In college in the 70’s I had one of the first 800 email addresses (Before Al Gore created the internet). So I’ve been online, a long time, possible since before your parents were born. So while I appreciate the lecture about “Social Media”, I’ve managed world champion Excellence Award teams before there was Social Media. I remember the Jones 677 and the amazing robots built by Green Eggs. They wouldn’t have cared about B03, B01 or B011. They would have gone “OK fine, that’s the rules, this is how we will win”.
And I walk the fine line between mentor, I work directly with 12 schools/ libraries that have IQ teams (total of 44 robots) and VRC teams at the MS/HS level. This year at states, the IQ teams took Teamwork Champions, MS teams took Excellence and Event Winners. So as we say, been there done that have the tshirt.
I’m also an EP, I ran or assisted with 6 VRC events and 7 VIQ events, VRC was the Delmarva Championship, the final VIQ event had 44 teams. I also helped at two different PA events. More T shirts.
So I see both sides of the coin. Our teams prepare for B01, they show up buttoned up, charged up, ready to play. I show up with events that are ready to go, minimal wireless on the VEX channels, ready to make matches work. I watch the lights and remind teams about charge levels, offer USB extenders to move VEXNET keys out of the middle of 20LBS of metal.
Two things happened. Alliances of three went away. You now pick your best partner and the two of you are not hampered with picking the 16th worse robot in your event to join your #1 alliance. But it’s once and done, so you need to play your A game.
B03 isnt’t coming back. Happy to watch @Anomaly do the Don Quixote thing and tilt at windmills. I do that too, I’m in a battle to get VEX to put the vision support in RobotC so I don’t need to mess with it for my VIQ teams. So I get that part. But at the end, B01 will prevail and at some point I’ll need to swap to VCS.
Thanks!
(Pro tip, your wall of text had valid ideas, but it’s hard to read as block of text. Paragraph breaks are your friend)