Hi, for all of you that haven’t read the thread in the Rumor Mill section, I am beginning construction of TRA (The Red Alliance) this week. The 40 some-odd responses in the thread have spawned some interesting ideas for the use of the site. I am still planning on using a “Facebook of FIRST” base to allow teams to create profiles for their robots as a scouting tool for others. My question to the FIRST community is, what else would you like to see on TRA? Please select all that apply. I am starting now and aim to have at least the robot profiles ready for team input by the beginning of the 2010 season. Please vote and comments are always welcome. Good luck to all and looking forward to the 2010 season!
Edit: A minor clarification to the poll options: Technical documentation would be game manuals for sure and possible docs that teams wish to share as well
Non-Technical would be anything published by FIRST or teams relating to team spirit, community service, team management etc.
If you plan to do a picture archive, I really suggest putting a lot of careful thought into the layout of everything.
As well as how you intend for people to find the pictures their looking for.
Just having people tag images, could make things complicated for a person looking for a single specific image and is also kinda messy.
So I have a few suggestions…
Have specific areas on the upload page for people to tag different things.
For instance… If its a picture of the game field during a competition, and you have some robots that are the main focus of the picture. Have a specific box for the uploader to enter the team # of those robots in. But for any robots that may be in the background of the picture, have another box for those to be tagged as well. That ways, when someone does a search for a teams robot, they don’t get a bunch of pictures where you can barely see the robot in the background.
Also, have some check boxes for the uploader to select depending on things like what the picture is of, and whats going on in it.
For example… A person is uploading pictures of their team in the stands at competition. The picture has no robots in it, but it does have several team members cheering.
So the person would not select the robot check box, but would click on the competition, and team picture check boxes.
Then when a person is searching for something all they have to do is select where and what the picture was taken of, and enter the proper team number and BAM! You have a lot less unwanted pictures in your search results.
I hope all of that was understandable, I was coming up with ideas while typing
Feel free to PM me if you need anymore clarification on this.
Can’t wait to check out the new site!
I like the ideas Teamcap posted, but want to add my own.
I think that teams should also be able to post ahead of time, from a list of options, exactly what competitions they are going to attend and have it posted on their profile.
a digg style system to promote stories on cd, first forums, nasa forums, team web sites, autodesk tutorials or whatever…being able to sort through most of the information is quite a chore and I end up missing important things from time to time…
FIRSTWiki is often forgotten about it, and while its easy to update, you have to create it from scratch(ish). Alot of team pages are poorly kept on FIRSTWiki, and like all wiki sites, I can’t trust it 100%.
I’m all for FIRSTWiki It’s a good resource, I try to keep my teams page updated as much as I can. The robot facebook is more of a scouting resource, at least the way I see it.
I guess I’m only using my team as a reference. I went on it recently, and before I attempted to update it, it was prolly about two years behind. Some sections were updated, but others were horribly outdated.
I assume this will be like facebook/wiki in which individuals update their own pages? I think the biggest problem you (along with FIRSTWiki and the photos on TBA), is the lack of teams that submit information. I’m not sure having an easy to use, nifty looking layout will be enough to get enough teams to input thier pictures and robot info to make it worthwhile. What are you planning to do to solve this problem of a low number of teams that submit pictures/info?
Not saying this is a bad idea, just offering suggestions to make it the best that it can be.
Suggestion!
I agree that this would be a pretty big problem.
To solve it, you need to convince people that updating their info, is worth it.
How do you do that, you ask?
Well start by contacting some big name teams, and convincing them to post info.
If you got teams like 67, 217, 111, 1114, 233, 190, 148, etc…
to have their information on your site, then many other teams will follow suit.
Also, if you contact people in charge of regionals/kick offs, and have them do things like, talk about about your site at kick off,
and send an email about it to all the teams competing at their regional.
Then im sure you would have plenty of teams on your site by the end of build season.
Again this is just an idea
My $0.02
Hope it helps.
Well right… But this is Dean we’re talking about…
He founded FIRST, so naturally if he asks everyone to do something over the telecast, then of course almost everyone is going to do it.
So… Maybe we should have Dean talk about your website during kick off!
I think that promotion on CD will get a lot of teams involved. If this is done well before Kickoff, I’ll see to it that all of the teams I know start using it. Eventually there will be a tipping point where it will become a serious disadvantage if you don’t.
One thing this site should do is have very specific sections and details. If it’s too open like FIRSTWiki people won’t know what to do.
So… Maybe we should have Dean talk about your website during kick off!
I know! Wouldn’t that be awesome? Assuming its ready then does anyone know who I would contact?
The best bet for getting the site to really take off is to combine all our methods, tell fellow teams, get big names (well numbers) involved and broadcast it on the webcast. I’m pretty much done with a simple demo profile page that I wrote in pure HTML on my teams robot from last year (No PHP yet) I’m having a little technical difficulties with my host but when its all sorted out I’ll upload it, post a link, and you guys can give feedback so I can make layout and design changes before I start writing the code. Stay tuned and thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm!
I know that when a new thing gets announced, teams get excited and they start suggesting ideas that would benefit their team, or the process as a whole, and people sometimes tend to forget things that other programs might need.
I know that week 3, I can go to TBA, and scout my heart out and get a good feel for how our matches are going to run. I generally know what each robot looks like and how to defend who, but I think that FTC and FLL are LARGELY neglected in this area.
I agree that that a facebook style page or a page with pictures (???) would be alright, but considering that the FTC and FLL programs don’t even have one central place they can all go for match turnouts, videos, etc. I think we’re putting the two other programs on a back burner…ALL the way on the back burner.
And it’s not to say that record of winners is not available. The TBA website has a record of winners, as well as the FIRST website. And as for documentation, Chief Delphi itself has A LOT of documentation and WPI and Simbotics also have a lot of information.
So while whatever we do with TRA might seem cool and fun, I think that the TRA should go towards promoting FTC & FLL and just maybe make things a little bit easier for them as well.
EDIT: And for promoting your website, I think it’d be better if you create it first. :D. If the website is as rock solid and fun as you plan it to be, then it will get recognition on its own.
I agree, that’s why I made that an option. I just tried to supply as many different options to see what subjects people felt they needed another place to find information on. I won’t necessarily create an area solely for awards, but rather work them into team/robot pages for example. And once the initial site is done I’m hoping to spend part of my senior year creating mini sites for the other divisions before handing it off to someone else when I graduate.