The Growing Gap in FIRST & on CD, and Our Responsibility to Fix It

[Fe_Will]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I think you'll find that many of the mentors who post here have expressed concerns over the way FIRST is growing. Instead of looking to sustainability, they are looking toward growth.

I can't remember who said it, but they said something like "I'd take 1 good, sustainable new team over 100 new ones any day".

Growth for the sake of growth is not progress. It is quantity at the expense of quality. FIRST's #1 goal should be working with new teams to reduce the incredible infant-mortality rate we're seeing among new teams. That doesn't mean handing them money, either, as is so often the "fix" in this day and age.

To me, it means putting certain very strict guidelines in place for starting new teams - guidelines that reinforce and confirm that the team has what it takes - especially in the mentor department - to get it off the ground.

I think it all goes back to what Dean has been saying, "We get what we celebrate." As long as one of the main rubrics for Chairman's is how many FRC, FTC & FLL programs a team starts this trend will continue. Sometimes I wonder how much mentoring really went into a team started this way and how much of it was, "Hey, here's this thing called FRC and its really cool and here's some money, have fun and we'll see you at the regional." I know that the majority of teams only know why a CA team won by the introduction at the awards ceremony. How can we expect to have teams not go out in droves and start teams without the proper guidance and support when all they hear is starting teams = Chairman's?

I was excited when the kickoff speeches were finally geared towards sustainability. I was less than impressed that the tone didn't seem to make it past Saturday afternoon.

Some thought provoking questions:

1. Do you know the name and contact information for your regional director?
2. Do you know the name and contact information for any team within a hour of your location?
3. Can you point out the adult leader for each team at your local regional?
4. Do you know at least two people on your local regional planning committee that aren't your regional director?

I don't think that FIRST is going to get better with a top down solution alone, it is going to take a grass roots effort to strengthen teams. That starts by teams getting off their "islands", self imposed or otherwise.

[rob_c]

I have to agree with there seeming to be a lack of focus upon the core principles of FIRST, especially with GP. I am currently in my forth year in FIRST, and am a founding member of my team. In our infancy, T.A.T. was a team which tried to promote FIRST as an educational experience where students could come in and learn to appreciate how to use science and technology to solve a problem. In our first two years (somehow) we won first and second place at VCU, respectively. In our third year, we fell apart. There has been much debate amongst our team as to why we were not able to perform at our best for lunacy, and why we did so badly. It has taken me this long to finally realize that its because we, as a team, forgot about the true purpose of FIRST.
Now, in this forth year, we are still struggling with what it means to be a part of FIRST. I was one of the candidates selected by my team for the Dean Kamen Award, and one of the things I was asked by the individuals writing the essay was to "define Gracious Professionalism". I responded:

The entire idea behind the concept of gracious professionalism is to promote the idea that a team doesn’t have to win the competition, and be the number one team to win FIRST. Gracious professionalism is, effectively, the means to prove to everyone that all the participants in FIRST are winners in their own right, and that you don’t need to build the best performing robot to be a winner.

It has taken me 4 years to have it sink in, but FIRST is not about being first at competition, it isn't about winning. FIRST glorifies the fact that by having completed the build season, and by showing up at competition, you have already won. I am currently faced with the task of getting this point across to the rest of my team.
The thing that I find most ironic about this whole thing, though, is that in the opening video to kickoff last year, there was a quote being said, I believe by Dean, that "FIRST is much more than just building robots"... I don't know how many other teams are willing to admit to the fact that they have lost sight of what FIRST is about, but I will firmly state that I prefer FIRST as it is meant to be, focusing on inspiring students to be creative, and to approach a difficult problem using their innovation, as well as the resources technology provides for us today; while at the same time being conscious of everyone else around us, and being willing to help everyone else get to the point of being able to accomplish this difficult task.

I feel that some of this may not come through as I had intended it. If you would like to make comments on this, or if you would like to offer advice, I am open to suggestions and criticism - I would ask that you PM me over posting to this thread, though. I am still learning what FIRST is, but I feel that it is my duty as a highly involved student on my team to try to remind my team what we should be focusing on.

