"Zem"asks:"How about the balance issue of teams capabilities, resources, and success"

FIRST General Forum
1

This was pulled from another thread

You forgot “Mentor Built Robots” :rolleyes:

This is an often topic and there have been hundreds of threads about this, but it’s a slow August before School OPENS!!! So lets take a crack at it.

  1. All of the top teams publish everything they know
  2. All of the top teams have students and mentors that will talk your ears off about what they know and can help you.
  3. Everyone has gone through budget travails they can tell you how to find more money

Every one of the teams will tell you it boils down to two things

Work Smart and Work Hard

Work smart is easy, FRC is over 20 years of “Did that and that Didn’t work” coupled with “Did that and WOW Did that work!” Most of it’ out there, go look it up, ask. You are at RIT/Connecticut area, you can’s swing a dead Talon without hitting another team. Go on a road trip and visit them all.

As to the Work Hard part, that’s all up to you and your team. But again look at the top teams at the end of build and the end of the season. They are crumpled around the robot on the floor, every last ounce of energy used up. That’s why they give out blue banners, they cover the team up as they quietly sleep to get ready for the next year.

Which isn’t really true, the top teams spent the summer looking at past errors, going to off seasons to try out new ideas and drivers.

Good luck!

2

I think Zem could have created this thread themselves if they intended for it to be a CD thread topic, and not a suggestion for a roundtable discussion on FUN.

3

Well Foster thought he would create it as a CD thread topic. Some people think differently.

4

The belief that the reason teams do poorly because they don’t work hard/smart enough is so incredibly out of touch.

The fact is in FRC, you can have tons of hardworking students, tons of mentors, tons of resources and tons of money and fail. There are so many reasons for this, mentor issues, culture issues, time restrictions, lack of support from community, etc.

Many many teams are created each year on foundations that are inherently unsustainable. It’s like trying to grow an evergreen tree in the desert. It might be possible to make it grow but it will take a lot of luck and an immense amount of resources. Even if it does take hold there is no guarantee it will continue to grow.

Unfortunately FIRST incentivises team creation over sustainability. I think there are a lot of thing FIRST and the FRC community could do to change this and there are good discussions to be had besides mentor shaming and student blaming.

5

Additionally, the public image that many of the leaders of this program project is one of “there is no problem” or “this isn’t that big of a problem”. It’s a HUGE problem based on the numbers.

The hardest place to start a FIRST team is where one has failed previously.

6

Seconded.

7

citation needed-- can you point me to the part of the FIRST sustainability study where this is explored?

8

I wish I could. I also wish I could tell you who I have borrowed that soundbite from. They know what’s up and I appreciate them loaning it to me to use.

9

I can’t back this up with data; only enough personal experience to believe it’s true.

Teams get started to fulfill a growth number without a sustainability plan and they have no technical mentors, a pile of money for 2 years which seems like plenty but only covers registration. Then they go to competition and rank terribly. Without any infusion of FIRST culture they don’t think about it as a success just to survive your rookie season, and it feels unfair that the top teams “are mentor built.”

The adults/teachers/administrators involved leave the program with a terrible experience, so when they are approached about starting a new team they fight tooth and nail against going through all that again. It takes significant work to either go around these people or to change their minds that their experience wasn’t actually bad it was just without the right context.

10

It’s almost like if you gave rookie teams resources to start off successfully they’d survive longer. Oh, idk, like instructions for getting a the KOP chassis running within the first couple of weeks instead of moving for the first time at their first event.

11

But that’s just part of the challenge right!? Back in my day we didn’t have any KoP chassis, and we had to build it up hill both ways!

12

And remove the back drive pins from drill gearboxes too!

13

Wow, that brings back some memories…

14

As for the mentor build bots, from my experience it seems that generally speaking the unsuccessful team have mentor built bots because the mentor what the help the team to hopefully do better while the successful teams have there mentor teach there students before build season and just guide them through the decision making process. Maybe i’m wrong but this is how it seems to me.

I agree that working hard is a basic key element but I also think having the right attitude is as well. I have met some teams that to me seem to just not have the right attitude and desire to really improve and succeed. And that is why they don’t get banners. I know teams that stop after build season and do not continue to work.

I wish I could so many teams but I don’t have the time.

I do not mind that this has been made into a CD post. I think CD has a lot of great ideas that could help with this topic. The reason I did not do it myself was because I saw the topic of FUN for tonight and thought it would be appropriate to post it there. Also I would love to hear those people talk about this topic. And lastly I did not know where I wanted to go with this.

mman1506 said :
The fact is in FRC, you can have tons of hardworking students, tons of mentors, tons of resources and tons of money and fail. There are so many reasons for this, mentor issues, culture issues, time restrictions, lack of support from community, etc.

While this may be true I personally only know of two teams like this. I would also like to add that I am not “mentor shaming and student blaming”.

I guess what I would like to know now is dose anyone have ideas of how to improve this problem besides educating teams on how to do better. For example the way the game is played or rules that would help this problem. For example in 2014 you only needed one good shooter and one decent one on the alliance. The third team just needed the ability to pass the ball. I think this was a good way to help low resource teams do well. In 2017 there were a lot of team that just had a drive train, a climber and some sort of holding device to catch gears from the loading station and deliver them to the peg. They could not even let go they needed a pilot to lift up the gear. I think games like this are great. The game allows extremely simple robots to do well.

