Remaining SR2015 announce tasks

[Jeremy Morse]

Hi,

There are a variety of things that need to occur before we start
confirming places for SR2015 (due to happen in September). Broadly,
these are:

- Confirm the London Kickstart location (Sam is all over this)
- Generate schedules for Kickstarts so that we can announce them
- Upload detailed event information into event pages on the website
- Be certain nemesis/userman is ready for this year (See srobo-devel,
I'd like to generate accounts for teachers immediately).
- Wrangle the Team Leader Agreement scenario. This requires some
polishing (see #1890, #1592)

If there's something I'm unaware of, please speak up now. If you'd like
to help with one of these things, hit reply. I'm on holiday from the
24th to the 31st, so input would be greatly appreciated.

Finally here's a prototype Kickstart-and-place confirmed email I'd like
to send out to teams who get a place. It requires teachers to mail a
signed TLA to an address; I'd suggest this address should be me @ UoB,
for cohesion. We should probably also allow scan-ins to be mailed in
too; does anyone have any strong opinions on this topic?

I'd suggest the TLA return date be 22/09/14.

~

Hi $name,

We're pleased to confirm that you have a place in the Student Robotics
competition 2015! You should now start recruiting competitors to take part.

As mentioned, this years Kickstart is on the 18th of October, and will
be held in Southampton, Bristol, and London. An overview of the event is
here [0]. The specific details of each Kickstart event are on the
following event pages:

[links to events]

To evenly balance teams across locations, we'd like you to attend the
Kickstart at $location. If you'd prefer to go somewhere else, please let
me know (with reason) via reply email.

You will need to arrange transportation for your team to and from the
Kickstart event, as well as adult supervision for the competitors. The
electronics kit that you'll be bringing back from the event comes in a
35l "Really useful box", measuring 50x40x20cm and weighing about 6kg. We
also provide 4 1m lengths of aluminium L-section to aid mechanical
support in your robot. If you're unable to attend Kickstart, you'll need
to arrange for a courier to pick the kit up from us after the event.

Finally, we've introduced a "Team leader agreement" this year, please
see the attached document. The purpose is to make what we're providing
clear, and what we require of you. Please sign and return this to the
address below by $date (you'll receive email confirmation when we
receive it). We may offer your place to another team if you do not!

$mail_address

[0] https://www.studentrobotics.org/events/kickstart

--
Thanks,
Jeremy

[Olly Smith]

On Wednesday, August 20, 2014 5:56:58 PM UTC+1, jmorse wrote:

 - Confirm the London Kickstart location (Sam is all over this)

That's pretty gosh darn awesome 

 - Generate schedules for Kickstarts so that we can announce them 

 - Upload detailed event information into event pages on the we

So i've filmed a bunch of videos[0], which could be used at kickstart. The same kickstart video[1] can also be reused this year (i'll redo it for next year, a two year cycle is pretty good for videos). I'm also planning on doing an animation of the game, assuming we get the rules sorted out in time. 
Unless we want teams to watch videos for an hour, then it doesn't make sense to show all of the videos i've filmed (they may not all be ready by then anyway). But we need to factor this in. Please point me in the direction of who i should be speaking to about the kickstart opening talks. If there's no-one, and you consider me capable, then tell me what i have to do to organise it, and i'll get cracking!

[0] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/srobo-summer-school/Cswbb7UhzA8
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWb3JalwaUM

[Sophia Maria]

Hi everyone,

fist to the kickstart email:

Finally here's a prototype Kickstart-and-place confirmed email I'd like
to send out to teams who get a place. It requires teachers to mail a
signed TLA to an address; I'd suggest this address should be me @ UoB,
for cohesion. We should probably also allow scan-ins to be mailed in
too; does anyone have any strong opinions on this topic?

TLA has two many meanings ^^ I was confused what sending a three letter abbreviation meant for a second.

Why not @studentrobotics? If there might be a chance that minors end up using the address, we should probably use a srobo address.

A scenario would be an irresponsible team leader just looking for any address the students can use to contact us, so they should always only get srobo addresses. I am maybe overly strict on this because I didn't know about srobo addresses and moving everything to @srobo took me a while.

I believe scans only should be fine.

"You should now start recruiting competitors to take part."

