Lessons Learned - The Negative

[artdutra04]

Okay, time for some of the negative.

Kit of Parts - FIRST, please give us push-to-connect pneumatic fittings in next year's Kit of Parts again. Seriously, since you didn't give us any this year our team is almost out. If money is an option, have a points system where before Kickoff we can "bid" on what we want in the KoP. Obviously some teams always use some parts while other teams never use them.

Dumb Rules - Every year FIRST creates a rule that every post-season event eliminates or changes in some way due to pretty much nearly unanimous disapproval of the rule. Last year it was G22. This year it was G14. Can we just avoid this all next year and just not have any such rules?

Actually, after being a referee at the VRC competition a few weeks ago, their game rules were all of two pages long. That's it. There was no "we-secretly-want-you-to-build-this-exact-kind-of-robot-rules" that many in this program really dislike. (And there is no denying this was the intent of many of the rules this year, given the limited bumper configurations, mandatory unmodified Rover wheels, trailer attachment, extreme robot size restrictions, etc). Let teams be creative, by please making less rules. I want to see robots that make me say "Wow!" again, as those were the robots that hooked me in this program. Sadly, they are an extremely endangered species nowadays with "stop-lawyering-the-rules!" people striking down all creative out of the box thinking, and I'm worried that students in the program now won't be as amazed and inspired by the winning robots of today as the students of yesterday were.

Why are the rules so complex? It seems there are too many chefs in the kitchen. Perhaps it should be time to ignore some of the lesser chefs, and concentrate on satisfying the majority of the goals from the most important of the chefs. It's sad, but I don't think we'll ever see a game as awesome as 2004 FIRST Frenzy ever again because of the number of chefs.

This is only a partial negative. Districts - From apparent results, they seem to work well in Michigan, and for that I wish them the best of luck. But from my years of experience in FIRST, I've noticed that the attitudes of people within the FIRST community vary region-by-region, and I'm not convinced the district model can properly scale out to the rest of the country/world. In addition, the way points were assigned at the districts seems very biased towards the robot performance and not enough towards the core values of FIRST. The other problem I have with the districts as it currently stands is that it "secularizes" FIRST. By not letting teams from outside the "district" (in this case Michigan) participate in the competition, it cuts down on the diversity of teams one can play against. Now if there was a provision to allow something like 20 teams from outside to compete in each week of competition, this would allow teams the chance to spread out more and compete against a broader base of teams, because as it stands now non-winning teams are screwed if they wish to play against a greater diversity of teams, and it can be disheartening to play against the same dozen teams over and over and constantly keep losing (although winning against the same dozen teams can be as equally boring).

However, there are some aspects of the districts that I believe are good, such as bagging the robot. You know what? Even without district competitions, I would love to have $1000 or even $500 shaved off regional registration just if we agreed to transport the robot there ourselves without the need for a shipping crate. Shipping a 400 pound crate across the state, only to have it return to a warehouse a town over for several weeks, then again get shipped across the state for the Regional seems wasteful.

Originally Posted by BurtGummer

...

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? ...

I hate to harp on the same post as everyone else, but nearly all respect for this post was lost when I read the quoted sentences above.

The issue here is not about the wire color (which obviously does matter, but I'll leave that aside for now), it's about that you admitted you had not read the rule book before the competition. Then you come out and complain about the wiring color? As a tip for future years, take the time on Kickoff Day and fully read through the sections of the manual on The Game, The Robot, and The Arena. Read every rule as if you've never read it before. Don't ever assume anything.

Smokey the Fisher Price motor says only YOU can prevent rule infractions.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

The issue here is not about the wire color (which obviously does matter, but I'll leave that aside for now), it's about that you admitted you had not read the rule book before the competition. Then you come out and complain about the wiring color? As a tip for future years, take the time on Kickoff Day and fully read through the sections of the manual on The Game, The Robot, and The Arena. Read every rule as if you've never read it before. Don't ever assume anything.