15

People get so focused on “Good Robots” and “Good teams” and try to make better robots and become better teams.

Good robots come from good teams, good teams come from good programs.
FIRST Rewards teams that focus on the program.

If you want a better robot, focus on your program.
How do you interact with your school(s) and teachers? what can you do to make this better?
How do you interact with your mentors and their employers? what can you do to make this better?
How do you interact with your students and their parents? what can you do to make this better?
What about the people in your community not in the above 6 groups?

It’s important to remember that all of these relationships arn’t static. You can change a toxic relationship with the school ( the “our school doesn’t help us at all” problem, show up to a school board open meeting with parents/mentors and make a stink, then do it again the next month). you can also loose a great mentor and sponsor by neglecting them and not sharing what you are doing (Stuart from 2011 this is aimed at you).

Coming from the Dallas area I’ve watched 1296, 2848, 3005, 3310 all build great robots by building great programs (148 has been around so long I just see the results of a great program). and watch out for 5417 and 5431 they are making lots of investments in their programs that will pay out in the next several years.

Note all of this takes time ( more than a season) and resources while you are building a better program you may want to scale back the time and effort resources spend on the physical robot.

and after reading RaMoore, yes FIRST need to realign the FRC rookie grants with the realities of their competition.

16

“Work smart and work hard.” That is America in five words.

   This statement captures the essence of the American Dream, the magical idea that with hard work and grit one can achieve anything The American Dream is alluring because of the golden success stories it has produced: individuals like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ursula Berns, and Ben Carson. America is the "land of oppurtunity", where "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement". We are captivated by this dream because it tells us that we can achieve success through our own personal effort, independent of external factors such as social standing, socioeconomic status, etc. The burden to achieve upwards social mobility lies solely with ourselves.

This captivating dream falls short of reality. I won’t delve here into why this is true in American society, but only how it is true in FRC. Here’s an excellent article from the Stanford Alumni Magazine on decreasing social mobility in America: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=94665

To say that working hard and playing smart will make any team successful is a half truth. Yes, working hard and playing smart is how teams improve (obviously), but teams are also heavily impacted by their circumstances in ways the OP fails to appreciate. Teams get discouraged when they see how insanely expensive FRC is, how much technical knowledge is required, how hard it is to find tools, a build space, school support, motivated students, and funding. When teams aren’t provided good circumstances, they fold.

A rookie team can work hard, but they can’t play smart unless they know what playing smart is. Many rookie teams are started without technical mentors or experienced FIRSTers who can give guidance in everything from flashing a radio, understanding different motor types and their uses, training a drive team, contacting businesses for sponsorships, to setting up a project in VS code.

I think you underestimate how little a rookie team knows. I didn’t know a company called ‘VEX’ existed until week 1 of build season. The founder of my team didn’t know $6000 dollars didn’t pay for the entire robot. Rookies get hung up on agonizingly simple things, like flashing a RIO. My first CD post was my team asking how to retain items axially so they don’t slip off. We didn’t know where to turn for resources or help. We didn’t have a build space or machinery. Thank you team 6377 for inviting us to your build space and getting our robot to move!

Teams get discouraged when they can’t see the broader vision behind FIRST, the exciting possibilities robot design offers, and the amazing worldwide culture one experiences at a regional. In short, they can’t play smart without guidance.

I am working very hard to ensure the future of my team. I don’t know if we will exist in 5 years. I realized I was passionate to robotics listening to Coach Norman Morgan (of 2468) explain strategies for team success at my local kickoff event. My teammates were inspired by the generosity of teams at our regional, who helped us finish our robot and get it moving on the field. Without support and a strong community, don’t expect for rookie teams to succeed on their own. Sorry, it doesn’t happen that way.

edit: RaMoore succinctly described why rookies fail in his above post

17

When “deslusionary” was talking about the OP, not sure if he was talking about Zem or me, since we are kind of intertwined at the first post.

I think we all know that the rookie teams are at a huge disadvantage their first year of FIRST since they “don’t know what they don’t know”.

I think Zem was more interested in the year 2…n (based on their second post), they are surviving rookies, how to move forward.

And while I understand that the American Dream of “Work Smart and Work Hard” is broken, I think lots of people misunderstand and hugely underestimate the amount of work that competition robotics takes. (And this is reflected in rookie teams the most).

Money is a huge issue to teams. In the real world it’s a huge issue for companies. Granted in RW it’s easier to find funding if you have a good story, you’ll get more than your money back. But teams can find funding. But it takes a dedicated effort and it’s not the “fun building a robot here” work. I try to explain to my funding groups “you are the most important team, without you getting funding, none of the other parts happen”.

18

No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

19

Yes

20

I realized I misunderstood the OP there. While I spoke mostly from the viewpoint of rookie teams, I still think many of the same issues face 2nd year teams, just not as severely. Speaking from the viewpoint of my team, we have identified the key areas we need to grow in but sometimes lack the ability to grow in them (e.g. train CADers but we don’t have anyone who knows CAD well. Robot design is hard to self teach).

Second year teams have a clearer conception of the trivial details of FIRST and can identify where they need to improve, so you’re right, “work hard and work smart” nicely sums up what second year teams need to do. IMO Second year teams still struggle with knowing how to “work smart”.