BOPD3

Experience Gained:
On our team, we had one member who was previously involved in Botball. They participated in the 2018 season. The experience was still quite new to us, and some parts were amazing and other parts were disastrous. The most disastrous aspect we struggled with was programming. Everyone on our team had little to no experience coding so it was new to us and we all had to learn together and teach each other. We took a lot of time to learn this new skill, but it’s good that we did. We also learned a lot about the best ways to strategize. The main lesson being: don’t start trying to score with what you think the easiest points are; look at the highest scoring areas and choose the easiest of those. These skills are very useful to us and we keep them in mind as we prepare for Regionals and GCER.

Documentation Process:
The documentation process was actually enjoyable for team member 5. Our team agrees that discussing our goals helped us get on the same page and made our team much more organized. Being organized prevented us from being stressed about our upcoming competition and now we feel confidence in our robots, programs, and documentation. Documentation was a good way for our team to discuss our goals and how we planned to reach them. It was a good way to be required to meet to discuss important issues. GitHub was a little difficult because no one had previously used GitHub on our team (with the exception of a pre-conference) and the repositories were somewhat confusing to create, but it all worked out. The YouTube video was fun to make and is a good team bond building experience. Team member 5 is very old school, and still enjoys typing out documentation though. The possibly have a writing obsession. 

Surprises:
We were surprised by the timing this year as well as the reinvention of team homebase as a part of the KIPR website. As well as the new association with GitHub. This year’s documentation periods and time between Workshop and Regionals and Regionals and GCER seemed a lot shorter than last year. We ended up procrastinating more than we intended and we fell into the same sense of security that was present last year in which everything seems slow until you realize that even if you can’t feel time passing, it most surely is. In that philosophical way that time walks in its own circle and carries no one with it. Anyway, timing was our biggest caveat. Homebase being reinvented was just a little hard to get used to, but didn’t change too much overall. The new coding work with GitHub repositories was unexpected and a little annoying sometimes, but overall helped with organization of programs. 

Advice For Future Teams:
Hold team meetings often, maybe at the start of every time you meet. It will also help to get a binder with colored tabs, we did this, it was incredibly useful and is one of the best things ever. Add in the game review, scoring sheet, legal parts lists, robot designs, notes, strategies, and anything else you write down or take notes on. Don’t look for the easiest ways to do things. Study each piece. Nothing is purely accidental everything is manufactured in a certain way for a certain reason. Build your strategies around this and don’t just pick and choose. Come up with strategies before you build, and make sure everybody is programming to that strategy. Always run your robots at the same time and consider which parts of the game board they’re going to be in. With your GitHub repositories, when you change your code, add a commit to keep your repository up to date. Otherwise you defeat the purpose. As soon as you turn in Period One documentation start Period Two, you’re going to need more time than you’ll for each period. Procrastination will be the worst thing you can do to yourself. Lastly, work together and enjoy the experience.