the bot to a regional. Santa, what I want for Xmas is the same cost (money and human) savings as MI teams, even if the pilot structure doesn't exist in my state.

[Zflash]

One criteria that our team uses when deciding to compete out of state is whether an event is being held at a university. We do this because we like the opportunity to show our students out of state options. Our team has traveled to Purdue twice for this reason and to the Florida regional as well. On other teams we have traveled to VCU. Traveling long distances is justified to the parents by pointing this out to them. My question is do other teams do this and how do you think it will affect MI?
By the way MI has always been on our list.

[Jim Zondag]

Originally Posted by Jason Morrella

If this pilot was truly designed to give teams more plays at a better value, then it seems it should be done in states that don't have multiple regionals already (Hawaii, Colorado, Oklahoma, Louisiana, etc

Jason,
I can't speak for any other states. I agree this may provide more benefit elsewhere. This proposal came from the from the regional coordinators here in Michigan to FIRST in New Hampshire. No one here made any attempt to represent any region outside of Michigan. I have no idea if any other regiona has every tried to implement any kind of similar initiative. I think FIRST was wise in terms of how to proceed with this idea and properly manage risk. Some think this will be an improvement, others disagree. The only way to know is to test it. FIRST agreed to implement this in this region and partially isolate it from the rest of the league in order to properly test the concept.

Dave,
I think it is too soon to assume that this will be universally rolled out everywhere in the future. I'm not sure anyone other than the FIRST board of directors can comment on that. Many of the goals of this change are financially motivated and a fairly detailed proposal was approved by the FIRST board of directors. A "successful" pilot event based on the new event model was conducted last March at Kettering U. How can we claim it was a success?... A: We surveyed all the teams who attended and had universally positive responses, B: Event was conducted with all costs meeting targets far below a traditional regional, C: Delegates from the FIRST board of directors were in attendance and were very satisfied with the event quality.

So, if we please the participants, please the management, and can do it for under the projected budget, is it a success? I'm not sure what other measures to use. On the flip side, how exactly can anyone claim that the current system is entirely "successful". ROI is low, team attrition rates are high, and many Regional events lose money every year with no end in sight. Is this "successful?"

Who will decide if this pilot is a success in 2009? Internally, the FIRSTinMichigan project has financial goals, expectations on how the events will be conducted and how many teams we can help to fund. These will be our internal measures of success. On the outside, how will FIRST NH determine if it is a success? I'm really not sure. I agree with you that there must be some standards by which FIRST will measure our "success" in 2009, but I do not know how or if this will be done.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

Who will decide if this pilot is a success in 2009? Internally, the FIRSTinMichigan project has financial goals, expectations on how the events will be conducted and how many teams we can help to fund. These will be our internal measures of success. On the outside, how will FIRST NH determine if it is a success? I'm really not sure. I agree with you that there must be some standards by which FIRST will measure our "success" in 2009, but I do not know how or if this will be done.

That's the problem.

"Internal" goals are subject to change without anyone in the community ever knowing. Internal goals can be moved lower after everything is said and done, and success can be [wrongfully] claimed. This is more or less exactly what Winston Smith did for a living.

This is a non-profit organization were are all a part of. This is not a business that has to protect its property, products, and ideas. There should be no secrets or private internal goals. What is there to hide? It should all be publicly available with complete transparency about why they are doing everything, for exactly what reasons, and exactly what they want to accomplish.

As such, this "pilot" in Michigan should have a very rigid set of goals released to the public well before the season kicks off about what they attempt to accomplish. And these goals cannot just be unquantifiable goals, like asking everyone if they had a happy time. They need to be hard numbers.

For example, this would be the start of what quantifiable goals for this program can be:

• Currently, A% of schools in Michigan have strong STEM-related curriculum or FIRST teams. And due to B, C, and D reasons, we believe the current growth strategy will not work for expanding this presence. As such, we are currently looking at this district-level pilot program for meeting the above goals.
  
  The new pilot program in Michigan is being pursued to increase the number of teams in the state by a rate 30% higher than the average growth in Michigan over the past ten years, as well as increase the team retention rate by an average of 50%. The average growth in the number of teams in Michigan over the past ten years has been an average of E new teams per year, and the average retention rate has been F%.
  
