Another Culture Change

[pandamonium]

H.A.T.E.R.S. = Having Anger Towards Everyone Reaching Success

[PhilBot]

I did attend the Pittsburgh regional.

I had heard beforehand that 1114 was expected to be a powerhouse at the competition, and personally that excited me, because there is nothing worse than a regional full of Toasters on Wheels.

From practice day, the mystique started to grow. How come they weren’t in any matches? Was their robot working? No, I was told… they never show their robot ahead of time. I thought that was odd, but I’d learned not to believe urbane legends.

Then when they did start playing later in the day, their capabilities were very evident. I immediately said “why didn’t we think of that, and that, and that?”

Their team sat behind us in the stands so I got a few moments to chat, but they were very quiet and restrained. On Friday, after a grueling day, my wife and I happened to pick the same restaurant as 1114 to eat dinner. All their talk was about the robot and what to do to make it run better (unlike our team for sure).

Several times during the event I did try and go over to have a look at their robot, and talk to their team about how they organized themselves, but I will admit to being somewhat intimidated, and I didn’t have much success. They seemed very protective of their robot and tended to keep much to themselves. It was difficult to even start up a conversation. Perhaps this was in response to feeling somewhat under the microscope.

However, this was very much in contrast to the other Canadian teams at the event who seemed very eager to chat with me when I did the rounds with our junior team members.

BTW, their singer did an AMAZING job of their National Anthem.

This was my first time competing with 1114 in a regional, so I don’t know if their reserved nature, on and off the field is typical. I also don’t know if the “apparent” stand-offish nature that I observed is real or imagined. I could understand their possible reluctance to show off their entire tech to other US teams. As a non-American (I grew up in Australia) I’ve experienced the fear more than once that the USA comes in with open arms and leaves with all your goodies

I believe 1114 has won Chairmans several times, so they clearly understand the FIRST mission. Perhaps they could help us eliminate the “haters” by showing US a bit more about what makes THEM the team that they are (rather than just a great robot).

I for one would love to find out what motivates them, and try to apply it to my own team. Next time I'll try harder to start a conversation.

Phil.

[BandChick]

It has admittedly been a long time since I posted anything on CD, but this blog has provoked a reaction in me unlike almost anything else I've read in a long time. As with everyone else, I will do my best to refrain from restating all the things already in this thread, but I do want to say THANK YOU, John. Thank you for, if nothing else, doing your own part to change the culture and to make this a present issue - the problem can't be fixed until we are all aware of it. Also, my humble apologies to Karthik and the rest of the Simbots for the way they were treated, here's hoping that NEVER happens again!

I would like to say that I am very glad to have been raised in FIRST by several top notch teams and mentors. When I started as a rookie in FIRST, I was immediately accepted into the community by teams 103 and 25. Here on CD I got to know some of our WFA winners, our UFH winners, and several other amazing students and mentors that really "got" the FIRST message and lived by the ethos of Gracious Professionalism. These teams, students, and mentors taught me about respect, compassion, teamwork, and encouraged me not just to build a successful robot, but to build a successful team.

With one comes the other - powerhouse teams get their successful team using the robot as the medium, while other teams (like mine) use their teamwork and collaboration as the medium, and that begets the successful machine. I am often impressed, humbled, and proud of the powerhouse teams in FIRST because they are the ones that are constantly in their pits learning, teaching, struggling, and of course, having fun. They can be some of the best role models, just like our Chairman's Award winning teams.

I am going to add on an example to Rich Kressly's post, where he talks about needing good strategists and scouters. This is ABSOLUTELY true.

This year for the first time, my team (1089) made it to the finals at the New Jersey Regional. We believe we built a pretty good machine, but we also knew that there were certainly teams faster/better/stronger than us. We built our alliance for eliminations based on data and knowledge from our scouters and headed into eliminations against other alliances. We got smashed by 1923, 25, and 1860 in the first match of quarterfinals (124-22 - which was the national high score for Week 1, btw). I have considered for many years 25 to be among the ranks of the powerhouse teams, and I am always trying to play on par to their level. After our initial loss, our alliance's drive teams and a few mentors sat down and plotted out a new strategy, and we won - quarters, semis, and there we were in finals. We were eliminated in finals by another great alliance (1676, 2016, and 303), and as we were, our drive coach and I looked to each other and exclaimed "No regrets! What a great play, and what an amazing set of teams to lose to!" There was truly little to no disappointment by the mentors or students on my team - we came to work hard and play hard, regardless of the results, and our take-home message from the regional was that the weekend was fantastic, but we have improvements to make.

I am often reminded of the year I returned to my pit at Championships to find my students having a dance party after their last match of the weekend, even though they had lost all but one match, AND fried their C-RIO. There were no comments of frustration, disappointment, or anger. Instead, the students were glad to have come as far as they did, and were talking anxiously about improvements they could make during the off-season.