Rob.

[Jay Trzaskos]

*****Another Rant, it's a little harsh*****


Just to bring this topic back to light because of something mentioned during Kickoff, here's a quick pop-quiz for all you FIRST-a-holics.

How many teams are actively participating in LOGOMOTION, 4 years later?

Answer: Just over 2000

In what year did FRC reach it's 2000th team?

Answer: 2007

How many rookies are there for the 2011 season?

Answer: Approximately 400


For those of you stumped on the point of this, 1/5 of all teams competing this season are rookies!!!!! STOP the unchecked growth and look towards sustainability for a change.

If you want to put an FRC team in every American high school, more power to you. If you think that it's going to happen in the next 10 years, you're simply being ignorant. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this program expand. But at what cost are we expanding? Just because school X has FRC team 3### for 1-2 years doesn't count as putting a team in that school.

It seems that by trying to reach Dean's goal as quickly as possible we're really just leaving students behind.

[mwtidd]

Originally Posted by Jay Trzaskos

It seems that by trying to reach Dean's goal as quickly as possible we're really just leaving students behind.

It's my personal opinion that we are not reaching Dean's goal as quickly as we should be. If you look at FIRST as an investible business it actually looks fairly poor. The # of teams added every year is fairly static, and in an organization that should benefit from social growth rates, it doesn't.

I think you feel a close connection to FIRST and I do to, but it was a game of numbers. I think there is a small percentage of people who will be impacted by first, and I don't believe that the # of teams has any impact on that %. I actually love to see FIRST separating itself from an agenda, realizing that the less of an agenda it has, the greater impact it will have. Some schools will embrace FIRST, and some won't, but by getting a team into a school for a year or two, you give them the chance.

If FIRST was to check its growth as you are implying it would fall into the chasm(see moore's book crossing the chasm). Right now you see first trying to expand from the early adopters to the early majority. It knows that it will have to abandon some of the early adopters and innovators in order to achieve the goals it wants.

I believe you feel the way you do about FIRST because it had an impact on you, but again it think it was just a #s game and you were one of the few. Growth will allow for more cases like you. I feel that a lot of people get caught up in the religion of FIRST because of the impact it had on them, and believe that's the right impact. I disagree and argue that we should approach FIRST with open eyes and let it have any impact it can, rather than a strong specific impact on a few. The marketing, business, and legal lessons that can be learned from FIRST can shape individuals just as much as the STEM.

[IKE]

To this day, I have never met a student that felt that FIRST was a complete waste of his/her time. I am not saying they don't exist. I just have never met one. I have met a couple thousand students from a couple hundred teams that got something more out of the program than they would playing a video game at home with their friends. I have met teams that only ran for one year. I have met teams that continue to struggle. I have helped with teams that eventually went under (249 Robodawgs).
If you are truly concerned about things. Find some of those 1 year wonders and talk to them about their experience. Was it leadership, was it money, was it ??? Better yet, do a large sample (100+) that way anecdote may actually be considered data, and see what you can do about fixing the conditions that lead to these teams demise.
Even your worst case hypothetical "win at all cost" team, is still likely better (when measured against FIRST ideals of GP, and Inspiriation towards Science and Technology" than they were the year before they had a team.

It is good to be aware of possible issues in the community, but some of it may also be a change in the way you are seeing things.

When you are little and you go to the carnival, everything is magical. All the games look winnable. And the rides look fun. Get a little bit older, and you start to learn that the relativley simple games are actually much more difficult than they seemed, and the rides just don't have the same thrill. Go to the Carnival after getting your ME degree, and you begin to get scared for the people riding "the bullet" as you know that thing has been taken apart and put back together more times than intended and currently has 50% of its original fasteners. Guess what, the carnival didn't change.

Same is often true of your first "real" job, your FIRST Robotics team, or even relationships. Its difficult to see the faults early on. After a while, it is difficult not to focus on the faults.