  In order to successfully execute this plan, we currently will need to grow the infrastructure of the existing FRC program in G, H, and I areas. We currently have J number of volunteers in the state; five years ago we have K, and ten years ago we had L. Though measures M and N, we are looking to increase the number of volunteers available for these competitions, and to successfully train them to fulfill these positions as well as current volunteers.
  
  Also needed to grow this new program are large sources of new capital to fund these improvements. Over the past ten years, the average growth of capital to fund teams and competitions and the state has been O%. In order to successfully carry out this new district model, we will need to increase that by P%. This will require an aggressive campaign to bring in funds through measures Q, R, and S.
  
  In the case that these conditions cannot be accomplished by T date, our fallback plan details are U, V and W. In light of such happening, any new models of competition listed above will be put on hold until the conditions listed above can be satisfied.

As such, I also want an objective assessment of this new district-level competition as opposed to other avenues of growing the message of FIRST, and why they feel (and can prove) this new program is better, especially in regards to quantifiable goals, such as the cost per person to participate, average time necessary to have a competitive robot, etc.

FIRST is inspiring us to careers in STEM. So now it's time to use these skills to make decisions based on numbers and not on bellyfeel.

[Jason Morrella]

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

Jason, The only way to know is to test it. FIRST agreed to implement this in this region and partially isolate it from the rest of the league in order to properly test the concept.

Hi Jim,

I understand what you're saying, and I applaud the people in Michigan trying to make this happen. The cost of FRC is WAY too high, there is no doubt about that. It should be cheaper to run an event and registration fees should certainly be cheaper (or at least some of the apx $200,000 in registration fees teams pay for each local event should actually go to paying the costs of that local event).

One point I was trying to make however is that "isolating" this as a "pilot" has already been done - in multiple cities by multiple groups for a number of years and it works. We all know the answers to the test: A lower cost structure for events is better for local volunteers/committees/sponsors, a lower entry fee is better for teams, getting to play twice for less than the cost of playing once is better for teams, getting to keep your robot and being able to make repairs & practice driving with it before events is better for teams, having more events in a region saves teams travel time/money and allows them to play more. This pilot isn't going to help prove any of those things - they are already proven. If the test is going to be given, it sounds like most everyone would like the opportunity to try it.

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

I can't speak for any other states. I agree this may provide more benefit elsewhere. This proposal came from the from the regional coordinators here in Michigan to FIRST in New Hampshire. No one here made any attempt to represent any region outside of Michigan. I have no idea if any other regiona has every tried to implement any kind of similar initiative.

Michigan is certainly not the first, and it won't be the last, to propose models to lower costs for events and teams (most are just never made public). I've worked with regional committees in California, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii and other states who have wanted to cut regional costs, lower fees for teams and try different models in their area for many years - but they were always told those tests should be in the off season and that they wouldn't be allowed to deviate in a major way from the model all events had during the official season, that the FRC season had to have the same guidelines and requirements for all events and teams to be fair. Many off season event organizers, like IRI, have pitched their models to FIRST and had FIRST people come observe them - and they have proven the results of those "pilots".

But these groups were never told there had been a shift and that they could run regionals in their states differently during the upcoming official season. I've heard from a number of committee members from different areas that they were stunned to see FIRST allow such a different model in one state without ever telling them they could offer those opportunities to the teams in their area. Trust me, if that was known, many states would be happy to do such a model this year.

Again, let me repeat, I applaud the efforts of the volunteers in Michigan to get a better return on the investment for schools and teams. It's the right thing to strive and work for. FRC will only be accessible to the majority of schools and students if the cost is lower. I just wish the same savings and opportunities were being offered to all teams - or at least to all teams with only one event in their state or region.

There's no doubt the FRC cost structure will change in the coming years, I (cough) agree (cough) with Dave - it will happen - with or without what is being done in Michigan this year. As IRI, Kettering and many others have already proven - a reduced event and team cost model works and is a good thing for teams, if made available to all teams.