There is a lot of talk about the problems teams are faced with due to the weather. Some arguments are quite compelling in favor of extending the shipping date. FIRST is willfully set in not giving the extension for understandable reasons. Hence, the debate has started. Do we extend the shipping date or not?
Please share your thoughts! What is the best solution? Do we ask FIRST to reconsider their position on the extension, or is there another solution we might consider–maybe more time during the “Fix-It window” period would be a fair compromise?
Having had to cut Tuesday meeting short and then not being able to access the robot on Wednesday or Thursday kinda sucks. I would love an extension, but at the same time I enjoy the stress and real world application of having a deadline and sticking to it.
Deadlines are part of everyday life. If you were trying to win over a client would you like to ask for extentions? If you were the client would you give one?
There is no problems with weather stopping ship dates. Many teams have had problems that are far worse than weather (Flooding for example) The problem with extending the date is that the teams that did not have a problem with weather would have even more time. The weather has been unrully this year but FIRST’ers have the ability to overcome even mother nature. The teams should have their robot done before the 6 weeks (Even though most of us dont get it done until the overnight work-till-you-drop-athons on saturdays before shipdate). FIRST would understand if there was something that happened that would have caused destruction, but i dont think a few inches of snow would make them worry.
To add to everyone’s weather comments, we have run a competiton in South Florida the last two years after the main playing field carpet was completely destroyed. We usually end up setting the offseason competiton field up at least twice. This year we will probablly have the luxury of having the competiton inside. Anyway the point I am trying to make here is FIRSTERS can make it thru anything and unless your shop is outside the weather shouldn’t really be an issue. Pretty much unless there is so much snow you can’t open your front door you can get to where you need to build a robot. Extending shipdate is definitely not an option though for obvious reasons. Extending the “fix-it” window sounds like a great idea though.
That is the only reason we got an extension previously. I believe in 2003 a Nor’Easter shutdown most of the Northeast. I think the storm hit affected teams at least down to Virginia if not further South and rather far West as well. They gave us a 2 day extension I believe because we got hit Monday & Tuesday of ship week and the freight delays made it necessary.
I think the nature of competing in a deadline means teams will inherently have various advantages and disadvantageous some expected others surprises, like weather.
Just a note about “overcoming” weather sometimes its outside of the FIRSTERS control. I’m sure the entire team would have been there on Wednesday when it snowed. District policy however is very clear if school is closed, no clubs can meet. In this case its more of a liability issue.
Quoted for truth–I can say quite literally that Mission Mayhem played through hell and high water.
If the weather is bad enough to shut down FedEx, I can definitely understand an extension from Manchester. Unless and until that happens, however, I’d expect to ship on the 20th and adjust your plans accordingly. It’s just one of the unpredictable things about FIRST–students might miss school, mentors are pulled away by work (or exams), half the team gets knocked out of commission by a virus at the regional, the laptop breaks, your $??,000 field floods…but at the end of the day, you’ve got to pull it off one way or the other.
Consider 1902 last year. They were planning to shoot, but their college mentors all got hammered with tests during the later part of build. There simply wasn’t the brainpower to get it done effectively, so they switched to a dumper. They adapted to the resources available (or unavailable) to them and worked it out. As I recall, last season wasn’t too terrible to them.
We havent had many problems with weather. But, we had to go home many times because the school had to turn off the electricity to do some tests. And bad weather is expected this week. So, it will be tough finishing our robot… I say that the shipping date should be extended.
I see both sides here… the teams that have no other choice but to give up the time to snow days, and the fact that it would just give more time to teams that didnt have that problem.
But looking at the threads here, I’ve seen many photos (and our video!) that indicate teams are finding a way to make it work regardless of the weather. We had a feeling we were going to have an issue so we packed up and made way for Harris, and even let another area team work with us in our facility as all Rochester schools were closed. Other teams set up shop in basements. Usually Rookies may not know better, but veteran teams should learn to plan. From work I take my laptop and any important papers home with me at night. If I get sick or my car doesnt work, I can still work from home. Yes a robot is more difficult, but with good project management, teams can plan for snowstorms. Hurricanes, tornadoes & flooding are much worse… but a little snow never shuts down the northeast
Personally I think that a ship date extension should be dependent on the team, there are teams that get away without any weather/flooding etc. problems, for them, the ship date is the ship date. However there are other teams that lose a week every year to weather. If you are that team that lost 10 days of school thus couldn’t work at all on your bot (or any number), FIRST should be able to extend your ship date by that amount. Saying they shouldn’t simply because in the “business world” you can’t get out of deadlines that easy is silly. FIRST isn’t trying to emulate the business world, they are trying to inspire young kids, if they were going to emulate the business world, we would see many more awards for things like teams that can make the most duplicate robots, or one for the highest ratio of effectiveness to cost (yes they give awards for effectiveness, but never relate it to the cost to produce). Is that FIRSTs goal? no, yes they have a few business awards, but its not their goal, their goal is to inspire kids, and to allow a level playing field for them all, which in part is why there are rules like the deadline and FIX it window.
Every year we attend the debriefing for Ontario, and well tell everyone we lose a week every year. There are two reactions, the skeptical reaction we get from FIRST and 80% of those there thinking we are either exaggerating and it isn’t possible to miss this much, then there is the second reaction of how do you do it of about 10% of those there. We do it, and have learned to do it every year, yes it makes things like autonomous hard to work on, and rarely do we ever have a mechanically fully refined robot, but we still can play the game to our best and we don’t get stressed out over not placing overly well, because thats not the point, the point is to inspire, and we are able to do that. To date we have missed 9 days(this includes today), because of weather, we live in a rural area, 90% of our students and 100% of the mentors live outside of the town, and when the roads are closed there just isn’t a way in to work. Comparing us to every other Ontario team doesn’t do justice to the situation, our team (and three others) live in the worst part of southern Ontario with all the snow and wind coming off Lake Huron. See link for a typical February day in our area (we are north of Goderich, in the customize window you can add “minor cities” to see Kincardine).
I do realize my thoughts on the subject may be a bit biased only because we miss a week a year, we have learned to deal with it, but a week missed is a week missed.
How about there are less than 7 days between ship and when robots have to arrive at the drayage facility for first week regionals. This side of the story has been ignored in this thread. To meet the existing timeline for regionals getting more than a day simply doesn’t work logistically.
I think it is unfair that FIRST is refusing to extend the ship date, even if it was by 2 or 3 days, it would help a great amount. everyone should be about done with the major construction of the robot, but the time we are losing now, is the time to work out all the small kinks. My school change locations this year and the building is nowhere near our old school. So it is hard to get to our school, even if we wanted to come in. Not only did it effect the building but our fundraising has been cut short and fundraising is the biggest income because we don’ have many sponosors.
But the Tigers still are clawing our way to the top.
There are a few ways around this, a) every existing team knows generally how much time they lose to weather each year if your team is like ours, you don’t sign up for the first two regionals (if such a rule were to be placed), b)FIRST gives us another week in between the first regional and ship.
This is not something I see FIRST implementing this year, and I am going to be skeptical and say they never will implement it.
FIRST did extend the deadline in 2003 after a major blizzard, but this is nothing compared to what hit in 2003. Many places are already back in school, or will be tomorrow.
Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline.