This is a bit the wrong way round for teams who formed and then tried to find a team leader, as I have experienced always for the German teams. I don't know how much checking occurs on teams having team leaders during the sign up process - it is mentioned in the sign up page but how much this is ignored I don't know. Maybe rephrase that to something along the lines of 'You should now ensure to recruit a team of at least three competitors with you as the adult team leader'

I'd suggest the TLA return date be 22/09/14.

School in Bavaria starts on the 15th of September, the older students school trips tend to be in the first weeks after the holidays; this is quite a harsh deadline.

Kickstart organisation itself:

 - Generate schedules for Kickstarts so that we can announce them 

 - Upload detailed event information into event pages on the we

 

So i've filmed a bunch of videos[0], which could be used at kickstart. The same kickstart video[1] can also be reused this year (i'll redo it for next year, a two year cycle is pretty good for videos). I'm also planning on doing an animation of the game, assuming we get the rules sorted out in time. 

My expectations for the videos we filmed were that they would be available as additional instructions on the website, not that they would make a major component of kickstart.

During the last committee meeting I got the impression that the intention is to have more live presentations [1]

Unless we want teams to watch videos for an hour, then it doesn't make sense to show all of the videos i've filmed (they may not all be ready by then anyway). But we need to factor this in. Please point me in the direction of who i should be speaking to about the kickstart opening talks. If there's no-one, and you consider me capable, then tell me what i have to do to organise it, and i'll get cracking!

Some of the kickstart schedules will depend on the location of each. However it won't hurt to start a collection of things that need to happen at every kickstart, including plans for the mini/micro games and what topics need to be covered in presentations.

Since you are happy to take some responsibility for this I'd propose these actions:

-> start a thread to discuss the micro/mini games; keep an eye on it

-> start a thread to discuss the talks; keep an eye on it

-> dig out old mailing lists discussing the micro games, kickstart talks, kickstart improvements
maybe include a conclusion of those old threads in your starting email of eacht of those threads.

I don't know how comfortable you are with the web stuff, finding out what needs changing is probably a good start, doing some prewriting for the pages and maybe even a news item.

cheers

lilafisch

---------------------

[1] https://www.studentrobotics.org/cgit/steering-minutes.git/tree/2013-2014/2014-06-23/minutes.txt?id=f5ff5d83764af3aa0cb290dd6ac64ab3d4e8b0ae

under kickstart -> presentatio

[Peter Law]

Hi,

Jeremy wrote:
> - Wrangle the Team Leader Agreement scenario. This requires some
> polishing (see #1890, #1592)

It looks like you meant #1591 rather than #1592.

Links for the lazy:
* https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/ticket/1890
* https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/ticket/1591

Peter

[Peter Law]

lilafisch wrote:
>> Finally here's a prototype Kickstart-and-place confirmed email I'd like
>> to send out to teams who get a place. It requires teachers to mail a
>> signed TLA to an address; I'd suggest this address should be me @ UoB,
>> for cohesion. We should probably also allow scan-ins to be mailed in
>> too; does anyone have any strong opinions on this topic?

> Why not @studentrobotics? If there might be a chance that minors end up
> using the address, we should probably use a srobo address.

I believe that Jeremy is suggesting the primary means of transmission
of the forms be posting them to him. Student Robotics doesn't have its
own postal address (at least not as far as I'm aware).

You're correct that any email comms should be routed via
@studentrobotics.org email addresses (and using
arc...@studentrobotics.org or the school-comms.git repo as
appropriate [1]).

>> "You should now start recruiting competitors to take part."
>
> This is a bit the wrong way round for teams who formed and then tried to
> find a team leader

...

> Maybe rephrase that to something along the lines of
> 'You should now ensure to recruit a team of at least three competitors with
> you as the adult team leader'

I concur, as this avoids needing to work out which category a given
team falls into. I'd suggest 4 members was a more suitable minimum
number though.

>> I'd suggest the TLA return date be 22/09/14.
>>
> School in Bavaria starts on the 15th of September, the older students school
> trips tend to be in the first weeks after the holidays; this is quite a
> harsh deadline.

It might be useful to know how close this is to the start of the UK
term, but I don't really think that this matters.

Please correct me if I've misunderstood, but I didn't think that
returning the TLA was locking down the team at all -- it's merely the
teacher agreeing to what we're providing, and providing some
additional confirmation that they exist. I'd expect we'd get some of
these back before term even starts.

