To extend or not to extend the ship date!

FIRST General Forum
#32

I have to agree with many of the posts before me about deadlines are deadlines.Things like this happen many times in the real world. Everyday people have to deal with issues like these.

On a side note delaying ship time would be good for my team right now because we have some gears and shafts out to the guys who do our heat treating and depending on shipping and/or the fix it window we may or may not be assembling our transmissions at Pittsburgh :ahh: Thank goodness for our practice transmissions. In the end I know the kids on our team are learning a thing or two about logistics and FIRST is all about learning. :cool:

#33

Maybe you’re talking about in your area. In West Lafayette/Lafayette, Indiana, however, it’s a different story. It was reported that this was the worst blizzard since the late 1970s. Purdue even canceled classes and all operations for 1.5 days, which is EXTREMELY rare.

#34

Ship dates, rules and deadlines all share one thing in common, they are your friend. :confused:

If that doesn’t make sense to you, consider this, without them, you would have no direction. Consider them the same as Design Criteria. Without Design Criteria you would have no way to know what to build.

Honestly, we would love to have extra time to build, but that’s because we drag our feet. No one else is to blame, not even the weather. So, how do we meet the deadline? We bust our hump for the next 5 nights. (Actually, we need ours finished for a practice session at St. Francis HS, home of the FemBots, this Saturday.) So, we bust our hump tonight and tomorrow and work with what we have Saturday, then finish everything Sunday and Monday.

#35

No, but a little creative thinking can at least make something out of nothing.

  • If everyone is stuck at home, open up an AIM Chat room with all your team members and discuss strategy (or anything) for your upcoming regional(s).
  • If your team owns some Vex robots, make a “programming platform”. Put some sensors on it, and let the programmers bring it home. Several hours with a gyro or accelerometer on a Vex robot and they could have the basis for advanced sensor feedback well underway.
  • If your school won’t let you even work on the robot outside of school, you can always work in Inventor or 3DSMax.
  • You can work on your Chairman’s and Woodie Flower awards at home.
  • You can work on your team’s website at home.
  • You could go to your sponsor’s shop (if possible), and work there.
  • You can work on pep club/team spirit buttons, banners, etc. from anywhere.
  • If your team does any sort of video production during the competition season, you can work on capturing and beginning to edit video at home.
  • If any of the students on your team have Vex robots, have them build 1/3 scale Mini FRC robot. Once the ship date is over, you can build a 1/3 scale rack and ringers and have a cheap practice robot.

While this may not be as good as actually working on the robot, at the very least you can accomplish something useful. :wink: I understand many team’s frustrations with the weather, as New England has about every weather extremity imaginable except earthquakes and tsunamis. There’s not much you can do about the weather, except try to make the most out of the situation.
And if it comes down to it, all-nighters are your friend. :slight_smile:

If on Tuesday, FedEx is still closed or cannot access a large portion of the country, then FIRST may decide to extend the ship date by a day or two. But not any longer than that. FedEx still has all the logistics of sorting out 1300 crates and getting them to their destinations in time for Week 1 Regionals, and that is no small feat! :wink:

With NASA and the Space Shuttle, billions of dollars worth of equipment and seven lives are on stake. With the airlines, there are a lot of assets (such as the planes themselves), employees, and passengers that they do not want to put at stake. But think of the ship date in another way:

Your boss/client expects a major presentation to be done by set date, but the weather is so bad that you cannot get to work to finish it up. If your client is in China, they don’t know of or care about your bad weather, they want their presentation done to meet their deadline. So to meet your deadline, you Remote Desktop into your work computer to finish it up from home.

#36

all i have to say is

keep in mind the term gracious professionalism in your arguments

#37

I don’t think FIRST is “requiring” anyone to put their lives in danger, nor do I believe that they are showing a lack of “gracious professionalism”. They showed plenty of sympathy in the response sent to Tonya here, and I do believe that they understand the difficult situation that many teams are in. You are not being forced by FIRST to drive in bad weather. That is your choice and yours alone. I think it’s pretty unfair to judge FIRST negatively and blame them for a situation which they really have no control over.

It’s true that weather is a highly influential factor in the “real world”. However, if FIRST were to extend the deadline because of the weather, why shouldn’t they then extend deadlines for teams who don’t have as much money, who have lost mentors, or who have problems with team organization?

