FIRST Objective introduces My Team

Competition Scouting
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I’ve created a new extension to FIRST Objective that I’d like to tell you about. If you are unfamiliar with FIRST Objective, see this thread:

This new extension is a different approach to scouting, more like pre-scouting. Take a minute and read this post, it may make all the difference to your team when it comes to alliance selections.

Any regional your team enters will only have 8 teams that automatically make it past qualifications. In a regional with 50 teams, that turns out to only be 16%. I don’t think there is any team that can guarantee themselves a spot in the top 8, considering the possibility of being partnered with teams that may not be as compatible as other teams; the chance of malfunctions or whatever. That means that a 50 team regional, 84% of the teams will be looking for ways to impress the 16% to fill out the alliances. Aside from getting lucky and having a scout see one of your awesome matches, how are you going to stand out over the rest?

FIRST Objective to the rescue! FIRST Objective is announcing My Team. My Team is an extension of FIRST Objective that will allow each team to have an area where they can post all their data (for their own robot) prior to any regional. My Team also provides places to brag about their team’s robot along with the ability to add videos and photos to back up their claims. There is a rating system where your team will be peer reviewed by other teams. A forum can catch discussion about fair and un-fair ratings, along with any other discussions. Please remember Gracious Professionalism! A message system will allow teams to privately interact with other teams. My Team keeps you updated with which teams have made changes to their information, and it also shows you which teams have been viewing your teams profile. There is an advanced search tool, so that teams can find other teams based on any of the scouting data on their profile. On top of that, as individual regional data begins to be posted, there will be a database that allows teams to see what teams have been winning, losing, how big their biggest wins are, and also how badly they’ve lost. It also shows the alliance partners for their best matches.

Whew! With an 80%-90% chance of needing to be noticed, I think every team will want to be part of FIRST Objective / My Team. And as for the 10%-20% of the teams that aren’t trying to be noticed, they’d be foolish not to look at all this information! Obviously there are teams that are in the Hall of Fame, that everyone already knows about but the newer teams and rookie teams should consider this a great opportunity to show the world what they can do. I’d also suggest that rookie teams use FIRST Objective to tell their story and share how they got their team started.

Using My Team along with FIRST Objective is a winning situation for everyone. My Team will help FIRST Objective grow, and consequently FIRST Objective will gain more members submitting more content that will help attract new schools and sponsors.

Now, take a minute and sign up at FIRST Objective http://www.firstobjective.org. It’s free, with no spam or advertisements. Once you log in, you’ll see the My Team button to navigate to the My Team site.

Thanks, and as always, please post any ideas, suggestions and criticisms you may have.

Sincerely,
Roger Smith

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Roger,

This look great. Hopefully we’ll remember to post the information once we have it.

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This last bit will be VERY useful, provided you can pull it off. Sifting through that much information can be a lot of work.

As for the idea about a Myspace for robots I like the idea. I’d be happy to participate, but I don’t think it will be useful. Any scout worth his salt knows to rate teams by how well they perform, not by how well they say they perform.

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the question is, where does the data come from? we have been talking about a desktop/cellphone/etc. scouting program that would upload this data. not sure if we’re actually going to go through with that, but i’ll definitely check this out. nice work, guys!

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So, the MySpace for robots idea is centered around videos (matches, team promo, animations, etc) to bring together the FIRST community. Then, with all this content in one place it becomes the perfect tool for helping describe FIRST to schools that are not involved.

The regional data analysis component of My Team is already online and working with data from 2007. Check it out; it’s very interesting. Provided that FIRST publishes this data again for 2008, there will be no worries about having it online.

Again, you need to sign up for a FIRST Objective account (free) to get access to My Team. Once you’re on My Team, just pick “Regional Data” to see the regional data analysis.

Thanks for your comments!
Roger

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roger, i signed myself and team 229 up, looks like if enough people get involved this could be a great resource. good work

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Thanks, I’m doing everything I can to make these sites visible.

I encourage everyone that finds these sites useful to help me promote them to the people they feel can benefit.

Thanks again,
Roger