KOP recieved 11 days late

[sloteera]

But we are talking about a rookie team in another country!!

They need to familiarize with system and softwares as soon as possible!
Imagine a rookie team that never had seen a Labview Interface, for example....
How long do you think they will take to learn how to use the software??

I think that they will need at least one week to learn how to manipulate the software!!!

[Racer26]

The only thing that strikes me about this as being a special case is that they're a rookie team, in Bosnia. I don't know of any Bosnian veteran teams that could help them out.

[dlavery]

Not to kill the thread, but everyone needs to face a little reality. FIRST is not going to extend the deadline for a team just because the KOP arrived late. Ain't gonna happen. No way. No use in even talking about it.

There have been some very rare instances where the deadline has been extended due to truly extreme circumstances. Late arrival of the KOP is not one of those reasons.. The Israel and Brazil teams deal with late kit arrivals every year (and the delays they contend with have been much worse than 11 days), and their deadlines are not extended. So it is not reasonable to expect that it will happen here. To their perpetual credit, the Israeli and Brazilian teams always find a way to work around the late arrival of their kits, and still show up with competitive robots. And, more importantly, they have shown year after year that even if their kits show up late they are still able to extract real value and a positive impact out of their experience, no matter what the robot construction limitations may be.

-dave



.

[IKE]

I would be opposed to an extension past the Week1 competition.

[Tristan Lall]

Any deadline change would result in some sort of disparity between this team and all of the others—of course, receiving the KOP late is a significant disparity in its own right, especially for a rookie team which is likely to have depended on its contents to perform even cursory design and prototyping work.

Something like this should depend on why the delay occurred. If the team was allowed to register after the deadline as a courtesy, there may not have been enough time to handle the logistics. On the other hand, if they were not a late registrant, I think FIRST should probably have anticipated that shipping might not be straightforward. Assuming the team registered on time, and is paying for shipping (as teams can do, if they're not picking it up at a kickoff event), timely receipt of their materials would be a wholly reasonable expectation.

There's also the question of whether someone didn't fill out the required forms or customs manifests, or didn't do so in the right language—it's not improbable that the team and/or FIRST could have made an innocent error there. I'm not sure how Bosnia handles these things, but even when dealing with Canada-U.S. shipping, it's important to itemize the contents, indicate the value, and describe the expected use (especially if not for resale).

I suspect this is one of those times when you want to just pay a customs broker to handle everything for you—if that's what FIRST did, and it still arrived late, there's probably not much that can be done, except to ship earlier next year.

I wouldn't be opposed to a short extension, if it was clear (to FIRST) that this wasn't the team's own fault, but a full 11 days is a bit too optimistic. If FIRST is unwilling to contemplate the possibility of an extension of any sort, then perhaps a partial refund is in order—certainly at least the cost of shipping.


Now, on the subject of late kit arrivals every year, that's simply unacceptable. When you understand the problem (because it happened last year), and still can't avoid it, you're doing it wrong.

In terms of a long-term resolution to this issue, maybe there could be a note in the list of deadlines explaining that registrants from outside North America who haven't paid by early November should not expect their KOP to arrive in-country by the kickoff date. If the registrants do pay early, FIRST would have an extra month to put together an early shipment of whatever KOP parts it has on hand at that point, and the team would get the bulk of its materials on time. At least this way, the teams would be forewarned, and have the option to resolve it. (It's not totally fair, because they'd have to raise funds faster than everyone else, but at least it doesn't interfere with the build season.)

[Racer26]

I suppose the biggest part of the difficulty is that the GDC doesnt want these teams to get their kit AHEAD of kickoff, lest a dishonest team open it, and learn something vital about the game (game piece, anyone?) and disclose it to the community on here, for example. Co-ordinating ship dates so things arrive somewhere on a specific day is not easy when using big international shippers like FedEx. This is the very reason that for us Canadians buying off Amazon, for example, we're quoted 9-15 days. They have no idea when it's going to get here.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

I suppose the biggest part of the difficulty is that the GDC doesnt want these teams to get their kit AHEAD of kickoff, lest a dishonest team open it, and learn something vital about the game (game piece, anyone?) and disclose it to the community on here, for example. Co-ordinating ship dates so things arrive somewhere on a specific day is not easy when using big international shippers like FedEx. This is the very reason that for us Canadians buying off Amazon, for example, we're quoted 9-15 days. They have no idea when it's going to get here.

I don't think that is a big concern. I mean, people put the field together for remote Kickoffs and those people keep their mouth shut in the day or so before Kickoff, so I don't think they hold back the KOPs in fear of people opening them and finding out about the game.