Smokey the Fisher Price motor says only YOU can prevent rule infractions.

This is a fantastic point that I don't think enough teams realize. I tend to know the rules inside and out, and we also have one high school student that is in charge of knowing the rules well and keeping track of updates and the Q&A. I feel like this is how many teams work and is a good way to run into trouble. Everyone working on the robot must know the rules.

On 2175 anyone working on the robot must also know the robot and game rules, specifically rules governing the section you are working on. I will pop-quiz kids and hand them a rulebook to sit in the corner and read if they get it wrong. I'm not doing it to punish them or to put them in "timeout" or anything like that. The only way for us to do things right the first time and to make sure our robot complies with the rules is for us to know what the rules are.

[Nawaid Ladak]

allright, let me get to it

1. G14 /// please FIRST, Never again try to cut a teams sucess short. We honestly could have seen a High Score placed this weekend, but you put the best teams on leashes that didn't allow them to perform at full capasity, and make us say... wow

2. Bumper Rules/Rober Wheels etc... Xerox Creativity Award. /// 7, Helux, Power Dumper, Shooter, These were the four designs that i saw most of this weekend. FIRST. please stop making the award about the sponcor (Xerox...copies) and more about what it stands for.... Creativity, bending the envolope, thinking outside the box. Seriously, a robot with a Gyroscope won XCA this year at CMPl.... thast sad

3. Districts /// Ovbiously we saw that this is something that either, FIRST needs to limit, or they need to make everything a district next year. There is no doubt in my mind that the #1 reason there were four MI robots in the finals on Einstein was because of the experance their drivers had accumulated by going to their respective events. Just to give an example, here are the match counts for the four MI teams that were on einstein (these numbers are after championships)

217: 85 Matches Played
67: 87 Matches Played
247: 82 Matches Played
68: 79 Matches Played

here are the totals for the other two teams that were on Einstein

111: 46 Matches Played
971: 32 Matches Played

I see a huge discrpeency there, Im srue you see it as well. Districts either need to be eliminated, or FIRST needs to start making Multi-Regionals affordable for everyone else

4. The Game /// Give the audunce something to cheer about, Someone was right when they said the stands were very quiet during Einstein Finals.

5. Volunteers and Cowd Control /// During Einstein Matches. If your a Volunteer and you were assigned to be on the floor for any of the divisions, I don't see why your not allowed to view the Finals matches from the floor of the GA Dome on the Archimedes/Curie side of the field. The volunteers this year would kick off Voluntters while keeping kids/mentors from other teams (Not the teams on Einstein or the Backups) would be sitting right there. Give volunteers some appreation and let them watch the matches from there instead of watching them from the bleeder seats because they were busy helping out on their respective possision and couldn't get good seats.

6. Sustaining before Growing /// FIRST keeps on telling us to grow teams. What they don't realize is that 40% of all FIRST teams eventually fold. Instead of trying to create mroe teams, try sustaining and satisfying the wants and needs of the teams you already have, try to bring back already folded teams, and THEN try to grow from there

7. Founders Award...NI vs IFI, Patent /// Please FIRST, don't start this mess, don't start a war, because honestly, that what it looks like your trying to do. first you debrand VEX in favor of NXT, and then you give a company thats been helping out with FLL since 2003, instead of a company thats been helping the orginization and it's teams for much longer in FRC.... and now witht he patent, I think FIRST is asking for it.

8. Awards/Finals. If my memory serves me correct. the finals were supposed to end at 6, Why was i sitting in the dome at 6:15 waiting for Finals match 2.... when the MINIMUM number of matches had been played? FIRST needs to work on time management, they give us six weeks to build a robot and fix it windws after (at least up intil last year,) you should be held to the same standards when you give yourself 2 hours to complete the Fnals on Enstein. on a side note, Teams, please don't call timeouts on Einstein, Dean Speaking is your timeout.

