to get back on topic, I would like to show my support for this letter. improvements have been made communicating with the community about recent changes, but more communication is needed about the future plans of FIRST.
I figure that I’m probably just echoing the crowd here, but you did a phenomenal job of making your points clear without appearing confrontational.
Congrats to all involved!
First of all, the letter not only makes some good points, but also makes them in a very GP manner.
I express my support for the letter and appreciation to those who took the time to put it together. Writing a letter by committee is never easy, but this one clearly resonates with the FIRST mentor/coach/teacher community.
I think the idea of “we support you, but let us help you” is an important one. Had the FIRST board listented to the feedback on VEX and FTC, we might have 50+ FVC teams competing in BC instead of 6 FTC teams and 40+ VEX teams.
Jason
Whenever it is available, will the response from FIRST be made public as well? I’d love to see the reaction.
Succinct was never my forte but here’s what I came up with:
I accepted the challenge of communicating this issue to FIRST. I felt it would be too difficult and yield essentially the same result if more people were to be involved, so it was kept small. It was exposed for comment and is far better than what was originally developed because of those comments and edits.
I thought long and hard about posting this even though we started the effort with that intent. In the end I did post it (obviously). My purpose for posting it was to make the larger CD community aware that such a request was being made. A secondary reason was to help ‘push’ the issue with FIRST a little by making it ‘public’ - a mild form of peer pressure. The last reason for posting it was to demonstrate to students that one can make their views known to others without intimidation, demands and the negativity that goes with all that.
I will most certainly share all responses received, if appropriate. However, please carefully note I did not ask for any response; instead I asked for a specific action. I do not expect that action to be taken any time before the end of next season, simply because FIRST has certain priorities that have more critical deadlines, and what was requested is not something that can be created with little effort.
Thanks for posting Don and your second and third paragraphs are succinct enough for me.
I appreciate you posting your intent to inform others while also wanting to take the opportunity to model means of requesting follow up or action in a GP manner via your letter.
I get tired of seeing pile on threads of bashing this that or the other and didn’t want to see another thread go that direction. Others who post should take into consideration your intentions and follow suit.
APS
I’m not sure exactly how anyone could disagree with this.
There is no suggested change in FIRST’s planned actions: it is the equivalent to a Freedom-of-Information-Act request. I.e.: tell us what you you’re doing, and what you are planning.
I’m sure any number of teams could hold up example of where forward-planning information would have been very helpful. Purchasing decisions are usually the most affected by that information: for instance a team who runs out and purchases expensive portable machine tools for use at matches might be very disgruntled to discover that FIRST is considering rules changes that have made those tools illegal to bring to events (which did occur).
You have my full support.
FIRST mandates on two forum posts a week for Beta testing teams to keep them in constant communication with the community. Perhaps they should hold themselves to a similar plan.
That is rather the point from my perspective.
I’ve been involved in establishing non-profit organizations and sitting on boards for several years. Part of that involvement is establishing long term and short term goals and building those into the business plan and the development of the organization. It is also an area that attracts support, sponsorship, and attention because the organization looks forward, outward, and with optimism towards the future while at the same time, having a realistic course of action in place.
If the goals/plans are impacted by economic changes then those can be addressed as needed while keeping the organization on track.
I think we can safely assume the FIRST staff has our best interests at heart and seeks to promote the FIRST principles and GP. As with any organization, sometimes the immediate tasks tend to draw the most effort, especially with the economic/business climate these days.
A 5 year, 10 Year, etc, plan is a great concept, but with FIRST, it would be by nature a basis for change. Technology is evolving faster than each competition cycle with new innovations making the current robot systems almost obsolete before they hit the floor.
I believe the answer should be to expect change, expect adaptation to new technologies, expect to think ahead and approach each season lightly without major specific tech investments.
Science is sometimes doing more with less with the emphasis on reasoning and problem solving. The best investment we can make is in our students and their capabilities to reason and solve problems, structure our teams with change and progress in mind, and prepare for what’s next.
Thanks for the letter.
See you all in 2010
Yeah, that’s true, and for tech issues I’m sure people would give FIRST lenience in this manner. But stuff like the control system change, FiM implementation, etc. aren’t really things that should be changing so rapidly that it’s worthless to tell anyone outside of FIRST in advance.
I believe the answer should be to expect change, expect adaptation to new technologies, expect to think ahead and approach each season lightly without major specific tech investments.
Was I not supposed to make a major investment in Vex parts for FVC? There’s no way I could have gotten around that. Yet FIRST discontinues its use not a year after I spent thousands on them.
I think non-tech investments often get wasted when FIRST makes a sudden change in direction without advance warning. The many Vex kits purchased aren’t as much of an issue as the many school programs that lost their relevance to FIRST when FVC became FTC. That single event cost FIRST a lot of goodwill among mentors and sponsors. To ask for something like that not to happen again seems reasonable to me.