[Nadav Zingerman]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

Any deadline change would result in some sort of disparity between this team and all of the others—of course, receiving the KOP late is a significant disparity in its own right, especially for a rookie team which is likely to have depended on its contents to perform even cursory design and prototyping work.

Something like this should depend on why the delay occurred. If the team was allowed to register after the deadline as a courtesy, there may not have been enough time to handle the logistics. On the other hand, if they were not a late registrant, I think FIRST should probably have anticipated that shipping might not be straightforward. Assuming the team registered on time, and is paying for shipping (as teams can do, if they're not picking it up at a kickoff event), timely receipt of their materials would be a wholly reasonable expectation.

There's also the question of whether someone didn't fill out the required forms or customs manifests, or didn't do so in the right language—it's not improbable that the team and/or FIRST could have made an innocent error there. I'm not sure how Bosnia handles these things, but even when dealing with Canada-U.S. shipping, it's important to itemize the contents, indicate the value, and describe the expected use (especially if not for resale).

I suspect this is one of those times when you want to just pay a customs broker to handle everything for you—if that's what FIRST did, and it still arrived late, there's probably not much that can be done, except to ship earlier next year.

I wouldn't be opposed to a short extension, if it was clear (to FIRST) that this wasn't the team's own fault, but a full 11 days is a bit too optimistic. If FIRST is unwilling to contemplate the possibility of an extension of any sort, then perhaps a partial refund is in order—certainly at least the cost of shipping.


Now, on the subject of late kit arrivals every year, that's simply unacceptable. When you understand the problem (because it happened last year), and still can't avoid it, you're doing it wrong.

In terms of a long-term resolution to this issue, maybe there could be a note in the list of deadlines explaining that registrants from outside North America who haven't paid by early November should not expect their KOP to arrive in-country by the kickoff date. If the registrants do pay early, FIRST would have an extra month to put together an early shipment of whatever KOP parts it has on hand at that point, and the team would get the bulk of its materials on time. At least this way, the teams would be forewarned, and have the option to resolve it. (It's not totally fair, because they'd have to raise funds faster than everyone else, but at least it doesn't interfere with the build season.)

Actually, this problem is mostly unavoidable. Customs officers can't clear a shipment before it arrives, and the evaluation period can not be anticipated. I can't begin to tell you how many times radios were received long after build season or not at all, thus preventing teams from properly practicing driving their robot. Every design challenge has unexpected difficulties outside of your control. Late shipments are one of them.

[LovablePsycho]

Yeah, that really sucks. But, unfortunately, FIRST will most likely not extend their time. Good luck anyway!

[jsasaki]

I think that it would be reasonable for those that received their KOP late to get an extension on the missing parts deadline but not much more than that. If our KOP came more than a weekend late like it doeds now I would be sad .

[Blackphantom91]

I think that They should have there time extended, pending that they don't compete within that 11 days because it may change their schedual and may not have the full time.

[EricH]

This is like the real world. Sometimes, a vendor for a critical part for your product can't get the part to you in time for whatever reason. Your customer, who is buying your product, won't wait for the product. If they have to wait, they pay less, or maybe even cancel the deal.

It doesn't look like any of them are on CD. If someone has direct contact to them, could they be informed of CD's existence? It may be helpful if they made contact with veterans, whether "nearby" (Turkey and Israel are the closest countries with teams, and may have some experience with things like this) or farther away via email/CD. We've all been rookies; we may not have had their unique challenges, but we can still help.

[Pat Major]

Attached is a history of how the team was started, this was written by Ingrid's mother for our local newspaper. It is a great FIRST story, Ingrid has taken on a lot, we are very proud of her and we are helping mentor the team via video conferences. I put the poll up because I was curious as to how people would feel about an extension. I don't think it will happen, I agree with Dave. I disagree that it is not worth talking about.

[gweaver]

I know it's a moot point, and all this discussion is academic, but as a previous poster said, it's a rookie team, which suggests, among other things, they don't have any stockpile of old parts to play with. Granted, most of the first week or so is design, but there's still the control system to learn and various systems to become familiar with (pneumo, drive, wiring, etc). I don't know if they should have a full extension of 11 days, but I would not be opposed to an extra 3-4 days.

As was previously mentioned, there don't seem to be any experienced teams to help them in their area.

I'd be curious to see how some of the experienced teams would do, if they were given a challenge (via video) and then a printed document (with conflicting measurements), but not provided with actual parts for almost two weeks. And I'm not talking about an FRC type challenge that those teams are familiar with, but something completely new, that they've had zero experience with. The only resource those teams would have would be the internet. Hmmm...

Just my thoughts,
G

[waialua359]

I think the discussion should lean towards how do we get international teams their KOP on time in the future, especially in dealing with teams from new countries that participate in FIRST.