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

6. Sustaining before Growing /// FIRST keeps on telling us to grow teams. What they don't realize is that 40% of all FIRST teams eventually fold. Instead of trying to create mroe teams, try sustaining and satisfying the wants and needs of the teams you already have, try to bring back already folded teams, and THEN try to grow from there

FIRST clearly understands the issue of teams folding. They have also stated with abundant regularity that teams need to learn how to build sustainable organizations. Your team is responsible for its financial well being, NOT FIRST.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by ebarker

FIRST clearly understands the issue of teams folding. They have also stated with abundant regularity that teams need to learn how to build sustainable organizations. Your team is responsible for its financial well being, NOT FIRST.

Which doesn't change the fact that the more teams fold, the less often FIRST achieves its goals. Telling soldiers that it's their job to charge machine-gun nests doesn't change the fact that charging machine-gun nests is hard and a lot of soldiers will die trying. Perhaps FIRST needs to change the program so that it doesn't cost $500-2,000 per student per year to be successful? What if there were an exciting STEM robotics program that only cost $150-200 per student, AND allowed more hands-on engineering opportunities for students?

[Carol]

We sat on the far side of Galileo for the finals and closing ceremonies, at the very top, and it was very hard to hear the announcements. It was speculated that perhaps the speakers were aimed for the top tier of seats as these are closed off during the rest of the competitions.

Dave's Top Ten List was shown only on the middle screen and not on the side screens, so we still have no idea what he said (there was a lot of laughter so it must have been good). The flags and equipment blocked our view of the main screen. Will the list be posted somewhere?

There was a closing video that we also didn't see, shown as we were headed out at the end. It would have been nice if they announced that there was going to be one at the very end so we could have stayed in our seats and watched it. (Rumor is that there is a brief shot of our team's Green Man Group in it). Again, will this be posted as well?

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

2. Bumper Rules/Rober Wheels etc... Xerox Creativity Award. /// 7, Helux, Power Dumper, Shooter, These were the four designs that i saw most of this weekend. FIRST. please stop making the award about the sponcor (Xerox...copies) and more about what it stands for.... Creativity, bending the envolope, thinking outside the box. Seriously, a robot with a Gyroscope won XCA this year at CMPl.... thast sad

That's an interesting observation. I noticed that the concentration of helix/power dumper/shooter/7 robots was very high at championships, but at the regionals out West they were not that common. I guess most of the very creative robots just didn't work as well as these four designs, which is why you didn't see nearly as much creativity at Champs. The few, effective desings won the regionals, so they made it to Atlanta.

http://selectric.org/nerds/2009la/

shows the robots at Long Beach, notice the very wide variety of designs! Arizona was the same way, lots of very interesting designs.

[Jeff Pahl]

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

8. Awards/Finals. If my memory serves me correct. the finals were supposed to end at 6, Why was i sitting in the dome at 6:15 waiting for Finals match 2.... when the MINIMUM number of matches had been played? FIRST needs to work on time management, they give us six weeks to build a robot and fix it windws after (at least up intil last year,) you should be held to the same standards when you give yourself 2 hours to complete the Fnals on Enstein. on a side note, Teams, please don't call timeouts on Einstein, Dean Speaking is your timeout.

The timeout was called between the first and second finals matches. It was for a problem that occurred after the first match. It was not something that could have been addressed during any of the previous speakers. Also, you may have noticed that the robots sit on the field during the speakers, making it hard to work on them then. The field personnel were telling the team that they had to have the robot on the field immediately. Their two options at that point were to either call a timeout or to place the backup robot on the field. What would you have done? I know I sure would have called the timeout.

I agree completely with the time management problems on Einstein. However, they are not due to a team needing to call a 6 minute timeout.

FIRST should have something prepared to fill a timeout if necessary. Something besides having the DJ cue up "YMCA".

