Important lesson learned

[roboraven15]

With our team being very small and unequiped this year, as we are trying to bring back a team that died 2 years ago, we made a grave mistake. With only a few people with any experiance, we had to give some people only certain jobs to accomplish what we needed. So, to cut this story down, we only truely taught one person the new programing. He had electrical and programing experiance, unlike anybody else on the team, so we gave him programing and controls. With our other people busy with other aspects only one maybe two other people had any brief exposure to the new systems otherwise. Now, our programmer has currently been kicked off the team, and we are in ALOT of trouble. We still need to finish the last parts of our robot at competition and now have nobody to do the programming. We left our rear open and it most definatly got kicked.

anyways we did learn one lesson, don't put anybody alone on a key part of your team.

Well our first competiton is next weekend, and we are not ready. I just thought maybe this would be something smaller teams should keep in the back of there heads in the future.

[Tom Line]

It's a good lesson to learn. You might also add never put a senior ALONE on any project - because when he's gone at the end of the year you may be in trouble.

On another note, post a message with a title something like - Team in XXXXX Area needs urgent programming help!

I wish I was in driving distance - whipping up a program is usually pretty quick as long as you don't need anything really complicated.

[roboraven15]

thats a really good idea actually, i think as of now we are next week going to go out too some of our neighboring teams for some assistance.

[Eric Finn]

Ah, yes, the problems of having a bus factor of one.
Unfortunately, I am not close enough (nor do I know anybody close enough) to Royal Oak, Michigan to help you.
If, however, there is something I can help with from a distance, I would be glad to.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by roboraven15

With our team being very small and unequiped this year, as we are trying to bring back a team that died 2 years ago, we made a grave mistake. With only a few people with any experiance, we had to give some people only certain jobs to accomplish what we needed. So, to cut this story down, we only truely taught one person the new programing. He had electrical and programing experiance, unlike anybody else on the team, so we gave him programing and controls. With our other people busy with other aspects only one maybe two other people had any brief exposure to the new systems otherwise. Now, our programmer has currently been kicked off the team, and we are in ALOT of trouble. We still need to finish the last parts of our robot at competition and now have nobody to do the programming. We left our rear open and it most definatly got kicked.

anyways we did learn one lesson, don't put anybody alone on a key part of your team.

Well our first competiton is next weekend, and we are not ready. I just thought maybe this would be something smaller teams should keep in the back of there heads in the future.

First off, Welcome back to FIRST. It's good to see teams coming back.

Now on to your issue. FIRST should be able to point you to the senior mentor in Michigan (I believe you are in Michigan?). That senior mentor should be able to get you into contact with a team willing to assist you.

If worst comes to worst, contact the district competition director and see if you cannot get assistance from the the other teams at the district competition. I;ll almost bet that there will be a few teams looking to help you, if you let them know your situation.