[mathking]

For the past couple of years, I have been involved with the Central Ohio Robotics Initiative in an attempt to increase the number of teams in Central Ohio involved in FIRST. I have been a mentor for (here you go Dean FIRST team 1014 since 2003. I also coach cross-country and track & field. All of these experiences have given some insights on why it is hard to grow FIRST (I don't think we have anything like unchecked growth, more like growth just barely larger than required to maintain health) and why it is hard to sustain a team.

#1 - The most obvious: It's expensive to run a FIRST team. It is relatively easy to get funding to start a team, but sustaining one past the first year or two gets harder. In the current economy (the one we had for the past few seasons) it is even harder. Though I will say that my own anecdotal evidence suggest that the record corporate profits for the past year or so is starting to turn that around a little bit. We actually got some sizable money from new corporate donors this year. Thanks largely to a large, motivated group of parents and members of our local business community. If you can get about 5 years (plus or minus) into the program you can develop some more sustainable funding. And hopefully enough cash to bridge the gap in tougher times.

#2 - It is intimidating to start a FIRST team. Even for trained engineers the technical aspects can be intimidating. For a lot of teachers it can be downright scary. For a lot of engineers the thought of working with a couple of dozen teenagers is pretty scary. For the most part, it is VERY hard to start a school based team without a teacher being responsible for it. When you do get a teacher over the initial fear, you have to work to keep that teacher involved, because replacements are hard to find. One of the most important things we have been trying to do with CORI is to help support new mentors. I know that if I resign as the track coach, they will find a replacement for me. If my co-adviser and I both resigned from coaching FIRST in the same year, the program might well die.

#3 - Finding mentors can be difficult. Particularly for a teacher already struggling with the thousand and one things needed to get a new team rolling. Once you find mentors, you have to be able to find people with whom you can work. If the adults don't get along things can go downhill quickly. (See #2: If the adult interactions get too stressful it is really hard to convince a teacher that all of the added work, responsibilities and stress are worth it.)

#4 - When the administration of a school or district changes, you never know how much support you are going to get. These kinds of changes happen every few years in most districts. The average tenure of a high school principal is fairly short and the average tenure of a superintendent is only a few years. When the support level changes it is really easy for a program to die.


I think that "team in every school" goal is the right one. In order to make sure that as many kids as possible have the opportunity to participate if they want to, we need to make FIRST ubiquitous. When we get to the point that starting a new school means "I need to hire a football coach, a track coach, a band director, a theater director, a robotics coach, ..." then we will be in the right position. But getting there is a long, hard road.

[Tom Line]

I think teams have a bit of a different opinion on what exactly defines sustainability.

While I've argued against unchecked growth in the past, I've also questioned my beliefs on the issue and come up with some questions that I can't satisfactorily answer.

I think people need to ask themselves: do I believe it's FIRST's responsibility to partially finance teams? In general I'd argue pretty heavily against it. However, when most people say that FIRST needs to help teams be more sustainable, they mean that FIRST needs to either support the teams financially or to lower the entry costs (which amount to the same thing).

That is the crux of the argument for me right now. FIRST offers enough incentives to join the program. If the learning and real world experience isn't enough, and the excitement and competition isn't enough, the scholarships and friendships certainly should be.

FIRST promotes sustainability by sustaining themselves - the parent organization. If someone can suggest a way to promote sustainability among teams that doesn't require FIRST to hand out more money in some way, then I suspect they'd jump onboard.

When FIRST says they want a team in every school, they mean it. If they had funding to make that happen overnight they would. They don't, so it's up to teams to do it themselves. I can't think of any other sport where the parent organization funds the teams. Even in highschool sports, the schools end up financially supporting the parent body, not the other way around.