FIRST does make an effort to level the playing field for all teams, but they can only do this WITHIN REASON. It would be logistically impossible for FIRST to make things 100% fair for everyone, all of the time. Can you imagine being a FIRST official, trying to judge how much extra time each team should receive on a case by case basis? It would truly be an organizational nightmare for FIRST. And if exceptions must be made for bad weather, than exceptions must be made for EVERY OTHER handicapping factor a FIRST team might experience - which definitely would not represent the real world.

So please - try to step into FIRST’s shoes for a minute. It would be unreasonable to expect them to be able to place everyone on a level playing field. FIRST isn’t all about being fair - instead, it’s all about overcoming real-world engineering difficulties. Do the best you can to get as much work done as possible. If you are unable to complete your robot, believe me - there will be plenty of teams willing to help you get back on your feet at the competition. If anyone can overcome a challenge like this, a FIRST team can! :slight_smile:

– Jaine

#38

I was on a team that could only work on the robot from 3 - 8 weekdays and from 8 - 3 on saturdays. We could not work on Sundays or Holidays. We build it out of a storage closet in a teachers classroom. Should we be given an extension because our school does not allow 24/7 access. We made it both years. Oh and by the way any metal work had to be done with hand tools only.

It’s a deadline. Meet it or not, but do not expect it to move.

#39

I dunno if this was just our schedule, but we moved our wednesday meeting to today, and that’s the only meeting that was affected. Granted, we also have no tuesday meetings and a four day weekend this week:D I think they shouldn’t move ship date. THere’s plenty of arguments for both sides, but there are dozens of teams that weren’t even anywhere near the storm, and so that woulod provide an unfair advantage. They have a bit of an advantage, but we shouldn’t increase it. the build season is cut short for good reason, and we shouldn’t let weather change it.

#40

I would like to echo the comments about keeping the tone gracious and professional, which has been the case so far. It is easy to come across as whining and angry or sanctimonious and smug without really meaning to.

As for the ship date, as many people have said, the practicality of extending the date more than a day or two is not high. They have to get the crates out to the early regionals and there is not a lot of time for that. So I completely understand the argument of not extending the deadline. (Though looking at the long range forecasts for the midwest, FedEx may not be able to do pickups in a lot of places next Tuesday.)

That said, I also don’t think it would be a tremendous hardship to extend the ship deadline by one or two days. It is true that deadlines are important, but in the “real world” they are missed nearly as much as they are made. We might even get a lesson in gracious professionalism out of it by asking teams who have not missed any time to ship Tuesday and letting other teams ship Wednesday or Thursday, all on the honor system. The idea of giving teams who had undergone hardships with the weather (or the team that had their work space flooded by sprinklers) some extra time to work on the robots at the regional competitions has merit too. After all, the problem with the carrier plates for the BaneBots transmissions caused FIRST to change the rules, which I think was a good decision.

Above all, everyone have fun these last couple of days. Remember we do this for a lot of reasons, but one is that it is a LOT of fun!

Good Luck from the Bad Robots!

PS- Team 963, I know you guys have had problems with the temporary change in buildings, the cold days, the snow days, the too few bus driver days…my wife teaches in CPS and my kids attend CPS. I actually live just a couple of blocks from the old (and future) East HS. If there is anything 1014 can do to help this weekend send me a message and we’ll try.

#41

I would like to make a few comments regarding this issue.

  1. FIRST has extended the date before for weather… in that case it was primarily a big Eastern storm… We were given 2 extra days to ship.
    This was about 3 years ago as I recall. I seem to remember it happening twice as a matter of fact… so for those that seem to think that it can’t happen because FIRST will not do it… they already have done it…

  2. Other teams are still effected by the eastern weather. Parts I had ordered from MSC which were coming from Harrisburg are delayed for weather reasons…they will not arrive until at least Monday… they should have been here Wednesday of this week…

  3. This year we have had problems (not anyone’s fault in particular…) but nontheless problems with materials from the kit. I have never had to wait so long to get the entire kit… we had parts getting to us 3 weeks into the build…this is unprecedented… especially the amount of parts…
    the pneumatics bag, the lights, the gyro sensors… and now the issue with the BaneBot transmissions… I have ordered my plates from Banebot but they seem to be backordered… or at least not ready

I am not complaining about any of the fine people that help out FIRST or the FIRST staff or anyone… I am just pointing out that this year we have an unprecedented amount of issues…

We are in Seattle and even we had snow days during the build… totally wierd for our city…

Therefore… yes having deadlines are good things… but we have precedence for past shipping deadline changes… don’t be surprised if FIRST decides to do it again… my guess would be 2 days… Thursday ship instead of Tuesday…

It would simply mean that FIRST has listened to all of us and decided to extend based on highly unusual circumstances…
its been done before…

thanks

#42

Truth.

