I’m back in the office after a week at the lake and am ready to go. Our busy season has begun. We are finalizing contracts for Regional Events (cross your fingers, I’d like to have all the contracts in place earlier this year than last because I know it makes it easier for teams to plan their schedules). Kate is encouraging suppliers to fill the kit (Colin will join her September 13th, not a moment too soon.) And Game Design is now weighing the pros and cons of purchasing game elements (no one seems to have exactly what we want) vs. having them made (pricey and there are the issues of lead time and inventory to consider). We’re also working out the details of expanding the bag & tag program, improving the online registration systems and, like I’ve said before, everything having to do with the FRC season is under review as we look for ways to make FRC bigger and better every year.
We’ve hired Ryan Foley as the new FRC software engineer. He will be working with Matt Pilotte on the field management and scoring systems. Ryan was a student member of FRC team 350 Timberland and a mentor for team 1995 Fatal Error. He has been an inspector and referee at the Granite State, Connecticut and WPI regionals and is actively involved in off season events. He’ll be joining the FRC team next week.
We’ve promoted Derek Foster to FRC Project Engineering Manager. Derek has been a member of the FRC staff since October 2007. You may know him. He’s been the FTA at the Oregon and Colorado Regionals the last few years.
We’re looking for teams to Beta test the 2011 software. A few teams will also be invited to try out some new hardware. An email blast will probably go out today with more details, but if you’re interested, you can find the application online here.
While I was out last Tuesday, NH Senator Jeanne Shaheen & Dean unveiled new legislation to enhance STEM education through the creation of the innovation inspiration school grant program. The press conference was held in FIRST place. My thanks to Casey & Kyle from Team 238 the Cruisin Crusaders and Michael, Emily & Steven from Team 131 C.H.A.O.S. who brought in their robots on short notice to wow the senator and the press. We had International coverage (press crews from Austria, China and Japan were visiting FIRST that day to learn more about our mission), and representatives from JC Penney were in the house. It was quite the busy day. I’ve posted some pictures taken by my staff here.
There is one week left to vote for FIRST in the AMEX Members Project.
Nothing too earth shattering, but I’m glad to see Bill keeping us all up to date on personnel changes at FIRST. The beta test stuff is already covered in a different thread.
“And Game Design is now weighing the pros and cons of purchasing game elements (no one seems to have exactly what we want) vs. having them made (pricey and there are the issues of lead time and inventory to consider).”
If the GDC is having this issue. Will the 1800 teams have the same issue? Will this be a repeat of 2009?
Over the past several years, there have been a lot of teams pushing for a game piece that is both included, and commonly available from local sources. I find it odd to hear they are considering a more complex piece. This news worries me that the game dynamics will focus more on the actual piece than the game play itself.
In any case, I hope that it will be INCLUDED IN THE KIT and that additional pieces will be READILY AVAILABLE FROM DAY 1 and that we don’t hear the “Well it’s similar to a regulation …” Similar != same.
Congrats to Ryan on the new job. I’m sure he will excel greatly in the new position.
As for the game piece, in the volumes that the ~1800 FRC teams use game pieces, I can’t see how it would be overly expensive to have them mass produced. We were paying $10+ a ball for the orbit balls, I hope the game piece doesn’t cost more than that, unless its a super low quantity (ie: trackballs).
And Game Design is now weighing the pros and cons of purchasing game elements (no one seems to have exactly what we want) vs. having them made (pricey and there are the issues of lead time and inventory to consider).
Hmmm, maybe that doesn’t bode well for a trouble-free field control system?
Well, 1800 teams using 5 each (It could be anywhere between 1 and 30 each though) is less than 10,000. For something that’s made of plastic, say a kickoff tote, that is a minuscule number, considering the mold for such an item might be $250k. Then there’s inventory: Let’s say each “thing” costs $25, and they overestimate how many they need, it could cost a bundle for such an issue - and of course there’s an even bigger penalty for underestimating demand.
Custom stuff can get expensive, and volumes of 10k to 50k are still considered “small”.
Don’t forget these other game piece supply issue years…
2010 The real ball was drastically different than commonly available balls, and was in extremely short supply. It caused my team and others to completely change dribbler designs once we had access to the real balls.
2009 Stated already, but we had to call friends and relatives in FRC team sparse areas to get them because there are soo many FRC teams in the Northeast.
2008 Trackball replacements were difficult to get, but at least they gave us one in the kit.
2007 Could only be bought from FIRST but no real issues.
2006 Not in any stores like they were supposed to be, but the manufacturer was able to make and supply them for us.
2005 The home made tetras weighed 2x the competition tetras, but we could make them ourselves.
2004 The company supplying the small balls did not make competition balls available to all teams. The ball they shipped had very different characteristics than the real ball.
2003 We could by the Sterilite bins at Target and Walmart.
I would say difficulty getting the game object has been the rule since I’ve been involved in FRC. As long as they give us at least 1 real game object we can cope with it. I just don’t want to have to jump through hurdles and hoops to be able to get enough game objects to make a working robot design.
