Glad I have more than six weeks with you.
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Unread 03-05-2013, 13:57
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by Chris Hibner View Post
I don't see the point. Teams competing in different weeks aren't competing against each other, unless there's some weird time warp that allows that in the Pacific Northwest .

The qualification system is still based on how you do in the event you attend. OPR (which improves every week) is not a qualifier for the world championship.
In a district system where district Championship attendance is predicated upon points earned through competition, though, isn't it plausible that a team competing in week 1 and week 6 is at a disadvantage to a team competing in week 5 and week 6?

The total time spent on the robot may be the same, but the functional state of the robot may be quite different between the former and latter at their first event. In other words, while team A has 7 weeks before they have to compete for the first time, team B has 11 weeks. Our robot would certainly perform better after 11 weeks of work than it does after 7.

I guess, if you presume that everyone is equally handicapped at 7 weeks, it makes no difference. I think our current experience shows us that certain teams do MUCH more in 6 or 7 weeks than others. So, in the end, the teams are appreciably better today would be appreciably better without a stop-build day, but everyone gets better overall. I suppose that makes sense.

Okay, I concede. But I still might die if I have to do for another six weeks.
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Unread 03-05-2013, 14:00
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by Madison View Post
Our robot would certainly perform better after 11 weeks of work than it does after 7.
But wouldn't that be true also of the robots you would be competing against at that event?
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Unread 03-05-2013, 14:06
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

Oh my heavens, we need to keep the 6-week deadline and if anything, get ride of the 30 lbs of fabbed parts rule. If I remember right, there was a time, you couldn't bring any fabricated parts to a competition, now teams can slap on a whole new shooter or intake at a competition.

Mentor burnout is a serious issue and I know for me personally, extending the build times will overwork our volunteers and myself. When we are overworked, we won't be volunteering at competitions, volunteering for community outreach events, etc. This is bad for FIRST!

Keep the 6 weeks and modify the fabricated components weight limit... (maybe 15 lbs?)
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Unread 03-05-2013, 14:06
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by Madison View Post
In a district system where district Championship attendance is predicated upon points earned through competition, though, isn't it plausible that a team competing in week 1 and week 6 is at a disadvantage to a team competing in week 5 and week 6?

The total time spent on the robot may be the same, but the functional state of the robot may be quite different between the former and latter at their first event. In other words, while team A has 7 weeks before they have to compete for the first time, team B has 11 weeks. Our robot would certainly perform better after 11 weeks of work than it does after 7.
No it's not a disadvantage, because everyone competiting in week 1 events have all had 7 weeks at that point. Everyone in the week 5 events have had 11 weeks, etc. In other words, your robot may have gotten better from week 1 to week 5, but so has everyone else's robot so the comptition around you is better. Once again, you're not competing against a set standard, you're competing against the other teams at that competition who have all had the same amount of time.

I'm actually going to advocate that the 6 week limit is a DISADVANTAGE to teams that compete late, especially in the district system.

Take team A who decides to attend events on weeks 4 and 6. With the current system, team A will have trouble going up against the 30+ teams at that event that have already competed in one event and have already had one event worth of refinement, practice, and fix-it windows. Team A is at a big disadvantage with the 6 week window. This is one of the reasons why we never schedule our first event after week 2.
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Unread 03-05-2013, 13:52
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

I'm against extending the build season, I can guarantee it would lead to more late build sessions for my teams. I am already stretched thin for 6 weeks and my college hates the fact I miss so many days of class (I still keep my grades up). If it were changed to an 8 or 9 week build season I simply would not be able to be a mentor in my current capacity.

More build time = more days missed of class/work
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Unread 03-05-2013, 13:54
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by Madison View Post
Are folks advocating an extended build season (e.g. 9 weeks) or the elimination of a stop-build deadline altogether?

If the latter, what would you recommend to minimize the advantage a team competing late in the season has over someone who, perhaps necessarily, competes in week 1? Would you attempt to minimize the advantage at all?

We meet 3 times a week during build; twice during the work week and on Saturdays. Later in the season, we meet more frequently as required. I'm pretty well ready to die after 6 weeks now; I can see how making the time allowed longer could help, but I also see where it wouldn't make much difference and the pain would only be prolonged.
My opinion...get rid of it altogether...

What advantage does a team competing in week 5 have over a team competing in week 1? All the teams competing in week 1 compete with other teams competing in week 1...and then 2, 3, etc...

Are you saying that a team in week 5 will wait until the week 1 districts/regionals and then copy the best designs?

Wow...I feel like EricH today...I think this is the most I've ever posted in one day...
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Unread 03-05-2013, 14:43
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Are you saying that a team in week 5 will wait until the week 1 districts/regionals and then copy the best designs?
Wasn't it 469 that used to have a reputation (c. 2005?) for making big changes at their first event? If so, were those changes independent of what happened in week 1?
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Unread 03-05-2013, 14:57
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by Tristan Lall View Post
Wasn't it 469 that used to have a reputation (c. 2005?) for making big changes at their first event? If so, were those changes independent of what happened in week 1?
Granted 2005 was before my time with 469... Do we make changes? Yes. Are they sometimes big? Yes. Do they sometimes resemble other good designs (like 1114's arm in 2007 because ours sucked)? Very occasionally. But most of the time the changes were because we weren't really done at our first event... In fact the running joke/motto on the team was "We'll just finish it on Thursday at our first event..."

