Multiples 2007

[Rich Kressly]

sighhhhhhhhhhhh. Much of what I read in this thread is respectful, but there's an undertone that needs to be addressed.

Judging or evaluating ANYTHING from a distance is dangerous. Even for those who know team members well on other teams. Anything that keeps students, mentors, and teams in FIRST is a good thing. What works for my team, might not work for yours ... yadda, yadda ...

Remember why FIRST exists, folks. Stay focused on the mission of changing the culture. Putting people in a position of explaining/defending a team choice on how to do business makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. All of these other details are wasted thought and energy. It's one thing to want to learn from other teams, but that is not what's happening here.

Remember, take what you know and believe and value from being a part of competitive events in the popular culture and throw those away. No, this isn't easy for any of us. I'm a lifetime jock and have coached multiple sports for nearly a decade where it was more about winning than I ever cared to admit. However, this is what our founder, the national advisors, and the board of directors ask of us. Without trying to sound harsh, it's time to get on board with that notion and live it all of the time, on purpose, for a reason. And, no, spending your time evaluating whether or not someone ELSE has it right isn't what I mean. For those who haven't read it, I believe I covered my thoughts on Gracious Professionalism here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...74&postcount=1

Every time you show up at a FIRST event you should notice the PEOPLE and say to yourself, "Oh, wow. Look at all of these people involved in FIRST. I wonder what positive difference FIRST makes in each of their lives. Maybe I'll go ask them all over the course of the next three days. Oh, yeah, there are some robots here too."

Until we learn to celebrate our differences with great vigor in an earnest way, we won't accomplish what we're supposed to get done. If the average American (sorry folks from elsewhere, I don't know the numbers for you) lives to the age of 75, that's 3900 weeks Americans have to live. I've got about 1820 weeks left in my life, how about you? How do you want to use the little time you have left?

Namaste.

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by LindsayKnowlton

Well, I might as well tell my opinion on this issue....

That's a lot of harsh words coming from somebody with no first hand experience working with the collaborative group, and little experience with the robot build team.

To 515 and 1447 - I'm proud to have worked with your teams this season. If our three robots don't run in a single match all season, I'll still be proud to have worked with you, because you're just that great. I hope that the experience has been as good for you, both personally and as a team, as I feel it has been for our team (whether our students have recognized it yet or not). Not only do I have pride in my team, but in both of yours as well, and in the achievements that our teams have made together. I also would like to apologize on behalf of anyone who may have ever made you feel, in any way shape or form, unwelcome.

To the Niagra FIRST bunch - Having experienced a collaborative build season, I'm amazed at what your teams accomplished.

As far as the Chairman's Award goes, we make the decisions we do because we think that it will benefit the FIRST community, or the community at large, while making our team as a whole a more inspirational experience, and through this process we strive to be the best team. When we are judged as the best team we'll win the Chairman's award. We didn't enter into a collaboration because it would "look good" on our award. For that matter, it wasn't to look good to the FIRST community (I doubt anyone would enter into such a publicly contested arrangement to look good), or to be more competitive either.

Another misconception appears to be that collaboration is easy, or taking the easy way out. I assure you that it was not easy. In all my years on this team I can't recall a year where we worked as hard as a team (or in this case, three teams) as we did this year. I can also assure you that there is a strong fundraising effort, and that building identical robots had little to do with saving money. Perhaps we just didn't organize it right, but there's probably little cost difference between what we spent and what it would have cost to build three different robots. There was also no "copying." From the beginning we worked as one group to design one robot and build three of them.

I'm proud that my team is part of a "triplicy." I think that the experience forged bonds between both teams and people from different backgrounds, who otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to interact, while maximizing our resources to spread the message of FIRST. One aspect of a successful season is knowing the limits of your resources and being able to not completely spread everything to thin. Overtaxing the resources leads to burnout, and that's one thing that does not lead to a healthy sustainable team.

I don't mean to say that collaboration is a perfect solution, because of course it's stressful, but I have yet to see a FIRST team (whether they are part of a collaboration or not) in which everything is perfect. One of the wonderful things about FIRST is the diversity among how teams are run and operated, and I think collaboration (identical robots or not) is one of the many effective methods.

~Allison K

[miketwalker]

I can say that with 1902 and 1369, the collaboration was mutually beneficial. Both teams had quite low budgets and time limitations with college mentor classes. We still built 1902's robot in Dan's garage, we still built the majority of it with hand tools. This year's game required an autonomous that took several days to code and in doing a collaboration permitted the first robot to be done early for programming. To say that 1902 was just collaborating for an ungracious reason would be silly. I can say that I personally have spent more time with 1390 then 1902 this year, and I know that we have worked with the majority of the Orlando-area teams in one form or another helping their programs. 1902 has also worked on securing funds to help sponsor all the teams in the local area. The code that was developed for this collaboration has been taken in pseudo-code bits and shared with local teams in need of help.

