We are struggling.

Competition Team Organization
1

I was thinking about posting something along these lines at the beginning of the build season, but I was under the impression that we had a good start compared to previous years. However, circumstances beyond our control have prompted me to write and post.

We have been struggling a lot these past few weeks. Our coach, who usually hosts the meeting in his class, manages funds and budget, and does various other administrative businesses, has been gone for the last three weeks. We don’t know where he went nor when he’ll be back, but the team is speculating that he won’t make it to the competition.

We have no parent volunteers. We have no mentors beyond my father willing to help and an engineer coming sporadically to school meetings to see where he can help design-wise.

There are about three teachers/administrators who are trying to sign up with FIRST to be mentors and stuff, but they have not been actively engaged with the team activities and it’s been a bumpy road getting accommodated.

One recent instance would be our meeting after school yesterday being cancelled over the announcements as the school was about to release us. We needed that meeting to finalise t-shirt sizes and discuss with the non-build members of the team where we are, where they are, and what we needed to get done in the final weeks of the season.

None of us were informed and we are now very behind in terms of orders for the robot and the buying of materials to build the thing. Due to our school district’s policy, a teacher has to buy the materials we need in order for us to use our budget - a very irritating hassle when your go-to district guy is gone.

We have a finished frame for our robot, but little else beyond pages of design and small prototypes. We try meeting one a week at school and thrice at my home, where we are given the garage to work.

With all this in mind, I have a few questions to ask the Chief Delphi community about this situation:

1.) Has your mentor/coach dropped off the radar unexpectedly for family/personal reasons, and if so how did you get help to keep the team going?
2.) Have you been behind/procrastinating during the build season before? How was it fixed and stopped?
3.) Would you suggest reaching out to local teams for help?
4.) If you have had horrible communication in the past, how was it fixed?

Thanks for reading.

2

1.) No.
2.) We were behind in 2014 a lot. I would recommend regrouping and seeing where everything is at, analyzing the issues with each group and address them as necessary. How to address them depends on the issues that they report.
3.) Yes.
4.) It was something that we had to address in the off-season. See number 2.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask me :slight_smile:

3

Never having been in a situation so extreme, I don’t have any non-obvious answers to 1, 2, and 4.

To question 3, YES. Reach out to teams. You may be able to get mentors and loaners of parts while your orders are in process, and who knows what else.

Also reach out to your FIRST Senior Mentor for your state (or other district). You can find your FIRST Senior Mentor through firstinspires.org.

4

I’m going to be reaching out to you shortly. I hope we can arrange for you all to come down to the machine shop at USC (~20 minutes away in Columbia) for a day or two and we can share the resources that 4901 had and the resources that 1102 has to get you more towards your goals robot wise.

I’ll be PMing you my phone number and email address.

5

You are from Blythewood, SC? I would definitely consider reaching out to other teams for help. I am up in Greenville, SC but would be more than happy to help from a distance however I can.

I would say the best advice for a team struggling with resources is to simplify. Focus on getting a solid, running base for Palmetto and then go from there. Being a defensive robot has significant value, especially this year.

Also, you’d be surprised how many materials you can buy from a local hardware store and what other teams may be willing to even give you.

When you get to Palmetto there will also be teams (1319 included) who can pitch in to help you get up and running.

If you want to talk more please feel free to send me a private message.

6

I’ll share some advice I’ve shared several other times, and that I need to take sometimes myself.

Sometimes we’ll be far from reaching our goals. Reach out to others for help. Revisit and set attainable goals for where you’re at now.

To me, some attainable goals will be:

  1. Attend competition with a legal frame and bumpers
  2. drive forward in autonomous past the baseline
  3. drive reliably - this means wiring is cleanly done to help with the inspection process
  4. You may be able to identify a couple of game tasks you can do with few(ish) resources. You can make a “gear-age” with 2x4 and plywood and some power tools. Will it be pretty? No, but it might work.
  5. Plan to spend the days between bag day and the summer to recruit another teacher or school administrator. Or work with a non-school entity that can take over ownership of the team. I do not know your funding, but there could be headaches in that process.

If you can work with a local team, you may be able to complete and test some of those items. Definitely find a local team with experience to make sure that your robot is legal to reduce the amount of time it takes to get through inspection. If you can even drive around on the field on practice day, you’ll be able to be ahead of some other teams in my experience.

