Team Update #13

[artdutra04]

There's a simple enough solution to people who for personal or family reasons cannot devote more than six weeks worth of time to FRC if there was no ship date: just don't have any meetings until six weeks before your regional. Since all engineering projects expand or contract to fit the allocated time, and since finishing early is nearly impossible, just restrict your start date.

[JaneYoung]

If there were no hard deadlines/no ship date - the bookkeeping side of things could become very interesting. At some point, I could see some teams pointing to the robots created during the year and play a counting/elimination game regarding which one/ones should stay or go. The organizational management and business management would shift and change.

Having the hard deadline as it has been, allows for planning for mentors and also, for students who juggle insane schedules filled with academic demands, extra curriculars, and somewhere in there I would hope they are developing social lives. Well-balanced social and academic development is important to the well-being of the individual students and their teams.

The GDC would be sending out updates like newsletters.

It could benefit teams who build/work on their sponsors sites but teams who build/work/depend on their schools premises - would have a difficult time. It would take - more - organization, planning, and time management to figure out their schedules.

I'm not saying it is bad, I'm saying it would require more work spread out over the time allowed, in the organizational end of things.

Jane

[yarb65]

Puts those shipping to an International location at a disadvantage. Cannot carry 65lbs as carry on.

[dtengineering]

I agree there has to be a limit of some kind on the amount of time that goes in to building a robot.

The six-week build period limit has worked for FRC for years, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is the optimal solution.

For instance I have had several people interested in being involved as mentors with our team and ask what kind of committment is required. When I tell them that it is pretty much a minimum of four hours per day, 4-6 days per week for six weeks straight they tend to shy away. The committment is just too intense.

We've tried having mentors come in twice per week during build, which seems to be a committment that people are willing to make, but that generally results in an unfulfilling experience as it is very difficult to play a meaningful role in the design and prototyping stage on a part-time basis.

So if there were a way to reduce the intensity of build by spreading it out over a longer period of time, I could see several benefits. Yes, there would be challenges, but a longer, less intense build would make build period disruptions such as school exam periods, unusual weather events, shipping and customs delays, and even unique events like having the Olympics smack-dab in the middle of build easier to accomodate (many schools around Vancouver, for instance, have been shut down for the past two weeks... had ours done so, too, we may have had to pull out of FRC this year). <edit 3: Andymark, Banebots, VexPro and other common FRC vendors might appreciate having their business spread out over a longer period, too.>

I think as FRC increases its international presence we also need to keep in mind that not all school systems around the world are in session in January and February. Admittedly the majority of the teams are in North America... but wouldn't it be great to have the sort of international involvement that VEX and FLL have? We probably won't get that if we schedule build exclusively for their summer holidays, or New Year's week.

I don't presume to know the thoughts of the FIRST executive, but I don't think we need to fear changes that they might propose for the build season. A six week build is one solution to constraining demands on mentor's time, and team resources but it is certainly not the only one, and possibly isn't the optimal one.

Maybe its time to try something different...

Jason

<edit 1: Bryan... you aren't alone. I think even those who love the intensity of build season can relate.

edit 2: Maybe this is morphing into something that should be a new thread on it's own right... >

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Having the hard deadline as it has been, allows for planning for mentors and also, for students who juggle insane schedules filled with academic demands, extra curriculars, and somewhere in there I would hope they are developing social lives. Well-balanced social and academic development is important to the well-being of the individual students and their teams.

As much as I know that it probably isn't, I feel like the scheduling comment is hitting right at me (anyone who follows me on Twitter or is friends on Facebook can attest that I have had numerous "I have so much work to do...oh, it's 2am already?" statuses over the course of the year). I'm not too sure about my social life right now, actually, or my sanity, for that matter. If we hadn't had a hard (or in the case of MI teams, "slightly squishy") deadline with the bagging, I might still be in the shop until 11pm most nights. As much as I love robotics, I've become completely burned out this year.

FIRST is demanding of the students and mentors alike. 6 weeks of robot-building is enough to drive all of us crazy (in both a good and bad way). Work will expand to fill the time allotted - that's why deadlines exist.

I think that everyone's views on this are on a team-by-team basis. Teams who are behind on their robots will generally love more time to work on it, but teams who are totally done by week 5 won't be as concerned about it, because it's normally just extra practice and tweaking time.