[Roger]

Originally Posted by Carol

Dave's Top Ten List was shown only on the middle screen and not on the side screens so we still have no idea what he said (there was a lot of laughter so it must have been good). The flags and equipment blocked our view of the main screen. Will the list be posted somewhere?

There was something early Friday morning too, on the video broadcast, when Dave ran thru a list. Was that the same list or a rebroadcast from another year? I'm sure it was amusing, but I guess the "people at home" will never see the photos up on the big screen.

[Tom Line]

I don't like listing just the negatives, so here are the postives too:

Positives:
1. The district system in Michigan was very nice. Though there still some improvements that need to happen in scoring (chairmans being worth 0) and time management (closing pits at 10:00PM & 8PM is insane - teams don't get to enjoy themselves and do things with other teams), we got HUGE bang for our bucks.

Negatives:
1. Judging consistency.
Crab is cool. It's also pretty old in terms of FIRST. It's time to educate the judges about standard FIRST systems so we stop seeing awards given out to teams for the same thing. It's my opinion that every team that made an effective fan this year should have won an award (and we did NOT make one).... but I saw multiple awards at every district I attended that mentioned... CRAB.... this is a personal beef but it's also a microcosm of what we see with judging around the country. With the current judging setup of volunteers, I don't know how you can fix it.

The judges need some better standards to work from. In one district, our presenters were told we needed more planning for future work. When we presented that at States, we got a very chilly reaction because we hadn't done them yet.

Oh - one final comment. Please folks, stop attributing a large part of the Michigan teams' performances to the district structure. 2 of the four teams were in the finals last year, Da Bears have multiple regional wins over the years, 68 has been incredible as well, and I think you'll see through the years that Michigan teams have always done pretty well at Nationals.

[sdcantrell56]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Negatives:
1. Judging consistency.
Crab is cool. It's also pretty old in terms of FIRST. It's time to educate the judges about standard FIRST systems so we stop seeing awards given out to teams for the same thing. It's my opinion that every team that made an effective fan this year should have won an award (and we did NOT make one).... but I saw multiple awards at every district I attended that mentioned... CRAB.... this is a personal beef but it's also a microcosm of what we see with judging around the country. With the current judging setup of volunteers, I don't know how you can fix it.

The judges need some better standards to work from. In one district, our presenters were told we needed more planning for future work. When we presented that at States, we got a very chilly reaction because we hadn't done them yet.

I couldnt agree more about teams winning an award for crab or swerve drivetrains. At both regionals we attended, the same team won a design award for a swerve drivetrain. I completely believe that they had a very good swerve drivetrain, and many teams iterations were not as effective but there was nothing new or unique about there rendition. I think the xerox creativity award should actually award a creative design, not a design that has been around FIRST for at least the last 5 years. I think that the judges should be better versed in what has been done previously to have a better understanding of what is truly unique.

[BurtGummer]

Also, I think there should have been some normal regolith fields to practice on. After we programmed our gyro, we wanted to test it out, but the practice rounds were already over. We didn't want to compete in a practice round anyways, we just wanted to see it on some regolith.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by BurtGummer

Also, I think there should have been some normal regolith fields to practice on. After we programmed our gyro, we wanted to test it out, but the practice rounds were already over. We didn't want to compete in a practice round anyways, we just wanted to see it on some regolith.

There were. If the practice fields were being run as practice rounds, then I think FIRST made the biggest mistake ever. (<G14> not excepted.)

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by EricH

There were. If the practice fields were being run as practice rounds, then I think FIRST made the biggest mistake ever. (<G14> not excepted.)

Yup, to test auton I had to jump on the field, reset it, risk getting hit, and piss off volunteers.

[Alex Cormier]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Yup, to test auton I had to jump on the field, reset it, risk getting hit, and piss off volunteers.

Who said you can't drive the robot back, use the dongle to switch the robot off and on to perform auto mode? numerous teams did this.