[Jay Trzaskos]

Originally Posted by lineskier

I think there is a small percentage of people who will be impacted by first, and I don't believe that the # of teams has any impact on that %.

it is a numbers game, so I don't understand how you can say this. Just running through the numbers, every single year a new group of students enters every high school. every year another group of students leaves for college. impacting one set of students at a single school will never have the necessary outcome of changing the social norm,

And as far as FIRST helping to "fund" sustainability, why keep writing to our representatives to help us start more teams when we could be lobbying for state funding of regional competitions. We could be working to cut down the cost of registration, not by having first 'give' teams more money, but by having our states continually invested in our program at a level that reaches all students.

[Boydean]

I think its both a problem with FIRST and with its teams. FIRST, I think, depends heavily on FRC teams to keep other teams going, and if they don't they should.

The best resource for teams is other teams. You see some teams bragging about their team raising $50,000 for one season (this has happened several times at competitions during discussions), but they do little or no out reach to other FRC teams.

Im not trying to point the finger by any means, and I have seen teams effectively 'rescue' other team from going under. I do think though its easier for teams to interact and help each other then it is to try to change the way FIRST approaches the way they run the program.

[Doug G]

I'm so glad to hear feedback and serious criticism from alumni, like Jay. This being the 20th year of FIRST, the seeds have been planted and are really taking some deep roots in many of you. Personally, this is our team's 11th year and I had the most alumni participating than ever, not just last year's graduates, but even those going back to 9 years. They are now engineers, starting their own families and are thinking about how to give back. They were in New Hampshire, with their own team, and with us. This is really important!! Recruiting new blood is one way to change our culture, but as FIRST students grow up, they will expect that the school their kid will go to should have a robotics team. If it doesn't they will know what it takes to get one started. This way of starting teams has much more power than forcing some new teacher (or unwilling parent) to take it on.

From a different perspective, many of the schools in the country, do not have a robotics team. Many have commented, that this is OK, quality over quantity. Hogwash!! Every school should have a robotics team (hopefully FIRST or Vex). Afterall we expect schools to have sports and music programs - the same should be expected for competitive STEM outlets. If this doesn't happen - then I really worry about how our country will survive in the global economy.

Why enlist the political folks? Because this mission, needs a kickstart! Will some teams not survive - unfortunately in this economy, yes. They probably should have started with VEX or FTC - much easier programs to sustain. But I don't think that should deter those efforts. I think the push for FTC is more than ever this year (even though I don't like it). Maybe you could just say it's the 20th anniversary, but I bet it makes for much more sustainable program for many school based teams that can't do FRC.

I hope in the next 20 years, at least half of the schools in the country offer a competitive STEM opportunity for students. I hope they include the ideals of FIRST. I see FRC being a bit elitist, like division 1 sports teams. FTC/VEX being like division 2 sports teams.

Please don't give in to the notion of slowing down growth. Be critical, sure. But take the next step as well.... Be a guest speaker to a team and talk about the ideals you worry are going to get missed. Go to regional planning meetings. Make the next 20 years great.

[Bill_B]

This is a big thread to read for two reasons. First it's sheer size and second by the importance of the topic.

May I suggest a slight wording change to the goal of having an FRC program in every high school? The goal should be to have an FRC program available to every school. We may be overly influenced by the attractiveness of the school system facilities and the already assembled student bodies when considering team formation. Much has already been said here and elsewhere about the volatility of political support. If some of that dependency on the support of elected or appointed officials were to be lessened, I'm sure the sustainability statistics will improve.

Another factor mentioned is team-to-team mentoring. I cannot expand on it here, but I've been thinking for some time that FRC expansion should be a sort of amoeba-like process. By that I mean a new team should have its earliest development while still able to make use of the resources of an already functioning team. Then split off when the "time" is right. This growth model has been working for our planet for a billion years or so. We may be trying to change the culture of celebrating technical success, but we should take the cue for how to do it from Mother Nature, right? I may start a new thread. . - - After build season.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

I cannot expand on it here, but I've been thinking for some time that FRC expansion should be a sort of amoeba-like process. By that I mean a new team should have its earliest development while still able to make use of the resources of an already functioning team. Then split off when the "time" is right.

