Is your team signing up with FIRST?

[Saratate]

Everting has been changing and coming out at different times and honestly our team is not sure about going back to FIRST. We are in a state that probably won’t be able to have any sort of in person activities for students. But we still want to do something. What are the benefits? All I see is more online zoom meetings that me and the other kids don’t want to sit on after being on a computer all day for school. But do we get penalized for taking a year off FIRST? Just looking for some other opinions…

[Ari_2412]

This is a good question for a poll:

• Yes
• No
• “.”
• Don’t know

[MikLast]

[Renamed] Who’s in for 2021?

After the initial gut reaction to a $2000 fee and no promise of in-person competition. I had to admit two things to myself. We are going to participate. This is just too important for our seniors, and honestly fundraising/grants will likely be easier if we are an active team. If we are diving in, we might as well be as gung-ho and optimistic as ever. Understanding that everybody’s situation is different, I wanted to start a thread for teams to unabashedly proclaim “I’m in!” Give us a reason, …

[BordomBeThyName]

The gut feel around the team so far is that we will most likely sign up. If nothing else, we’ll be doing it to support FIRST. We have an amazing group of kids coming up the pipeline and I’d be devastated if they couldn’t participate in 2022. We’re doing okay financially, so I consider it an acceptable expenditure if we register just to help keep the lights on at HQ with the end goal of giving my 2022+ kids the same experience that my -2020 kids got.

How much we participate in the virtual FRC offerings remains to be seen.

[tjwolter]

We’ll have our first virtual meeting soon. Up to now there just has not been that much to talk about. I’ll put it to the team and sometimes they surprise we mentors but I’m inclined to think that the value of the 2K virtual option, as I understand it at present, is not appealing to us. We are hoping to have a full year of team development and to come out of it stronger than ever. 2K will get us some great stuff for prototyping new designs.

The Chief Delphi effect is occasionally mentioned here. I can imagine that larger, better established, better funded teams may find, for instance, things like Virtual Chairman’s to be a selling point. At this time in our team’s history, we do not.

Hoping for better days…

TW

[mpirringer]

1989 is signed up

[ngreen]

I hadn’t pieced together the chairman’s aspect by that pushes us further towards joining.

Mainly though I think we have to consider our sponsor funds that already go straight to FIRST and importance of keeping a good relationship there. The relationship is worth more than the $2k.

I’m going to push a little harder on the virtual challenges because I’m not sure what the students may think. I do think the Juniors and Seniors will want to do Chairman’s, robot challenges and to be eligible for potential competition and travel events later next year.

[Alex_Jurek]

We are treating this year like any other year - for many reasons.

1. I still believe that what FIRST offers is a great learning tool for our students.
2. My seniors deserve to have some semblance of a ‘real season’…
3. This is still a great time to teach the up and coming students - I hardly got to know them last year.
4. We have incredible sponsors/partners - I am certain that they expect us to continue the same training regiments for our students. They are still providing the funds… the mentors will continue to provide the learning opportunities.
5. It is still cold in MN in the months of Jan and Feb - we need something to do for those of us not wanting to go out ice-fishing. For those of you unfamiliar with ice-fishing, we take chainsaws (mostly Husqvarna and Stihl ( for you heathens it may be something like Remington or Poulan) and cut the frozen fish from our lakes and ponds… Eeeeasy pickens!
6. By Mid-December I will have most of our yearly wood cut to heat our home here in MN - it takes about 10 cord for each home here in the great northwoods. That and my lovely bride works from home… without robotics, she will have to deal with me pestering her - or I can go back out and restack that wood pile.
7. By March I may have to start rearranging the furniture. First by wood, then by color, finally by size - so I might as well be in the shop sorting our hardware. If I am done by April, then I will be going through the boneyard of bots or sweeping the walls in the shop…
8. Come May… I can cut my toe nails to get them ‘summer ready’.
9. I am sure at this point in the year (May-June) Ginger Power will be requesting that my team does more drops for COR Robotics in the Central MN area.
10. Champs! Did we qualify?
11. Now it is September… is FRC back on? Am I still the coach? Can I start thinking about where 4607 will compete for 2022?

[cglrcng]

I will not re-write the book I wrote on another thread. But, 60 is in! We are gambling on FIRST HQ and FIRSTAZ, Using refunds from the 2020 cancelled season.

Mechanical team is already back at work in the shop improving the 2020 creation that was tested by functions along the way to first event load up day -8hrs (when the season was cancelled), but the bot was never actually driven so much as 12 feet. (Personally so far, I am zooming from home). But other mentors/students are live, and face to face at the shop twice a week.

But, now we need to quickly train at least 1 programmer or more. I found out just yesterday that we now lack a returning programming team at all, though we do have code that was completed in February and March, still lots to do!

Back to programming/drive team member years, as if we do go live in 2021, no doubt a limited amount of team members will be allowed into a venue, so they will all need to multi-task in 2021.

Still feeling bad for the 2020 graduated seniors that did not get to drive their creation in competition that they worked so hard on to build and program. (Both were exceptional programmers).

[kl26436]

@Saratate

But do we get penalized for taking a year off FIRST? Just looking for some other opinions…

If you’re asking about being penalized for future Chairman’s awards that’s a great question that I wondered about as well since its an award for years of sustained excellence and if a gap in 2021 will hurt or not.

If you’re just going to close down for a year even if you’re not penalized officially; I think enough teams are reinventing their outreach programs and doing some really cool stuff that will just stand out to judges. If you’re just not registering for 2021 to save money but still actively doing stuff for your community that’s a different story that I’d like to see guidance from FIRST on.