Expecting change is fine, I don’t think that anyone wants FIRST to tell us exactly what it will do in 5 yrs time and for us to hold them to that. That would be a disaster. Things do change and we need to realize that. The aim here, as far as I can tell, is to see where FIRST is planning on going. The example that is mentioned a lot is the FTC/FVC debacle. Knowing ahead of time that FVC was only temporary and would be replaced with an entirely new system within 5 years would have saved teams a lot of money. The fact that FIRST switched gears rapidly and for no obvious (to us) reason (I am not speculating on a reason here) ticked a lot of people off.
No one wants detailed plans and finalized budgets for 5 and 10 years out, we are asking for vision, goals, and budget proposals so we know where they are heading. Meaning, something a little more attainable and measurable than the general goals of FIRST. Can these goals change based on the environment? OF COURSE, it would be foolish not to. Should they be changed because FIRST wants to please a new sponsor? (hypothetical situation, not saying it would ever happen) Heavens no! We just want to know if FiM will continue for the next 5 years, can we plan on it for budgeting next year? Right now we don’t really have methods for FIRST to communicate this. Bill’s Blog is a wonderful step in the right direction, I do believe FIRST is trying to become more transparent. I also believe this letter should help to communicate that the community (or at least a subset of the community represented by these mentors) believe that FIRST needs to take these steps.
Actually, it is wise to work with 3 year and 5 year strategic and budget projections and planning, Andrew. A large part of my job has to do with the 3 year planning and budget projections.
Just a thought.
Point taken, I will go back and reword that part to more accurately say what I mean. Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew. This is what can happen when bean counters read ChiefDelphi. 
We’re building robots for a high school competition, not 45 nanometer multi-core processors for Intel.
The PIC-based IFI control system was used more or less unchanged for five years (2004 through 2008). Based upon the current control system, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re still using more or less the same hardware well into the 2010s decade.
It’s cheaper for us to stay well away from the bleeding edge, and high school students still get inspired either way.
Expecting change is fine, I don’t think that anyone wants FIRST to tell us exactly what it will do in 5 yrs time and for us to hold them to that. That would be a disaster. Things do change and we need to realize that. The aim here, as far as I can tell, is to see where FIRST is planning on going. The example that is mentioned a lot is the FTC/FVC debacle. Knowing ahead of time that FVC was only temporary and would be replaced with an entirely new system within 5 years would have saved teams a lot of money.
I thought that it was made readily evident the change could happen in that the original program was a pilot.
MI pilot and Israel Regional pilot come to mind. They worked, and are still going. That’s not exactly the same as the FTC pilot seasons.
I think it’s questionable whether or not they do have our best interests at heart.
If their goal is rapid expansion as fast as possible with no regards to sustainability that is not in the best interests of the current teams.
We don’t know what their plan is. Their actions seem to say that maybe there might kinda sorta be a plan that they may or may not be referring to from time to time. But we have no idea what that is. If we knew it would help everyone to better direct their efforts to either support that plan, or get out of Dodge. Especially since FIRST is so volunteer driven.
I first became aware of a pending change away from the VEX platform in FTC when the name was changed from FVC to FTC. By that point we had already invested several thousand dollars into VEX kits and components.
VEX and Tetrix parts have a longer “investment timeline” than most FRC parts do, as they are intended to be re-used from year-to-year. That is one of the beautiful things about the system… the cost can be amortized over several years of competition. In fact… they kind of have to be in order to make them a good investment of scarce educational funding.
IFI has demonstrated how having a long term plan to gradually transition from one technology to another can allow teams and schools to plan for, and budget for, changes and improvements. They have been clear about what technologies are under development and made it possible for teams to do incremental upgrades. Not only that… but IFI appears to be going to great pains to make sure that their technology advancements actually work before releasing them for sale and competition. For instance we have known that wi-fi was on its way for well over a year, and have just purchased two Wi-Fi upgrades to transition two of our five VEX kits from crystals to the VEXNET system. Next year, I hope to purchase three more upgrades… but I’ll probably hold off purchasing a new kit until the new controller is available.
FIRST’s idea of a long term strategy was announcing “Your equipment might be obsolete next year.” No transition plan, no gradual upgrade path… not even a description of what the new technology was going to be. That made it pretty difficult to plan or budget for the future. It also made it difficult to encourage new teams to sign up… in fact we held off recuiting rookie FTC teams in BC that year because we really didn’t know what the future would hold for them. (Turns out the future was quite rosy… but as VRC teams!)
Generally the FIRST directors do a really good job, and I’m willing to believe that they thought they had been sufficiently transparent – I might have, too, had I been in their shoes – but that is why I think it was a good idea to politely ask for them to try just a bit harder at sharing their plans and vision for the future of FRC, FTC and FLL.
Jason