In response to Tom's comment, I know that 1369 and 1902 both built their own robots. Sometimes 1369 would put extra resources into one area (for example, the drive base assembly) while we worked on something else (in this same example, the arm assembly). Neither team handed a robot to another team, not in any way. The photo of the 2 robots taken together was the only day I ever saw the 2 robots in the same room in fact. 1369 came to Orlando to work in Dan's garage on a day where the school couldn't allow them to work and both teams made a full day out of it. Several students drove over from Tampa that day. 1369s programmers also met with 1902s programmers at a house in West Orlando every weekend working in unison on the sensor testing and code design. There is no way we could say that one team built the robot and handed it to the other. 1369 built the base first, learned some lessons and told us before we put ours together. 1902 put the arm on the base first and passed on the lessons to 1369. We learned to use the assembly-line process to our advantage to increase efficiency and make much better use of our time.

Without the collaboration none of that would have been possible, I wouldn't have had the time to donate to 1390, the code wouldn't be in a position to help other teams, and we certainly wouldn't have had the first robot done a week and half early. Veteran teams pairing doesn't have to be a selfish act, and from what I saw this year was one of the best changes 1902 made in it's approach to expand. I think that you will see the Orlando area teams greatly benefited from this approach since we have been able to share our resources even though both 1369 and 1902 had small teams with small budgets.

[Allison K]

Like Smita said above, we have triplets this year. It wasn't so much planned as it just happened. We have a 9th year team, a 7th year team, and a 4th year team. 226 found out on kickoff that the first team needed help, and on the Monday after kickoff that the second one did, and there wasn't much decision making involved. It was either a collaboration or no team at all. Mentoring wasn't a workable option because we didn't have the resources to divide between two teams, much less three. It's been a really great experience for all three teams though, so I'm glad it happened. All three teams worked together to design one robot and build three of them. We didn't assign robots to a team until the day before ship, and even then all students worked on all three robots. I don't have the energy to look up the thread (my brain is still melted from last week) but I recall a conversation about how to help flailing veteran teams. Maybe the veteran collaborations is an example of this issue.

In any case, Larry, Curly, and Moe are looking forward to a reunion at West Michigan!

[mtbkr5]

Originally Posted by mtbkr5

Our Triad was mainly formed to share mentors and resources and most importantly, brains. We are 3 schools within a 5 mile radius in an area that is not a mecca for industrialization. Finding a shop to help us out is not an easy task. By forming this Triad, we shared shop time, held meetings at either school or shops. In the pre-season, we looked at many different drive systems, arm systems, feeder systems, and some students were concered about making the bot water-tight fot the possible water game . 384 has always been ahead of schedule and on time, something that 1086 has had problems with in the past. One of 384's mentors is a Physics teacher at their school and a former Air Force engineer, who gave us the military perspective of the design process which we implimented as a fly-off of which team's design prototype we would use for the competition. One of 540's student's dad owns a fixture corp. who made a full rack to be used by all three teams, designed and made an awesome control board and crate for all three teams. 1086 shared their machine shop and warehouse space with the 384 and 540. Engineers who work with vacuum systems for their paletizing robots everyday, helped the student design team understand air flow and pressure to get max yeild for the Venturi vacuum. This process of colaboration is not about winning, but about the local teams getting a better engineering experience from FIRST.

I posted this in another thread concerning the idea of a colaboration. Its about geting local teams together to better the experience from FIRST.

[JaneYoung]

I can think of reasons for teams to do this, if even once.
- As miketwalker and Allison K have mentioned, helping/aiding each other. Lack of resources can make things like collaboration a successful learning experience for everyone involved.
and
- curiosity - Working together for one robot is fun and challenging enough - teams working together brings new challenges and ways of working together - expanding the pool of talent, resources, opportunities

There has been scattered remarks about veteran teams and their struggles, some dying out. This is something to look at - as FIRST expands creating more rookie teams, we need our veteran teams around to help support the rookies with experience, knowledge, and the can-do attitude to help them get through build and the competitions and to help them understand FIRST. That is why our Hall of Famers are so valued and important.

[JamesBrown]

First off there is a difference between similar designs and collaboration, for example two of the RI teams (1568 and 1350) built very similar robots despite the fact we didn't talk about design or see each others bots until day 43 (at team 69's scrimmage). This was coincidence; there are only a couple of simple and reliable designs, so you will see alot of teams that seem to have some design overlap.
http://joemenassa.com/images/robotic...s/IMG_1598.jpg

Now to the topic at hand, collaboration. If two or three teams work together and all of the hs students get to work with engineers and every one learns something then I see absolutely no problem. FIRST has not stopped collaboration because it doesn't need to, collaboration does not seem to take away from the quality of the experience of the students and mentors involved. I have worked with a couple different teams and have also had the opportunity to see how some other teams work. It is definitely possible to have two or more teams build similar robots without taking away from the experience for any one. I think that more time needs to be spent focusing on the details than on the big picture. The big picture just shows identical robots, but if you read the old posts by Karthik and the other Niagra FIRST people, or you read this year’s posts by any of the collaborating team members then I think you would have a hard time arguing that these teams did not fulfill the goals of FIRST.