Libby and Marshall both on a show talking about contentious issues? This is a bad idea but I love it. Taking bets now on how high the swear counter goes.
I am really looking forward to what Marshall and Justin have to say about this. I know that many will come to hear the ethics discussion, but the bulk of the show premise was written around the CAW, Bag and Tag, and withholding. I believe that it is really going to be a great discussion so stick around through the entire show.
The boffin students behind closed doors in Zebracorn Labs are working tirelessly as we speak to put together some talking points about the CAW. Here’s a picture of them hard at work:
There were so many great discussion points during this Candidly Speaking program.
**The first I would like to address is the 6 week vs 6+ week build season.
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There are two things to keep in mind while we discuss this.
Robot Competition (Robot Success)
Cultural Influence (CA, EI, etc)
One area that I want all teams to keep in mind is the mentors are the key to most teams’ success. I know this is a HS sport, but like all other HS sports, it is the coaches/mentors that are crucial to a teams continued success. And lets be honest, the teams that cannot afford time (mentor time/dedication) are not watching this program.
My team can afford (time) to compete - no matter if we run more than a 6 week build season with B&T or not. Please remember that many of us already run 2, 4, 6 weeks prior to the build season. If we now allow another 6+ weeks, we are benefitting teams that have a large number of dedicated mentors. However, many of the teams we compete against in the competition as well as in the cultural side just don’t have the same resources.
I look at FRC as a competitive sport akin to Football. Some teams in my state of MN are able to run summer passing camps (akin to our off-season/preseason) for the majority of the summer. Of these teams, most make it to the Section finals or beyond. The others struggle to make it beyond their first round of section play-offs, no matter on how well they did in season.
Short order - I guess what I am saying is that no matter the format, teams that have a highly dedicated, incredibly strong mentor program will always compete no matter the structure of the calendar.
However, the teams that do not have the support (community, resources, sponsors, school-backing, mentors, etc) will be at a larger disadvantage. Essentially I think that we will level the field at the top end, but will increase the gap between the haves and have nots.
Actually, most people think that lower-resource teams will do better with the no-bag build season. Those lower resource teams can’t build a second bot. Keeping their bot out of the bag will pay them bigger dividends than a top tier team who builds a second bot anyway.
Top tier teams like those that use fast-turn-around (like the IFI sheet metal teams) also are able to iterate more quickly. The biggest gains in iteration come early in the process when you can take giant steps. More time for those lower tier teams will help them get some of their bigger iteration steps out of the way.
It may sound like I’m for the 6+ build season, but it actually scares me.
I would say that there’s considerable debate on that, but the debate I’ve seen has mostly been upper-resource teams debating about how it’ll affect lower-resource teams.
And the scary part is, that both points of view are valid…