7

Dang. People are complicated and we don’t know the problems some face. I hope you can find others who can replace whatever it was your coach was doing. There are adults everywhere who have management, mechanical, design or machining skills. From retired people to business owners… ASK and PASS THE WORD AROUND! I have been amazed at the people who have helped us when asked.

Meantime, I’d say carry on and do the best you can. Let the t-shirts go, and focus on building a robot that can do one or two tasks. A good gear manipulator and a possible climber might find itself in the finals with an alliance of good shooters and climbers…

Whatever you accomplish, you can feel good that you overcame less-than-ideal circumstance and didn’t give up. GOOD LUCK TO YOU.

8

Contact teams in your area! FIRST teams are always willing to help and more than happy to do so.

As for the mentor situation, it may be hard to to do, but you’ll need an adult to step up to work on paperwork and working on logistics.

The best thing you can do right now is get a working drive train and I guarantee there will be help at your first regional, if not before then.

If you need help with code, feel free to PM me. I can help from afar with that and I am more than willing to do so.

If you need any help whatsoever, PM me. I was a student last year and I am now a mentor(head coach in FTC and mentor/drive coach in FRC), so I will try to help you, as a student, facilitate and do what you can do.

9

1.) Not quite to your level of severity, but we do find ourselves strapped for mentors once in a while because our mentors are either parents or college students. For this reason, communication is imperative to make sure we have enough mentors to hold a meeting each night.

2.) We have had a habit of this before. Coming up with a solution required a serious talk with the entirety of the team to sort out organization and leadership. This is a good time to talk about goals, resources, and obstacles.

3.) PLEASE, I cannot stress this enough. Even the best teams out there collaborate with each other. Whether you are in direct need of help or not, I would strongly recommend taking any opportunity possible to reach out to other teams. If nothing else, you get a new viewpoint on things (and some cool friends). I wouldn’t even limit this to local teams. FIRST is a huge community of people willing to help each other out. CD, email, and social media are your friends. Use them well. Keep up with what other teams do and ask questions. More often than not, you will get enthusiastic answers.

4.) Everyone needs to agree one one (two max) methods of not only communicating, but organizing. There is a plethora of team-oriented communication platforms, so you should be able to find one that’s right for your team. Use it frequently so everyone can stay up to date. We’ve gotten into the habit of writing out detailed meeting summaries after every meeting is finished so we know what we have done and what needs to be done. Have a way to keep track of files/links/etc, especially for administrative and logistics purposes. If you miss a meeting, be ready to reschedule or plan around it on short notice, and don’t use up valuable meeting time talking about things that could be discussed in an online platform.

I hope this was helpful to you. Good luck to you and your team.

10

  1. Yes. A few years ago the team’s faculty adviser suddenly moved out of the state. We worked with the school to replace her and get the support the rest of the mentors needed from the school. Luckily, she’s moved back and is back in that role with the team now :slight_smile: You need to have additional mentors in place before such a thing happens to help pick up the slack!

  2. Every year :slight_smile: We push as hard as we can, set our initial build-complete date at the end of week 5 so we have a buffer, and if needed start cutting features from the robot in order to get it done in time.

  3. YES! Look for help any and everywhere you can get it!

  4. Someone has to take on the role of communication coordinator. On the mentor side, we use a group e-mail to keep in touch, and the faculty adviser ultimately makes sure things are moving correctly. On the student side, the captains have clear expectations set on which communications they need to send out. Outside of e-mail communications, we have a “wrap-up” at the end of every meeting where we cover any and everything that needs to be broadcast to everyone.

Ultimately, all of this comes down to recruiting mentors and setting up a strong structure for the team. With that, you can absorb most issues and keep on moving!

11

What everyone else said ^^

I want to Emphasize: Get something that moves, put together and at least get to competition with that. Best you can.

Other teams are a HUGE resource, get in touch with as many as possible. Call their school if you have to and ask for their coach to call you back.

12

Replies so far have focused on the shiny Robot (and Driver Station).

In addition to what the other folks said about building something that move reliably, and has some macros for autonomous, double-check that the teachers helping you are already shuffling the right papers to allow the team (plus chaperones) to travel to your event(s) (or that they have a plan to get that done early enough).

You mentioned teachers were trying to help, but you weren’t clear about how much they have accomplished so far, beyond being frustrated by the FIRST sign-up processes.