Also this year, the NJ Regional was visited by a team from California, and a member of their team wrote a letter to the judges - which they read aloud to the entire audience during the award ceremony. The member thanked the teams in NJ for being welcoming, supportive, and incorporating them into the community of the regional right off the bat. I was proud, in that moment, to call myself a FIRST mentor, and a member of NJ FIRST - I almost cried.

As for my team, you can BET I will be reminding my students that the behavior demonstrated at the Pittsburgh Regional is wholly unacceptable, and reminding them why professionalism (all aspects of it) NEEDS to be the way they act.

Thanks again, John, and everyone else working with him to make this change happen.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by PhilBot

From practice day, the mystique started to grow. How come they weren’t in any matches? Was their robot working? No, I was told… they never show their robot ahead of time. I thought that was odd, but I’d learned not to believe urbane legends.

Urban legend indeed. We weren't in our morning practice matches because we were upgrading our deployment and dealing with Banebot issues.

Originally Posted by PhilBot

Several times during the event I did try and go over to have a look at their robot, and talk to their team about how they organized themselves, but I will admit to being somewhat intimidated, and I didn’t have much success. They seemed very protective of their robot and tended to keep much to themselves. It was difficult to even start up a conversation. Perhaps this was in response to feeling somewhat under the microscope.

We're generally a reserved group at competitions who definitely keep to ourselves. It's less about being under the microscope and more about being focused on a particular task and not getting distracted.

Originally Posted by PhilBot

This was my first time competing with 1114 in a regional, so I don’t know if their reserved nature, on and off the field is typical. I also don’t know if the “apparent” stand-offish nature that I observed is real or imagined. I could understand their possible reluctance to show off their entire tech to other US teams. As a non-American (I grew up in Australia) I’ve experienced the fear more than once that the USA comes in with open arms and leaves with all your goodies

The reserved nature is typical, but I wouldn't call it "stand-offish". We definitely shared details about our robot to many teams who came by to visit. There was definitely no reluctance to show off information to US teams.

Originally Posted by PhilBot

I believe 1114 has won Chairmans several times, so they clearly understand the FIRST mission. Perhaps they could help us eliminate the “haters” by showing US a bit more about what makes THEM the team that they are (rather than just a great robot).

We normally have an extensive display which talks about our non-robot efforts at our later events. It just wasn't done in time for Pittsburgh. Here's some archived information from the past: http://www.simbotics.org/team/outreach

Originally Posted by PhilBot

I for one would love to find out what motivates them, and try to apply it to my own team. Next time I'll try harder to start a conversation.

I look forward to that conversation.

[PhilBot]

Originally Posted by Karthik

Urban legend indeed. We weren't in our morning practice matches because we were upgrading our deployment and dealing with Banebot issues.

I feel your pain on that one. Had the same problem in Rack 'N Roll.

Originally Posted by Karthik

I look forward to that conversation.

I'll hold you to that.
I have FTC and FLL tickets to Nationals, and I know you have an FRC ticket.
You going to be there?

[Chris is me]

I can buy the argument that it's a bit intimidating to talk to them in the pit. They are all very driven and busy, and don't necessarily have the time to embrace their crowd with open arms. It's not a flaw of 1114's nor does it even begin to justify what happened to them, but on a busy day like Thursday I could understand why someone might get a negative impression.

I'll contrast that to an interaction I had with 217 at the Championship. I walked over to get a picture of their robot. Their driver at the time basically invited me in, proceeding to give me a nice 10 minute tour of their robot. They flipped it over, turned it on, showed how all the subsystems worked including the pincher and nonadrive, and talked about their design tradeoffs. It was like asking for a small glass of water and being given a 40 gallon drum.

I would reach some conclusion and say that teams could be even more proactive about being outgoing at competitions if they don't want to be hated, but that honestly shouldn't be necessary. Plus, 1114 really does get it. I happened to be visiting the St. Catharines / Niagara Falls region last summer and 1114 offered me a tour of their facilities before I could even ask. If that's not professionalism and going above and beyond, I don't know what is.

The most surprising thing about the visit, though, is that Simbotics turned out to really be not all that different from any other team. They worked out of a school shop with a handful of mills, lathes, and other equipment. They had worked their way into getting a decent work space, but there were a lot of closets and hallways; I bet they probably started off with just the little shop out back. 1114's shop (and school) is virtually identical to 2791's. I'd say we're a little better off. 1114 has everything they did because they work harder. More sponsors, recruiting engineers to help, the IFI partnership.

The best part of the tour? Not one mentor was present. None. The meeting I was at was 100% students. The students ran the tour and explained the details of every last thing I asked about. It was impressive, to say the least.