We had to push really hard on the school administration for a week beforehand to get access to the school on Wednesday.
In addition,the three-quarters of our team who couldn’t make it before 10:30AM couldn’t get there until about 6:30PM. This wasn’t a major problem since the very most committed did get there, but if the storm started an hour earlier no one would have been there.

#43

The reality is that each year several teams will lose days each year because of snow, cold, and bad weather. This year was actually one of the better years as far as snow days are concerned, however we lost days for the cold here in Michigan. I see that many of the posts are coming from areas that don’t normally get a ton of snow, making it a problem. Teams in the east and midwest have been dealing with these problems throughout the years and will continue to. In short, better luck next time, the ship date should stay the same to keep a level playing field for all teams.

#44

i’d give anything for another week, but c’est la vie, ladies and gentlemen. of course, many members of team 1757 are already displaying signs of insanity, so i’m not sure if we’d even notice.:confused:

quick counterpoint: impossible deadlines are actually part of the fun in my opinion. the all-nighters, the collapses into manic laughter over holes drilled 1/38575" away from where they absolutely need to be, the elation when little things go right for a change, that’s what makes the last few weeks of the season the rollercoaster of fun that they are. the season is like some kind of twisted rollercoaster, and the end is like a terrifying drop that scares you witless, but exhilarates you beyond belief.

or maybe i’m one of the crazy ones; who knows at this point?:smiley: :smiley:

#45

It’s part of the challenge. Sure, we all could use a couple extra days, but as many said before, deadlines are deadlines.

#46

geeez…and i was going to say they should knock a week off the build season. less thinking, more building. :slight_smile:

#47

With this, at least, I disagree strongly. For several years in a row, we’ve had usable software ready well before the robot was assembled. A lot of the “fancy” programming can be written and debugged using a simulator or testbed. For tweaking PID constants and presets you do need an actual robot, but much programming is possible without one. For some problems, all you need is time.

#48

Thanks everyone for responding to this post.

Let me summarize the results of this post. The problem presented here is real. Some teams get 6 full weeks to build their robot and some don’t. Some teams live in beautiful climates and some don’t. Some teams have more resources than they know what to do with and some have very few resources.

Overall, FIRST is a reflection of the real world. There are companies that have resources: money, great facilities, and a pool of engineering talent available to jump in and tackle any challenge. At the same time, some companies are limited to the resources and talent available in their immediate family. They are the Mom and Pop operations that make up the backbone of our socio-economic culture!

So, what does all this mean? It means that we have an uneven playing field. This is not going to change, and it is something we have to get used to. After all, we live in a competitive world, and the strongest make it to the top. That’s what makes FIRST such a great operation. With FIRST, everyone gets a chance to participate in a wonderful experience that encourages young people to get involved in technology, regardless of their level of experience. FIRST is a learning tool for all.

Now, here is the real dilemma with this weather issue: Some teams are faced with it and others are not. It would be very hard for a Florida team to understand how important a snow plow is during a blizzard. It would be very difficult for a California team to visualize a car hung up on a 3 foot snow drift. I might add that it would be difficult for someone in Ohio to explain what living through a hurricane and flooding is like. We live in different parts of the country and do not face the same weather conditions.

Something else we need to keep in mind is that not all teams are equally blessed with resources. Many of the smaller teams (most FIRST teams) have to rely on the schools to be open in order to get anything done. If the schools are closed, nothing gets worked on. No matter how much you plan for the weather, many students from an urban/rural setting do not have a way to communicate with other team members nor do they have a place to meet outside of school.

So, what do we do to make it fair?