In 2008 we wanted to "shoot the ball" but thought it would be deemed illegal. After we won Detroit and saw 27's awesome robot and how much fun and cool it was, we spent the next day ripping our arm off our practice bot to make a kicker...because it was sooooo cool to score that way. The students wanted to put in the time. The mentors did too. So we did.

I think that was the last season of "big changes" other than minibot deployer in 2011...again...233 found such a cool way to launch those suckers...
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Unread 04-05-2013, 16:36
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by nuggetsyl View Post
Even if a team coppied a design, the real question would be did they learn something? Reverse engineering is not always that simple.

It's possible to do this now even with the with-holding allowance. You don't need to take your robot home in order to do it. In 2011, my old team (2079) built an elevator that didn't run smoothly and we had trouble calibrating it. We took the 35 pound with-holding allowance (I think it was 35) and built a completely new 4-bar linkage manipulator lightly based off of the design from 148 that we were heavily inspired by (our linkage used box tubing, but the dynamics of the system were similar). I still question myself as to whether this was the right thing to do, but we learned a lot along the way, and it made our competitive season more successful.

Long story short, even if you can't take your robot home, it's still possible to make drastic iterations that can be influenced by successes of other teams.

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Unread 03-05-2013, 14:55
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

For our team, the "stop build" day was last Saturday. We basically work 100% until we are eliminated. Having to build and maintain a practice robot costs us 2x and increases our workload by a significant amount. At each competition there is a massive push and stress to update the bagged robot to the current state. How nice would it be to show up to the competition and be ready to go?

There are teams that stop building at 6-weeks and their mentors get a break. I get it and respect it. However, without a stop build day your season can still be 6 weeks long... just go to a week 1 event and your done (maybe FIRST could even move it up a week). Right now, if you go to a week 5 event you will be competing against teams that have worked for 11 weeks... the stop build day accomplished nothing.

For our team, removing the 6-week stop build day would not "extend" the build season at all... rather it would reduce cost and mentor burnout.
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Unread 04-05-2013, 02:13
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

The 6 week cap definitely puts a great deal of pressure on teams, since it is such a short amount of time to build a great, efficient working robot. But, I think it is helpful in some ways. It teaches members that there are certain deadlines, whether they are short or long, that must be met. And, this is quite true in real life. Essentially, I think it teaches us to make a well organized, balanced schedule to plan out how to go about building a good robot. Really, in a way, it sorts out the teams that are really dedicated to doing well during competition. Typically, the best teams are the ones with the best planning. Ultimately, it prepares us to deal with the sometimes ludicrous deadlines that are sent our way in college, and after college.
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Unread 06-05-2013, 18:16
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

I disagree with eliminating the six week build season, the only thing I could see happening is that addition of an additional week. The whole idea of having six weeks is to prepare the students for life and real world applications, where there are strict deadlines that must be met.

I also suffer from burnout towards the end of the season both as a student and a mentor this past year. I can't even count the amount of hours I've spent on robotics in high school and university but getting rid of the time limit to build the robot removes on of the learning points that FIRST created. The students need to learn to meet deadlines, even in high school.

To prove that it should not be problem to build the robot and test before the end of the six weeks take into account that us Canadian teams have to deal with exams during week 3 or 4 depending on the year, which makes all of us lose at least 4 days of build season. Even with this barrier Canada has been able to produce 2 world champions and some of the biggest powerhouse teams in FIRST.
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Unread 06-05-2013, 18:21
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Even with this barrier Canada has been able to produce 2 world champions and some of the biggest powerhouse teams in FIRST.
Do you think they stopped working after 6 weeks?
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Unread 07-05-2013, 00:14
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by Irwin772 View Post
To prove that it should not be problem to build the robot and test before the end of the six weeks take into account that us Canadian teams have to deal with exams during week 3 or 4 depending on the year, which makes all of us lose at least 4 days of build season. Even with this barrier Canada has been able to produce 2 world champions and some of the biggest powerhouse teams in FIRST.
FYI - Canadians aren't the only ones having to deal with exams during the build season. Our school, and perhaps many others, have finals in week 2 which is pretty damaging to the schedule, basically knocks out a full week for many of the students.
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Unread 07-05-2013, 00:38
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

I dislike the fact that because there are really no limits on working after stop build day, we invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to build an identical practice robot, when we could much more easily (but not currently 'legally') have only one robot and no bag. We are spending all this time and money to because we are required to put a few mils of plastic between ourselves and something we can just make two of and continue development on. In that sense, the bagging is absurd. But, it does have it's benefits, as indicated by numerous others previously.

Anyhow, consider this mentor burnt to a crisp. FRC is becoming a competition of which team has more experienced people who can sideline the greatest percentages of their lives for the greatest amount of time. It's a battle of who can sacrifice the most, and it's not healthy. It's tough to keep up.

I wouldn't mind seeing something imposed that said "FRC teams may only meet a maximum of 6 days per week, and may elect which day per week they choose as their non-work day. On the non-work day, team members may not design, fabricate, assemble, procure, or program any piece of the robot, or take part in any activities directly related to FIRST Robotics." Of course it's not enforceable, and teams would find a way to bend the rule, but it would be nice to go home for even just one day per week. Come to think of it, this isn't really any less enforceable than bagging, which is honor system anyhow. FIRST HQ, I haven't wished much of you, but for 2014, my wish is to make us go home once in a while. Thoughts?
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