[Racer26]

@Chris is me: I too have toured the 1114 shop, and was pleasantly surprised to have much the same reaction. I do know however, that much of their competition robot is outsourced to sponsors machine shops (IFI for the sheetmetal, for instance), and that they have (at least in past, if not presently) access to a closed Niagara District School Board school's gymnasium to set up a practice field in, which they don't have to tear down during build/competition season. I know they have also made this space available for local teams to use in past years.

Am I envious? Absolutely. Do I think they should be hindered or chastised for their awesomeness? Certainly not.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

@Chris is me: I too have toured the 1114 shop, and was pleasantly surprised to have much the same reaction. I do know however, that much of their competition robot is outsourced to sponsors machine shops (IFI for the sheetmetal, for instance), and that they have (at least in past, if not presently) access to a closed Niagara District School Board school's gymnasium to set up a practice field in, which they don't have to tear down during build/competition season. I know they have also made this space available for local teams to use in past years.

Am I envious? Absolutely. Do I think they should be hindered or chastised for their awesomeness? Certainly not.

But the thing is, 1114 didn't just spring up with an IFI partnership. They worked hard and diligently to get it. It took them years to get that sponsorship - their 2009 robot was their first IFI sheetmetal robot.

I believe that from 2004 onward (?) their robot was machined almost exclusively in house, using sponsors for parts like their sheetmetal 2006 ball tower. It sounds exactly like how my own team builds robots.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

But the thing is, 1114 didn't just spring up with an IFI partnership. They worked hard and diligently to get it. It took them years to get that sponsorship - their 2009 robot was their first IFI sheetmetal robot.

I believe that from 2004 onward (?) their robot was machined almost exclusively in house, using sponsors for parts like their sheetmetal 2006 ball tower. It sounds exactly like how my own team builds robots.

This is correct. IFI began sponsoring our team in 2008, and only began doing sheet metal for us in 2009. Each year that IFI has done sheet metal for us, major parts of our robot have still been done in house. (Drivetrain in 2009, Hanger in 2010, Minibot deployment in 2011) If you look at our robots closely, you'll notice that there is a very homemade feel to certain parts of them. For example, this year's robot features two plastic drinking cups, a fishing pole and a chunk of wood. (Much to the chagrin of some, and to the pleasure of others)

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Karthik

This is correct. IFI began sponsoring our team in 2008, and only began doing sheet metal for us in 2009. Each year that IFI has done sheet metal for us, major parts of our robot have still been done in house. (Drivetrain in 2009, Hanger in 2010, Minibot deployment in 2011) If you look at our robots closely, you'll notice that there is a very homemade feel to certain parts of them. For example, this year's robot features two plastic drinking cups, a fishing pole and a chunk of wood. (Much to the chagrin of some, and to the pleasure of others)

Don't take this the wrong way, y'all -- but one of the things that some of the folks on my team and myself liked about your 2008 robot was that it was kinda ugly.

You don't get to see that stuff on a webcast and so teams fill in the blanks on their own, but the reality is that no team is building robots that we can't manage to make ourselves. We all have different capabilities and it'd definitely be implement certain mechanisms with more/different/better resources, but there are always ways around the roadblocks.

[GGCO]

This is really unfortunate and I hope the mentors on all teams give their team a serious talk about this kind of behavior.

From my own experiences with COMETS Robotics, I have had to face similar criticism from teams. Last year was our rookie year, but we had three members (myself included) that were veteran FRC members from another team.

So when we had an incredible amount of success, we made it to Einstein, there were many teams who told us (sometimes to our faces) that we were a "rookie" team. I put it in quotes because they were implying that our team didn't deserve the amount of awards we received.

So I can understand the terrible behavior that 1114 experienced, and it's my hope that this kind of attitude ceases to exist in the FRC.

[Cory]

There's not much that hasn't been said here already but I've noticed one prominent theme in this thread-an outpouring of support for 1114 specifically because people know that mentors don't build their robot, that it is a partnership of students and adults.

Who cares who builds the robot? If 1114 or any other team wanted to have their robot be built entirely by adults that would be no better or worse than a team that has theirs built entirely by students, or anywhere else in the spectrum. Who are we to judge how or why a team does what they do? If it inspires their kids then it should be good enough for anyone.

[sNeff]

**This represents my personal experience and opinions, not those of GRT 192**

Originally Posted by Cory

~

To risk an unproductive foray down a well-traveled path...

In my past experiences as a student on 192, I have noticed that the students directly involved in designing and building the robot or modeling the animation or otherwise contributing to team success in a very direct way [includes sponsorships etc] are an order of magnitude more interested and inspired by their time on the team than students who rarely contribute. One of my pet projects in leadership was finding the students on the 'outskirts' of the team and getting them involved throughout the year.