FIRST is not about winning. It’s about transforming a culture, it’s about Gracious Professionalism. According to Woodie Flowers, “In the long run, Gracious Professionalism is part of pursuing a meaningful life. One can add to society and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing one has acted with integrity and sensitivity.” If this is the case, then what do we do for the teams that have lost 5-10 build days? How do we act with “integrity and sensitivity” toward this issue?

Several solutions to this problem have been offered. Any one of them will help level the playing field to some degree. Of course, nothing will be perfect, but at least it is an attempt at doing the right thing. Here is a summary of some interesting thoughts and possible solutions that have been posted on this thread:

  1. I would love an extension… (chris31)
  2. work-till-you-drop-athons on saturdays before shipdate (65 Xero Huskie)
  3. 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. (techtiger1)
  4. If the weather is bad enough to shut down FedEx, I can definitely understand an extension from Manchester. (Billfred)
  5. I say that the shipping date should be extended. (rohit)
  6. …with good project management, teams can plan for snowstorms. Hurricanes, tornadoes & flooding are much worse… but a little snow never shuts down the northeast. (Kims Robot)
  7. 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. (d.courtney)
  8. To meet the existing timeline for regionals getting more than a day simply doesn’t work logistically. (Peter Matteson)
  9. 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. (Tiger963)
  10. Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline. (Lil’ Lavery)
  11. What FIRST needs is a system that allows everyone 6 weeks, not 6 weeks of fine weather at FIRST HQ, but 6 weeks where you live…(d.courtney)
  12. …the only time FIRST should extend is when the shipping company can not pick up the crate on the 20th…(ALIBI)
  13. I think a extension of the ship date is a fair decision. (redbarron)
  14. The mayor of Cleveland told Clevelanders to say inside and not to come out because it was a weather emergency. (Wickedclown1)
  15. …FIRST might consider extending the ship dates of teams who were affected. Either that, or allow specific teams at regionals an extension in their pit times,…(Vashts6583)
  16. It was reported that this was the worst blizzard since the late 1970s. Purdue even canceled classes and all operations for 1.5 days, which is EXTREMELY rare. (Michael Hill)
  17. Honestly, we would love to have extra time to build, but that’s because we drag our feet. No one else is to blame, not even the weather. (billbo911)
  18. Should we be given an extension because our school does not allow 24/7 access. We made it both years. Oh and by the way any metal work had to be done with hand tools only. (kawelch)
  19. I am not complaining about any of the fine people that help out FIRST or the FIRST staff or anyone… I am just pointing out that this year we have an unprecedented amount of issues…(Bob Steele)
  20. geeez…and i was going to say they should knock a week off the build season. less thinking, more building. (johnr)

In summary, most agree that there is a problem. The solution is not an easy one. All we can hope for is FIRST to make the right decision and truly make this a great experience for all!

We are not asking for the playing field to be completely level. We simply want to be able to get to the game!

Thanks!

#49

It did happen twice, in fact. In 2004, teams were given two extra days because of all of the KOP packing snafus. It certainly helped 1293 out, although we weren’t affected.

One thing that should probably be noted is that robots have come together under far worse conditions. Might I note, for the record, then-rookies 1396 at the Championship in 2004? They came to Atlanta on Thursday morning to find an empty pit–no crate. By the time the pits closed that night, they had a box on wheels in motion. I should further emphasize that this was pre-Kitbot FIRST. What’s more, they finished around the middle of the Archimedes division, which was pretty stacked that year (including stacked with the eventual world champions). If it can be done under those conditions in 12 hours, it can be done in most any situation.

You build the best robot you can with your resources, time included.

#50

and just out from the email blast –

Greetings Team Shipping Contacts:

We want to remind you all again that Robot Ship Deadline is: Tuesday, February 20th, 2007.

FIRST requires verification of the shipment of each team’s robot crate for the initial shipment only. Teams are required to adhere to the rules and the robot shipping deadline. All teams are responsible for tracking their robot crate(s) to ensure that it has arrived at its destination on time.

Please follow the instructions below for your chosen initial shipment method:…

#51

While this is impressive, it was by no means accomplished alone. I can’t find the original account, but many many teams turned out to help with the “One Day Wonder.” So take comfort in that if you must ship a box of parts, every team with man power to spare (and some who don’t have manpower to spare) will be there to help you out. :slight_smile: