How much does robotics, particularly during the build season, push into your daily work schedule? … In conjunction with this, what level of support do you see from your direct management as well as upper management and or principals.
This is a great question! I would really like to find out how some of the other organizations support FIRST (in addition to their very welcome funding).
All the way up to the highest levels of the organization, NASA has been very supportive of the FIRST program. Obviously, we have kicked in a lot of funding for teams and events. But beyond that, our top management has been very supportive by helping to organize volunteers for regionals, spreading the word about FIRST through their organizations, advocating and advertising the teams within their organizations to other potential sponsors, etc. (here are two hints to gain internal support for FIRST: 1) if you have a company exec who is sitting on the fence, sign them up to be a judge at a regional competition - they will get a full dose of the best of FIRST while requiring just two days of their time, and they will have a lot of fun and most likely become very supportive; 2) if your company sponsors more than one team, setting up a little intra-company friendly rivalry between the teams can make for some added fun and give the executives a little something to brag about at the next directors meeting [this works particularly well if the teams are sponsored by different divisions of the company/agency] The NASA Center Directors are usually a lot more interested in finding out if “their” teams beat the teams from the other NASA centers than they are in finding our if “their” teams won the competitions!).
At the level of an individual team, each NASA-sponsored team has the flexibility to set up arrangements to get the right mix of resources they need. Each team does it a little different. This is one example:
When we first started Team 116, the agreement I had with NASA was that they would fund the team, cover my travel costs, and let me participate, as long as it did not interfere with my “real job.” I figured that was a reasonable trade. We were lucky enough that first year to find three other engineers willing to give up their evenings and weekends to participate, and a great bunch of students who would do the same.
Ever since then, our pattern has been to meet 7:00-10:00pm three nights a week, then up to 16 hours over the weekend. The “other” weeknights are used as “overflow” nights, to catch up on some work if we are behind (and it always seems like we are behind). NASA Headquarters is a typical office building, without a shop or any production facilities; so all work is done in the small shop that we built at the school. We get tossed out of the school at 10:00 when it closes, so some evenings we migrate to my garage to continue work until late in the evening (or morning, as the case may be).
Since that first year, as the program has grown and our involvement has increased, NASA has been very supportive and flexible about letting me put in the hours that are necessary. But I have always participated (at my insistence) under the condition that it not interfere with my real job. One thing that we have tried to do is show the people at work how our participation adds to our direct job performance. For instance, rather than focusing on the hours away from the office that the team requires, I talk about the great summer interns that we have brought in each year (that have all sourced from the team), and how much they have contributed to our primary mission.
-dave
