Port: The Drive to 2019

"So what are you guys going to do tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow we start the 2019 season."

A parent and I were chatting while tearing down the tables and chairs from our end-of-year banquet. In reality, we have already had a few meetings that looked forward to 2019 - retrospectives on what went well and where to improve from 2018, suggestions for recruiting, summer outreach and training, and general housekeeping. Or, literal house-keeping.

Throughout the past few years we've all been a bunch of Slackers. (Get it? Ahh I crack myself up...) Slack has been our main method of communication with channels for engineering and business, attempted integration for polls and project management, and general happenings for all members and alum. This year, we are taking on a new challenge, switching to BaseCamp3 for our new general communication, at the recommendation of a great team friend and current 449 mentor. We are also performing this change at the most challenging time of year - the summer. (But hey, we do these things not because they are easy, amirite?)

Finding/Making Time for Friends

We are fortunate that our close friend and 2018 Championship alliance partner is well, close to us! We have plans to visit with them for some quality team bonding. Along with 2910, we have been invited to 4th of July Parades and more team get-together's in our home region. This summer will also hopefully bring friends round to our house for our annual summer barbecue. Of course, we will make time to visit, e-mail, Slack, and smoke-signal our friends from around the world. (I almost fell out of my chair both mortified and grateful when I saw JVN shared my previous blog. Thank you! Next time you're in WA or I'm in TX, yeah?)

Even though the energy and enthusiasm of the competition has come to a close, the music never stops! We had a great time attending the Geek Gala for PNW teams hosted by 5588. (I still get super confused when I see familiar faces but no named/numbered shirts nor buttons...)

Six years ago, a young man on our team, through connections with his family, helped us bring STEM and Lego NXT kits to a remote school in Uganda, Africa. This past May we hosted a benefit concert at our school, raising money to aid in building a robotics lab at the Beacon of Hope School. While I personally wasn't present, I heard that the band rocked, and the crowd had an amazing time. We are so proud of our CyberKnights Uganda, and the outpouring of local support from teams, families, and friends here in the Seattle area.

We always find a night at the end of the year to once again celebrate and cherish the year, and specifically the years of service from our graduating seniors. Our chairmans essay talks about how FIRST imprints STEM, problem-solving, and college education, but 10,000 characters is not enough to tell the full story of any single one of our seniors. This year, our stage looked quite grand with lovely banners, medals, and trophies. The seats were full of students, parents, siblings, friends, mentors, and sponsors. The school principal was in attendance. After dinner, the head of schools Skype'd in from a personal vacation to congratulate the team and impress upon us the reasons for his continued support of our robotics program. We celebrated the innumerable contributions from our incredible mentors. We uh... goofed off a bit... (I for one, think our head coach looked magnificent with bunny ears during the talk about growth and maturity.) All in all, it was a fun night, bringing everyone together to close out the year.

One of my favorite repeat speech items from our head coach are the sports figure quotes. They are tremendous icons and models with experience digging deep and reaching for the stars, and some of them have pretty good words of advice.

• “Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.” – Pat Riley
• “Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement.” – Matt Biondi
• “Gold medals aren’t really made of gold. They’re made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.” – Dan Gable
• “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

The Question. The Plan. (Which Blue Objective?)

Capacity is a word that is very important in life. Capacity is very important to individuals, corporations, devices, robots, and more. Just as important as capacity, is capacity planning. Part of that conversation starts now, and we'll most likely have a re-hash again in the Fall. In one of the best powerpoints on Strategic Design, author Karthik posits that a robot might have 30 units of capacity, with a maximum of 10 units per feature. So which is better, a robot with 6 features but each at a 5/10 capacity? Or a robot with 3 features, but maxed out at 10/10 capacity units? Our method is to attempt CyberKnight effort and quality (10/10 capacity units) for every task we take on. We liken this to our team goals, with student availability and expertise being the available capacity. Though Summer and Fall seem like long amounts of time, we formally have fewer than 100 hours with mentor support for training and other projects in the lab (machine shop rules, need an adult, liabilities, yada yada yada...).

