2022 Pendik Off-Season Briefing

FIRST General Forum
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Turkish Off-Season events are truly phenomenal and holds an important place in the Turkish FRC Community and its culture. The older ones back in Atasehir were unforgettable experiences personally and, it’s great to see the community is starting to get back on track. It’s been a few days since the Pendik Off-Season ended but it seems that its effects will last. Sending my gratitude to everyone who made this great event possible and thanks for reminding me once again how much I adore FRC. Huge congratulations to all teams who have competed at the event. Very well, here’s my brief report:

First of all, it’s disappointing that most Turkish FRC powerhouses (such as 2905, 3646, 6025, 6429, etc.) don’t attend these events anymore (a special shoutout here goes to 4191 and 6014, thank you!). These kinds of events are a great opportunity for the teams and members to improve themselves. Beyond that, it’s a magnificent chance for the rookie teams to see in person how a successful team operates and ask their questions directly face to face. It’s also important to draw public attention and possible sponsorships to the community. So, a call to our Turkish Regional Chairman’s Award Winners and Chairman’s Award Finalists: I acknowledge your extraordinary efforts to improve the community but there’s still a lot to do!

Unfortunately, even though I spent a whole day at the event, I couldn’t gather enough information from the teams business-wise, but I understand that it was an off-season event and teams are mostly focused on their robots. Still, I expected more because, among 30+ plus teams, only a few of them were prepared for a regional-level business presentation.

Congratulations to 6014 for their well-deserved Chairman’s Award! I cannot describe how much I admired your professional approach. The paper you’ve written and the systematic plan you’ve created for your education-based projects based on it is outstanding. I look forward to seeing you apply this approach to your other projects. Here’s a little tip: It would be fantastic if you could increase and develop the range and details of your outcome metrics!

I’ve also had a chance to catch up with the 7466, a relatively young team with incredible potential and a unique team organization. I’m serious, if you still haven’t checked out their team organization, you should as soon as possible. Their efforts, especially on the disadvantageous groups, are simply incredible. I believe that FIRST has been struggling at reaching children with disabilities, and FIRST events are the most inaccessible events I’ve ever seen. Any attempt to fix this issue is invaluable and I really can’t imagine how much the impact would be if they would be successful. What’s your take on a fully accessible FRC Regional @AlexBurchard, can we make it possible in Turkey?

Also, I’ve got to congratulate 8557 for winning the Engineering Inspiration Award. Any team with a Regional Rookie All-Star is a promising prospect but there is something special about them. Only time will tell!

One other thing is about United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. I’ve seen many teams using these goals as frameworks for their projects or adapting their projects to these goals and it excites me very much. But there’s a huge misunderstanding within the community. These goals also encompass various outcome-oriented targets and indicators. I know these targets and indicators are created by the UN on a global scale and way out of reach for FRC teams. However, still, teams who are using these goals must set their own targets and indicators for sustainable, achievable, and comprehensible success.

Turkish FRC Community’s development is mesmerizing to watch, and I can’t wait for the upcoming season. Let’s charge it up!

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If you have any specific issues, please email me, otherwise, there’s limitations to where we can hold these events, and the venues are what the venues are :man_shrugging: I wish they were better designed with accessibility in mind, but FRC is hard to fit in existing venues as it is, and on top of that, trying to make it accessible is very difficult when the building you’re in isn’t built for any part of what you’re trying to do.

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This is a very cavalier attitude. I know that many countries lack adequate accessibility standards. Is this normal in Turkey for buildings to not be accessible?

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I mean, it’s not like I can show up at a venue with a hammer and nails and fix it myself. In some ways accessibility in Türkiye makes America look barbarian, and in other ways accessibility in America makes Türkiye look barbarian, but most venues aren’t designed well for physically limiting disabilities. We try to do what we can with the buildings we have, I’m not saying we do nothing or anything, but like, I can’t change the physical plant I have to work with. If I know ahead of time I have students with various disabilities, we make every effort we have time to make to make it work for them. I did an insane amount of extra work last year to try to make things work for our deaf team for example. I was sleeping in my office trying to get things ready so there would be visible text as often as possible. I’m not going to say we’re perfect or anything, but we do our best. However at some point we have to be realistic about the physical plant we have. If I was going to design an arena I’d do it very very differently from the ones we use, but we have few buildings available that can be used for FRC scale events, and at that I also have to exercise some financial responsibility - I can’t necessarily afford the ideal venue, even if it existed (which I honestly haven’t seen an ideal venue yet). I wish I wasn’t constrained by the real world, but alas, I am. That’s just a crappy reality.

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