This year, I had the honor of being chosen by my team as a Dean’s List semifinalist. While I did not make finalist, one question was asked in my interview that really got me thinking.
What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas in response to this question.
I love FIRST and I love many things about the program, however I do hold one opinion that might not be so popular. Throughout my experience as a student in the FRC Community, we had a lot of ups and downs having to deal with the craziest of situations. Eventually that storm cooled and we were able to focus upon the team and team growth. Luckily we got to go to St. Louis that year and managed to grow the team with many different passionate students.
However, looking back on that experience, the awards were a nice form of recognition at the time. But they are not what I got out of FIRST. Leadership skills, communication skills, electrical knowledge, mechanical knowledge, physics applications, corporate relations, and many more developmental skills are what I walked away with from the program. And it changed me.
Too often I find that Alumni and Mentors focus too much on making the robot successful rather than making the team successful. If I were to change one thing in FRC, it would be to put the students before any other drive. Failing as a student is just as valuable as succeeding as one. Obviously I think there must be a balance. But when it comes to a decision of machining a component, deciding on a design, programming a robot, and making many other team decisions, I believe that there is great value in mentors only providing guidance rather than direction.
After attending and watching dozens and dozens of events, one thing is clear to me. There should be some kind of FMS connection checker system available to teams and maybe at inspection to make sure all teams can connect to the field without a problem. I would have it available to all teams all throughout the competition so if they messed with any code or network stuff, they can double check to make sure they can still connect to the field before they actually head out to the field and place the robot on the field. Takes a huge load off the FTA’s while also making sure less teams sit dead on the field because of communication issues.
The vast majority of the FIRST experience is positive. Sure, there is always the Byzantine process that is inspection, and there are the occasional troublemakers that show up in any large crowd, and Recycle Rush was an underwhelming game, but negative issues/points are the exception rather than the rule.
The biggest improvement that could be made to the FIRST experience is to have MORE of the experience. Last year, 3946 won a berth to CMP, and it was transformative to our team members, and possibly to the team as time goes by. While the best teams in FRC were at CMP, we always get a fair cross section of CMP-playoff caliber teams at Bayou Regional. The things that most inspired our team members at CMP were the maker fair, the sponsor booths, and Karthik’s strategy seminar (OBTW, in reverse order). Finding a way to bring a slice of these experiences to regional (and district) events would be a big improvement to a great number of teams.
Another improvement that occurs to me is something we are working on locally - that of finding a way for nearby FRC teams to work together more often. This is the first year we have mentored rookie teams (two of them!), and I can say with confidence that their rookie years were much more successful than our rookie year on many fronts. This is the first year when we had more than a **very **few hours interfacing with members or mentors of other FRC teams outside of FRC and FLL events. We strive to build up our relationship with our neighbors in full realization of Gracious Professionalism. It may not be exactly FIRST phrasing, but this is how one of our recent drafts of our core values defined GP:
We build each other up, including our competition. Compete with grace, succeed with grace, fail with grace: always learning, always teaching, always inspiring.
I think this is an important aspect that would grow FIRST in a very positive way if utilized even more. Even teams that are not rookies should (and do, but more!) cooperate together on different pieces, helping each other succeed.
Agreed. After doing decent at a couple of events last year, the students started talking a third regional, or Champs waitlist. The mentors put their heads together and figured out that Champs wasn’t happening, and a third regional wasn’t going to happen last year.
Guess what the plans were this year? Yep, 3 regionals. And we punched our CMP ticket at the second one.
I wouldn’t mind having some workshops and other similar Championship elements at regionals. If they could be fit into the schedule, and there was space for them, that could be a great addition to the regional experience.
I’ve lost the earlier thread (I think started by Boltman) about match scheduling at Central Valley Regional. I suggested that there is a better way to schedule those matches so as that we don’t have oddities where the best teams (yes, there is sorting of abilities in FRC) don’t play each other or end up in alliances together during qualifications. We saw the same thing happen at Silicon Valley this year. 1678, 254, 971 and 368 never played each other and 1678 was allied with all 3 others. 3 teams were unbeaten and 368 could have been unbeaten as well.