Our team runs off the two core targets for which we strive: Be the best robot and drive team we can be. Be the best role model and community team we can be. Really, these have been our goals for the past 5 years. Goals on their own are somewhat meaningless though, so we give measurements to determine whether we have met or exceeded our goals. This past year, our measurement for robot success (as it has been for several years) was to be an alliance captain on our Division at World Championships. This was presumed to be a lofty, 10-15 year goal in the making. We came suprisingly close in 2016, but smashed through this goal this year as the #1 seed on Carver, about 10 years sooner than even we thought was possible. (I promise we'll come down from this cloud one day.) Our measurement for being a role model team was to be recognized with the Chairmans Award at District Championships. While we achieved this measurable result in 2016 and again in 2018, we still retain this same goal. The Chairmans Award is always a moving target, and we use this goal to ensure that we keep our focus on building incredible people, partnering with incredible organizations, and giving back our knowledge and ability to those around us.

Every summer, we present these two concepts to the returning student body, identify our available capacity, and create agenda items that progress our core team focuses. The students tell us, mostly using the highs and lows of the previous year, where they want to spend the time, and where they want to improve. I'll admit, last year this didn't go entirely as planned. We filled a whiteboard with every possible outreach and engineering training we could muster, then said 'yes we NEED to do that' for every item on the board. Then when reality came knocking, we had our two main mechanical mentors show up every Thursday, and had an audience of about 1.5 kids. (I say 1.5, but don't worry, there were no bandsaw incidents.) Next month, I'll share our planning process, the screams, CAPSLOCK SLACK COMMENTS, and our slated goals and objectives for summer.

Advice for Graduation and Beyond

I have been mentoring for 5 years now, and every year, this time of year hits pretty hard with the departing seniors. Some joined up as freshmen four years ago and myself and the mentor crew have had the privilege to watch, learn, and grow over four years, others we see for one or two years, but for each of them, we recognize and cherish for their time spent, effort shown, and output produced.
Although my high school graduation was a simply mind-boggling eleven years ago, I have dug into my history, and gathered some wisdom and well-wishes to share with all of you:

• Eat healthy, get some sleep, and brush your teeth. No really. The freshman 15 is a real thing, and with most of you living away from home for the first time, the undue stress of college classes, finance to pay for college, meeting and un-meeting new and old friends, it really is a time of huge change in your lives. Treat your body to good food and good sleep, and avoid cavities. (source: I had 5 cavities my freshman year. Zero since. Cavities are no fun.)
• This is a personal preference and opinion of mine: Take a year away from your team. I know many students want to return, mentor, work with friends, and share in the success and growth for another year. In my personal opinion, take a gap year, but do go back and volunteer at events, or visit the shop on a given Saturday.
• Keep learning every day. Learn about your career space, be it in STEM, as a trades-worker, a service job, or others. If you buy a car, learn how the engine works. If you buy a house, learn how to plant a garden, do basic drywall repair, change a light bulb, or replace a light fixture. (Be thankful I am sparing you the recent tale of my septic system. See, it started with a simple enough job, where every 3 years it needs to get pumped but ---- no. wait. sorry.) Learn how to play a musical instrument (or drums. Which is definitely a musical instrument. Totally. I promise.) Always keep learning.
• Remember the lessons taught by your FRC team - How to collaborate with (and tolerate) others. Earn trust in those with whom you study or work. Take big problems and break them down into small, manageable, solvable problems. Make mistakes, learn from mistakes, and grow. Network with colleagues and friends. Take time to relax and celebrate events, and reflect on what they mean to you. Eat all the free pizza you can.
• "There's no way you can build a robot in 6 weeks as a bunch of high school kids. It can't be done." Great challenges can be accomplished. You can do it.