Team Update #13

[Steve W]

Hard deadlines are good for mentors. Burnout is probably one of the biggest reasons that mentors are lost. I have a loving and caring wife who says go and enjoy yourself. I do make sure to take an evening or two during build to take her to dinner. If the season was much longer I believe that things might change at home as hints start coming by the end of week 5.

[ks_mumupsi]

I am glad to see this discussion on going here. However, it is disappointing that we have to have this type of a discussion.

I believe in the true spirit of GP, this should not be a questions, teams should understand that this was to allow teams additional development time of systems not keeping the entire robot back to spend more time improving it as a whole regardless of weight. I hope that we do not resort to such a competitive state in FIRST where we are no longer keeping in mind the true philosophy of FIRST - which is to "Inspire and Recognize"... The rest is all sweet candy.

Having gone through this as a student, a volunteer and now a mentor its difficult to see how quickly FIRST is changing and maybe sometimes not for the better.

Its as Dean said in the kickoff speech, we dont want to become like the other college or pro sports out there where it all becomes about winning and loosing.

I hope that we dont have to go to a regional questioning whether a team is bringing the appropriate amount or type of fabricated items or such.

see ya guys on the field.

[dtengineering]

I have a real love/hate relationship with the ship date. I love the sense of accomplishment when a working robot ships. I love people's response when they learn that you did "all that" in six weeks. But I hate having to skip lessons on how stuff works, or why we're doing things certain ways due to the pressure of the ship date. (This year we had just two adult mentors... so we're running a bit shorthanded). And I really hate shipping off a robot that isn't ready to play the game. I don't mind shipping one that isn't ready to win the game... but we owe it to ourselves and our alliance partners to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the game.

But for all that, I do support the idea of a firm and fixed shipping/bagging date.

But I really, really, really like the witholding limit, too. Tonight I was able to sit down with a half dozen students in a fairly relaxed setting (with the Canada-Russia game streaming over the internet, of course... ) and grease up the gearboxes that got delayed for ten days by Canada customs, and show them how planetary gearboxes work, and do a bit of experimenting to get our "ball magnet" roller up and running.

On the "to do" list is to finalize our kicker design (we've had the rough dimensions worked out since the second or third week of build) and attach some IR rangefinders to help the driver find the ball.

As we're in a later regional this year, we'll have a chance to do this at a much more comfortable, relaxed, and enjoyable pace than we would during build.

So I don't think "fixed build date" and "witholding limit" are mutually incompatible. I think they work together to give a pretty good compromise.

I also have to say that while I love the year-long competition for our five VEX teams because it lets them redesign and re-build between competitions (we compete at five different VEX tournaments, each roughly a month apart here in the BC/WA area), a VEX robot rebuild is much less demanding of my time than an FRC rebuild would be.

And, with respect to some earlier posts in this thread, my experience with FRC over seven years has been that it continues to evolve. And thank goodness for that... stagnation would be far worse than a change that some people didn't like. There are many possible ways to extend the build period without burning out... we could start with a three week "design period" during which no tools could be used, and no parts could be machined. Or we could have a longer build period, but require teams to log their time and limit it to 10 hours per week of total meeting and shop time. I KNOW we could get more mentors involved if they only had to make a committment twice each week and could still play a meaningful role in the design.

Jason

[Cory]

I like having a ship date. I'd hate to put as much time in as I do during six weeks for a 14 week period, from kickoff-championships.

[Taylor]

If build season was longer than 6 weeks, I would not be associated with FIRST Robotics.
My wife and kid would see to that.

[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.

[JHSmentor]

Jason, you are echo'ing a ton of thoughts that have been going through my head recently as well. I have only been a mentor for 3 years (2 rookie teams and one 2nd year for the first team I mentored). I find it interesting to see how many "veteran" teams appear to struggle nearly as much as the rookie teams - I was originally thinking this was a rookie phenomenon (and maybe it is more of an issue still). The rookie team I am helping this year had absolutely ZERO resources by the time kick-off occured. The team is completely supported by grants - which the money for those did not come in until basically the week before kickoff. We had no material supplies, no tools, and only 2 of us 3 mentors had any experience with FIRST at all. The team has literally been together for 6 weeks (maybe 7 total). I expect there are other teams that are in the same boat.

Additionally, we are Week1 competition team. While the withholding allowance certainly helps - it's not going to be nearly as beneficial to our team as to most. I see that some teams also meet quite often and spend tons and tons of hours building, designing, marketing, etc. We did not have that option. So, in the end, we had probably 3 weeks or so to really do anything more useful than some brainstorming sessions and watching other teams videos on prototypes we were thinking about (and even that was a struggle since the school does not allow for surfing the web). Teaching and mentoring the students on most things has been very limited (basic on the job training) and I have been seriously concerned about how much the kids are really getting out of the program and how much desire they are building to even want to come back next year. There are only so many pep talks you can give and promises of how cool it will be at the competition (let alone the encouragement to work longer, harder, faster, and more efficiently).

Schools really seem to struggle with the idea of diving into this program - and I can see why. Making it a viable long term program for a school is of utmost priority to them - yet it's so difficult and nebulous on how to do just that. Having a larger build season, or some of the other ideas you mentioned may be the ticket. I'm not sure what needs to be done but hopefully some changes will come soon that will make it easier for everyone involved.

Anyway - I could go on and on - so I'll just stop here. At least I am able to vent.

[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.

[yodameister]

Originally Posted by Taylor

If build season was longer than 6 weeks, I would not be associated with FIRST Robotics.
My wife and kid would see to that.

Ditto