Improving Benelux FTC Expertise
It is our goal to one day have a European FRC regional. In order to make this happen, it is vital that we increase the amount of teams on the continent. Starting and operating a team without a local competition brings added challenges. That’s why we think it is important for new teams to start with as much experience as possible. And there is no better way to get FIRST experience than through another FIRST program.
We currently put a lot of effort into improving the FTC program in the Benelux region (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), as this is the closest program to FRC. The amount of FTC teams in the Benelux has been rising steadily for a few seasons now, but for us it is important that the level of expertise rises with it as well.
We have been working together with FTC Benelux to volunteer at events, give masterclasses and serve as a helpdesk through official Slack channels. Next to that, we run two big projects that we would like to highlight in this post. These being the FTC Playground and the TR Skills Academy.
Playground
Even though there are communication channels where teams can ask questions nearly 24/7, most of them don’t interact with it. This might be because they are afraid to ask questions online, or more likely, because they are not aware of what they don’t know. To help relieve these issues, we devised FTC Playgrounds.
FTC Playgrounds are a collaborative effort between FTC Benelux and Team Rembrandts where we open up our shop as a hub for FTC teams. We give them access to a match field and our machine shop (under supervision) to work on their robot. By having multiple teams together, we provide a social environment for them to connect with other teams, and learn from each other. Next to that, we also have ample mentors and FTC alumni on site to assist with any questions that teams may have.
Playground sessions will take place three times a season, before every set of events. With each session being able to house around 8 teams.
To get a better feeling for the Playground sessions, you can watch the promo video below (unfortunately only in Dutch):
Skills Academy
With the Playgrounds, we are able to solve single issues, but the format isn’t ideally suited for major changes within teams. To address these shortcomings, we created the TR Skills Academy. Contrary to the Playground sessions, during the Skills Academy we take a more proactive approach in teaching teams hard skills, as well as individually helping them with team management.
The 2023 program consisted of three sessions during the summer break and a recap session in between kick-off and the first round of League Meets. Each session had two masterclasses hosted by experienced TR members in their respective fields. These were:
- Judging and Awards
- Scouting and Strategic Design
- Media and Branding
- Mechanical Design
- Electronics
- Software
To help them with team management, we coupled very experienced TR members with the teams to take a look at their processes, collaboration and organizational structure. All in the hopes of creating a set of teams that can sustainably be seen as role models for the entire FTC Benelux community.
Future Steps
Since the initial establishment of the programs was the hardest part, most of the planning can be recycled for future sessions. This means that we can get better results with lower effort.
For the coming seasons, we would like to scale up the playgrounds to include more teams. We can achieve this by advertising more during events as well as becoming more recognizable to the community. Scaling will bring bottlenecks but if we are aware of them early enough, they won’t be a big problem.
The 2023 edition of the Skills Academy was such a success that we would like to do it again for the 2024 offseason. One of the biggest points of feedback was the inconvenient timing. Therefore we would like to push the program forward and have it take place just after worlds (during may/early june).
Written by:
@Nigelientje - Lead Outreach