It turns out that the NFLgoes through substantial schedule permutations to arrive at equitable constrained schedules for the season. (Baseball, basketball and hockey don’t have this problem because each team plays the others multiple times.)
Let’s not confuse “arbitrary” with “random.” Random doesn’t guarantee fair, especially if we don’t have multiple draws. Playing 1-3 events each season doesn’t guarantee that everyone will have an equitable chance. (And BTW, the current method is not truly “random” because it requires a seed value to get it started. This has long been an issue in statistical analysis.) The situation requires intervention to arrive at a fair schedule. No scheduling method will be perfect, but most efforts will be better than the arbitrary method used now.
Lower the cost of FRC events and increase access (Districts is one solution)
FLL increase access to more events, 1 QT is not enough
For anyone wondering, you can find out about the current scheduling algorithm here. You can also download it and try to create schedules for yourself.
I have to agree with the ability to have more teams work together in the build season.
This was my first season with FRC, and Metal Muscle 1506 is incredibly fortunate to have the FIRST Center at Kettering which we now share with 7 other teams. All of the teams located in the FIRST Center learned from each other, worked together and were able to lend a helping hand whenever needed.
I know building such a facility is no small endeavor, but it would be incredible if FIRST were able to have more of these facilities around the country and the world. I know they are building another one soon in Grand Rapids, but wouldn’t it be great to have more of them scattered around? Even teams that are not part of the Center could come in and practice on the field, talk about the robots, awards, designs and collaborate on everything FIRST.
How do you propose events know who the top teams will be while schedules are being generated?
Ban Andrew Schreiber from events.
That would certainly help my experience.
Safety Award reform. Less theater, safety escorts, and taped up signs. More focus on actionable and smart suggestions and practices. I dislike having to entertain or deflect safety captains who want to interview a kid on my team who is usually busy, or having to have an extra person in the pit to be “just safety captain”.
Banning any mascot with reduced speed/motion/visibility from the pit area.
At this point two things:
I know this has been discussed many times, and I don’t have a solution, but if I had a magic wand I would find a way to lower the financial and logistical barriers to entry. The district system is a move in the right direction and the problem will probably become more manageable as FIRST continues to grow, but we spend a LOT of time raising funds for travel and logistics that could be better spent on team development and outreach.
Interesting, I never realized this information was available.
For the Citrus Dad, if you notice the Algorithm rtfdnow linked to is from 2008. 2007 attempted to sort teams so the best teams would play against each other, rather than only with each other. They essentially proke the teams into 3 tiers by team age (team number) and each alliance was made up of one team per tier. Since Average team performance tends to be higher in older teams, this lead to high performing, young teams seeding well ahead of older teams with similar performing robots. This was widely seen as a disaster by just about everyone.
If memory serves FIRST actually solicited algorithm suggestions during/after the 2007 season.
If you have a good solution to the issue then write it up, and submit it to first. I am sure they would be willing to listen.
I don’t think anyone thinks the algorithm is perfect, but the luck of match schedules is part of the game.
I’d like to start with a disclaimer that this is a personal opinion based on my experiences.
Move all of FLL to elementary school, and FTC to middle school. We’ve had a lot of success with this in Michigan and I think it creates a really smooth pipeline for students to flow from one program to the next as they age. A clear progression keeps students engaged with age appropriate challenges and results in high school freshman that are ready to hit the ground running when it comes to FRC.
Pair this with lowering the barrier to entry/cost of FRC through district systems as regions/states reach critical mass of team density and you have a great progression of programs.
+1^
*Which go straight to HQ, funding neither team development nor local event improvement.
Reduce the registration fee for returning teams. Lower the entry bar to FRC so teams can have a little more cash to buy the stuff they really need.
Eliminate or restructure bag & tag so that all teams have out of bag work time between their events. The only teams that stop working after bag & tag are usually the ones that can’t afford to build a second machine.
Emphasize the team experience from the top down. Without the teams there is no FIRST, but sometimes it feels like the teams are secondary to the organization overall.