Of course being a student on GRT wouldn't be nearly as much fun or nearly as inspirational without the wide mentor and parent support we enjoy. GRT's robots are 100% student built. Our high-quality workmanship is a point of pride, and our team-members have put in the hours of practice to achieve it. We also have a machine shop better than most college shops, the culmination of 15 years of unwavering dedication from our lead mentor, and a number of mentors who make sure we don't hurt ourselves and break tools while we work.

This informs my opinion that a truly 100%-mentor-funded-built-and-troubleshot robot (that I doubt exists in modern FRC) is a disservice to the students on that team. As a team is more and more mentor driven I find it harder and harder to support them unconditionally. It's appropriate to have a happy medium, and I suspect many teams are closer to 'medium' than they would like to believe.


On-topic:


Pittsburgh's incidents are embarrassing and a darn shame. Some of my friends on a certain local team have experienced the same kind of ostracism, at last year's Nationals no less. ("How could a bunch of high school girls put together a bot that successful?" when I would love to recruit some of them for my old team.) I was shocked when I heard about it--I had no idea that kind of thing was going on, and if I see it in the future I'll try to step in.


I disagree with OP's emphasis on 'professionalism', primarily for the same reason I disagree with an emphasis on 'tolerance'--tolerating something still implies that the tolerated thing is bad. Taking the 'gracious' out of 'professionalism' would solve very little, after all.
Unfortunately I don't have a better replacement in mind yet, making this criticism pointless (don't criticize until you have a solution, right?); I will continue to think about it (probably after Finals are over this quarter) and try to post something more constructive later.

[BandChick]

I want to restate that this negativity is NOT in FIRST just about who built the robot (student, mentor, student/mentor). It exists in many other aspects of FIRST. This discussion has become about the disparity of resources between "powerhouse" and "other" teams, but that isn't what John's point is about. It's about correcting the behavior, and 1114 is just his example.

If it helps, I'll provide another example.
This year in NJ, 1089 was fortunate enough to finish in the Top 8. We had been scouted by several teams, and many more stopped by our pit both to lobby for us to pick them, and some to discuss picking us. When it came time for alliance selections, we knew the higher-seeded 2180 had intentions to pick us. BUT (while we have a great relationship with them) we also knew that the best alliance for our team did not include them. Politely, my alliance captain on the field declined the offer - and got booed for it.

We were lucky, however, to have Dave Lavery there doing alliance selections over the mic. He quickly explained that it was completely within our rights to choose to decline for any number of reasons, hushed the teams, then announced us as the #6 seed, citing "Well, now we know why they declined." My student was already upset about having to decline 2180, and when he left the field with our alliance, he was clearly bothered by the crowd's reaction.

It wasn't the only incident we experienced in NJ this year, and we are certainly not a powerhouse team (yet). Several students on another team were accusing our team of "not deserving to be there" and "not building a good enough robot to be where we were seeded." Now, this didn't happen directly to our faces, but just a few rows behind us. The problem WAS addressed by the mentors on that team, and for that I thank them.

What I want to stress is that this can happen to ANY team in FIRST, and it shouldn't.

[XaulZan11]

I can understand how people/teams 'hate' the elite teams. Me and my team's rookie year was 2006. At both our events that year were on the 8th and 7th alliance, and got absolutely killed by 111 in the first round of each event. We had no chance at coming close to beating 111, who went on to win each event. After the events and seeing a polished, professional robot, a huge team with a ton adult mentors on the field accepting their awards and Raul yelling at the drive team, it was easy to say "yeah, 111 has Motorola build their robot for them". I really felt Wildstang cheated. Thankfully, is not really my personality to boo or do things similar to what happened at Pittsburgh. Obviously, I don't feel that way now (even after they absolutely dominated Wisconsin again this year). I wish I knew when and what made my opinion change.

Walking back to the pit after Saturday's award ceremony this weekend a student from a team I respect and 'gets it', said something like Wildstang should feel ashamed and didn't deserve to win because no students touched their robot. I said something like, "nah, I'm not sure I agree with that, I'm sure their students put a ton of effort in." After reading this thread, I wish I would have taken a stronger stance and encouraged him to talk to their students about their robot. I do agree its up to the experienced teams, mentors and students to squash any of these negative thoughts and actions.


Teams like 111 and 1114 are what makes FIRST special. They provide an unthinkable amount of inspiration. Without 111, 71, 70 and 494, who were the best teams at my first events, I'm not sure I would be as involved in FIRST as I am right now. They continue to inspire and motivate 1732 to improve. After watching 111 this weekend, we are determined to improve to get to their level. Thanks 111, 1114 and all the other elite teams that inspire and push teams to improve.