Blake

PS: If your team chooses to, it can have a fun and very valuable tournament experience without a robot. Tournaments love volunteers. Also, students who aren’t entangled with a robot can absorb new ideas (gotten from other teams) like sponges; can become scouting experts; can have chats with mentors, inspectors, guest speakers, etc.; can hang out together making plans for the next season (that include using this seasons parts to practice with for the next 10-11 months; can organize (ahead of time or impromptu) informal workshops or idea-exchange roundtable discussions; etc.

13

Thank you all for the great responses, and for those who have reached out through PM.

In regards to getting to the competition with the paperwork and such, I believe that we have a hotel booked and at the very least two chaperones that will be accompanying us. There’s a slight possibility of storage issues, as we have to fit everything we have under one bus, but we have some tentative backups in case that becomes an issue.

We have the AndyMark KoP long chassis put together and we are pretty confident that we can get the gear mechanism going when we get a hold of materials (hopefully tomorrow). Our rope mechanism is also pretty flushed out. With our seniors leaving last season, we only have one programmer who has other obligations when we usually have meetings, so we can definitively use help in that area if needed. Most recently we have had trouble connecting the roboRIO, router, PDP, and computer together, along with correct wiring of motor controllers and such, so help in that area would be appreciated as well.

We will definitely work on communication in the upcoming days - we use groupme and have had members leave and mute the chat due to mass communications happening over the span of an hour. We try to stress the importance of being up to date, but along with large posts of random chat its been a bit difficult to do. We plan on switching to Slack next year.

Again, thank you to those that have responded and given us feedback.

14

Reach out to YETI and the teams at the FIRST Zone in Charlotte. There are a lot of capable hands there. They should be able to help you out.

Were north of CLT and a little far away from you all, wish we could help.

15

PM me if you need still need help. What language are you programming in? We have a team of students set up as a ‘programming hotline’ if you need it.

16

Thank you, we’ll keep that in mind.

I’m pretty sure we code in Java, and the program we use is Eclipse.

17

  1. Team 4050 has been fortunate enough to have 12+ mentors to help with overall team leadership. Of those mentors, only a few are directly involved with the build, and the rest are administrative mentors/chaperones. It helps that we are not a school-based team, we are able to pull many mentors who are parents or members of the community. I would look in the offseason to see if your able to recruit non-teachers/faculty as mentors for your team. It takes a lot of people to run a FRC Team, and it definitely helps to have mentors to take care of administrative duties and the like.

  2. Our team has never been where we wanted to be at a certain point during build season, yet we always seem to pull through during the last few weeks. Once again, a recommendation for next year: plan out your season. Even if you don’t specifically adhere to the schedule, it’s good to have a plan.
    It’s always hard as a young team to gain momentum and direction, that gets better with time. I know from experience - I joined my team in our second year. My suggestion for this year: Sit down as a team and evaluate where you are, what your resources are, and where those resources can get you by bag day. Keep in mind that you can continue work on a certain poundage of material before your regional.

  3. Absolutely. Veteran teams have more resources than you can imagine. If we were nearer to you, I would offer our assistance (we’re in PA, let me know if you think we can help with something!)

  4. We still have horrible communication. All I can do is point you back to planning out your season. Have team meetings as often as possible. Update each other when you see each other. Find someone (maybe a captain) who can be the team communicator - making sure everyone’s on the same page.

18

1.) Has your mentor/coach dropped off the radar unexpectedly for family/personal reasons, and if so how did you get help to keep the team going?
2.) Have you been behind/procrastinating during the build season before? How was it fixed and stopped?
3.) Would you suggest reaching out to local teams for help?
4.) If you have had horrible communication in the past, how was it fixed?

  1. Mentors are not the driving force behind our team. Students take charge of nearly everything. Mentors merely provide some sort of direction and help if needed. The team goes so long as the students have a place to meet.

  2. We’re always behind where we’d like to be. Everyone is. The main thing is to make sure that you’re meeting often enough and you set goals that need to be met. We meet nearly every day for at least a few hours. Everyone has a clear job, so procrastination is kept to a minimum. The environment is more professional. There’s fun and messing around, for sure (this is necessary for a well-functioning team), but you, as a mentor, need to communicate to your students that there’s time for that later. The key is giving everyone a set job.

  3. Yes. Other teams that are miles ahead of where you are are probably very close by. And one of the core tenets of FIRST is coopertition. It’s probably going to be a very positive and enlightening experience for you.

  4. Have daily meetings. Make sure everyone is on the same page. Email. Use a messaging platform like Slack. Try to have some sort of bonding activity. Your students are not working for a corporation. They’re a team. They should be friends, and a lack of communication is a sign of other serious problems.