This sounds suspiciously like the nonprofit I have founded...

[Frenchie461]

Another bit of advice that might help; when anyone new joins robotics, spend an hour or two explaining what first is about, use Kamen's speeches, examples from other years, and how they can be further inspiration, and as always stay graciously professional.

[PayneTrain]

I'm going to use a team 422 has competed against in the last two years at the NJ Regional: Team Overdrive (2753). They are a very stacked, talented, and large team, that went toe-to-toe and beat Veterans in Lunacy and Breakaway, winning in '09 and reaching the semi's in '10. As the emcee reiterated, this team's rookie year was not their first "FIRST" rodeo (heh). This team built upon their success in the Tech Challenge level, then became a very powerful team in FRC.

I don't know about their financial situation, but let's assume they had the drive to be in FIRST, but no money. They wiped the floor in Tech Challenge, building their drive to make a great team, and in that, getting enough sponsorships and memberships to upgrade to FRC.

I think FIRST doesn't push FTC like it should, especially in this shaky financial world. FTC is both a great independent program, and a good gateway into the FRC realm.

[Nawaid Ladak]

Originally Posted by Jay Trzaskos

*****Another Rant, it's a little harsh*****

...

For those of you stumped on the point of this, 1/5 of all teams competing this season are rookies!!!!! STOP the unchecked growth and look towards sustainability for a change.

If you want to put an FRC team in every American high school, more power to you. If you think that it's going to happen in the next 10 years, you're simply being ignorant. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this program expand. But at what cost are we expanding? Just because school X has FRC team 3### for 1-2 years doesn't count as putting a team in that school.

It seems that by trying to reach Dean's goal as quickly as possible we're really just leaving students behind.

I agree with this to an extent. I think its much easier to sustain a team rather than create a new one. Sponsors, teachers, school administration, mentors... at least one of these groups of people would be constant. if your creating a new rookie team, there is a chance your starting from scratch, with no experience from any of the four resources listed above.

You have new groups of students every four years. Just like in College Football. how is Ohio State able to sustain their program and continue to grow while a school like the University of South Florida isn't? (No offense to any fans of the USF Bulls). your going to inspire the same amount of kids in the short and long term. But if you fail to sustain a team and rather create a new team. your discouraging the current students on the veteran team. Take it from me, I've been on two teams that have folded. I was in the very small minority that actually decided to go work with another team.

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I think teams have a bit of a different opinion on what exactly defines sustainability.

While I've argued against unchecked growth in the past, I've also questioned my beliefs on the issue and come up with some questions that I can't satisfactorily answer.

I think people need to ask themselves: do I believe it's FIRST's responsibility to partially finance teams? In general I'd argue pretty heavily against it. However, when most people say that FIRST needs to help teams be more sustainable, they mean that FIRST needs to either support the teams financially or to lower the entry costs (which amount to the same thing).

That is the crux of the argument for me right now. FIRST offers enough incentives to join the program. If the learning and real world experience isn't enough, and the excitement and competition isn't enough, the scholarships and friendships certainly should be.

FIRST promotes sustainability by sustaining themselves - the parent organization. If someone can suggest a way to promote sustainability among teams that doesn't require FIRST to hand out more money in some way, then I suspect they'd jump on board.

Okay, how about this idea. What if FIRST was to charge a "stockpile" fee of $1500 for each rookie team when they register for thei rookie season. That money would become available to teams after their third year and would only be used for paying off a portion of registration. Some sort of system like this would take care of financial duties.

I also think the frcteams@usfirst.org account should send out a mass e-mail to teams that have yet to register two weeks before the registration deadline for veteran teams, and again the day after registration is supposed to close. In the e-mail, urge the teams to contact FIRST if they are having any non-monitary issues, such as finding mentors, sponsors, etc. FIRST can then pass the information down to the teams respective regional director and the operation can resume from there.

I think these ideas make the most sense and wouldn't be that hard to implement.

just my $0.02