Please read R17

[Paul Copioli]

Ken & John,

I agree with the intent that both of you are trying to get at, but by not being directly associated with teams this year, you are both not really qualified to monopolize this discussion. Believe me, it is entertaining, but you are detracting from the point.

Rule R17 actually goes against the "students working with mentors" idea. We lost 5 of our 10 hours due to the time constraints put on all of us. Now, our team did meet, but there wasn't much inspiring going on. Unless you call pegging me with more darn poof balls exciting.

Can we please get back to R17? If we can get FIRST to slightly modify the rule for after week 1, that would be fantastic. My ideal, "10 hours, starting Saturday at 5:00pm and ending Thursday at 8:00am. Use them anyway you want them."

-Paul

*Note: For those of you that don't know, John is one of my closest friends in FIRST; but I still had to call him out about not working with a team this year .....

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Can we please get back to R17? If we can get FIRST to slightly modify the rule for after week 1, that would be fantastic. My ideal, "10 hours, starting Saturday at 5:00pm and ending Thursday at 8:00am. Use them anyway you want them."

Well, it's not quite what you wanted, but it's better:

http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=734

You're still only getting two five-hour windows, but at least they can now be on a Saturday, which most folks are used to not having during the season anyway. ( )

For all it's worth,

Billfred

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Ken & John,

I agree with the intent that both of you are trying to get at, but by not being directly associated with teams this year, you are both not really qualified to monopolize this discussion. Believe me, it is entertaining, but you are detracting from the point.

I'm sorry for causing a distraction in this thread, for those interested: I split the tangent-discussion into this thread. I realized early on that this was a tangent, and should be discussed elsewhere, but got caught up in the discussion.

Sorry again.

-JV

So... new clarification/change on R17... good enough?

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by JVN

So... new clarification/change on R17... good enough?

Good direction - at least it gives us Saturdays back. Our primary programming mentor is only available on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings.

But there's work to be done for next year's rule. Paul promises some post-competition comments, which I look forward to seeing. I will just say now that FIRST has to define what their purpose is in limiting post-ship modifications. Once that purpose is defined, the mechanism of implementing it will become apparent, as will how the rule should read.

If the intent is to allow teams 10 hours per week, why not just say that? Does it matter if it is divided into two periods of 5 hours, or 3 periods of 3, 3, and 4 hours? We don't want to get ridiculous with it, using a chess timer to or timeclock to check in and check out each individual minute. Just come up with a way to have more flexibility.

I don't want a continuous Fix-It Window. But I don't want to be out of technical compliance with a rule simply because our schedule doesn't fit the schedule of every other team in the country, while still meeting the spirit of the rule.

[Steve W]

Bringing this thread back to life to see if Paul will now make his points known.