Peter

[1] https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/wiki/SchoolComms; I note that
this page might usefully be expanded to mention postal things too.

[Murray Colpman]

On 21/08/14 19:38, Peter Law wrote:
> It might be useful to know how close this is to the start of the UK
> term, but I don't really think that this matters.

UK term usually starts in the first few days of September - often on the
1st, which is especially likely this year given it's a Monday...

Murray.

[Jon Bartlett]

> UK term usually starts in the first few days of September - often on the
> 1st, which is especially likely this year given it's a Monday...

My term starts on Sept. 2nd this year - most places will be about the same.

Jon

[Sophia Maria]

Hi,

I believe that Jeremy is suggesting the primary means of transmission
of the forms be posting them to him. Student Robotics doesn't have its
own postal address (at least not as far as I'm aware).

Ah, as in send it to him on tree. I had somewhat only focused on email signed form scans^^
 

>>
> School in Bavaria starts on the 15th of September, the older students school
> trips tend to be in the first weeks after the holidays; this is quite a
> harsh deadline.

It might be useful to know how close this is to the start of the UK
term, but I don't really think that this matters.

Please correct me if I've misunderstood, but I didn't think that
returning the TLA was locking down the team at all -- it's merely the
teacher agreeing to what we're providing, and providing some
additional confirmation that they exist. I'd expect we'd get some of
these back before term even starts.

In previous years I always had teams that then still had to get a teacher involved. For that they need to meet a teacher, currently we just give them a week to get the teachers agreement.

However if that special case comes up (a team not being able to get a team leader on time) I'm sure we can find some solution.

If overal the 22nd is considered a suitable date, I'm fine with that.

cheers
lilafisch

[Peter Law]

Hi,

lilafisch wrote:
> In previous years I always had teams that then still had to get a teacher
> involved. For that they need to meet a teacher, currently we just give them
> a week to get the teachers agreement.

This feels like data we should already have. I'm guessing that a
combination of priv/teams.git and Jeremy's head would contain this. It
would be useful to know the number of teams which we don't have the
contact details for the adult team lead of.

Peter

[Harry Cutts]

Hi,

On Wednesday, 20 August 2014 18:56:58 UTC+2, jmorse wrote:

Finally here's a prototype Kickstart-and-place confirmed email I'd like
to send out to teams who get a place.

Just my usual set of small things:

 

The electronics kit that you'll be bringing back from the event comes in a 35l "Really useful box", measuring 50x40x20cm and weighing about 6kg.

Shouldn't this be an 18 litre RUB? (The dimensions are certainly of an 18 litre.)

<pendant type="grammar">

Finally, we've introduced a "Team leader agreement" this year, please see the attached document.

There are two sentences in one here. The second comma should be a full stop, or the words after it should be in brackets.

</pedant>

Harry Cutts

[Jeremy Morse]

Hi,

Peter Wrote:
> I believe that Jeremy is suggesting the primary means of transmission
> of the forms be posting them to him. Student Robotics doesn't have its
> own postal address (at least not as far as I'm aware).

That's correct, sorry for the actual ambiguity there.

Lilafisch wrote:
> This is a bit the wrong way round for teams who formed and then tried

> to find a team leader, as I have experienced always for the German
> teams. I don't know how much checking occurs on teams having team
> leaders during the sign up process - it is mentioned in the sign up

> page but how much this is ignored I don't know. Maybe rephrase that

> to something along the lines of 'You should now ensure to recruit a
> team of at least three competitors with you as the adult team leader'

My position here is that only team leaders should be filling out the
signup form, and the team leader agreement should flush out any
competitors who use the form (there's a field for "your relationship
with the competitors"). Having to second guess all the people who fill
in the form is infeasible.

Making it clear immediately that we expect them to be a responsible
adult isn't a bad thing though; I'd prefer to put this in the section
introducing the team leader agreement, how about:

"In the course of the Student Robotics year, we expect you to be the
'Team leader', responsible for corresponding with Student Robotics and
being the responsible adult for the competitors. Exactly what is
required of you, and what we provide, is written in the Team Leader
Agreement (attached)"

...followed by the sign/send sentence in the last paragraph of the draft.

We've never /actually/ specified a minimum bound on the number of people
taking part before. I don't think it's a bad thing, but if we specify a
minimum bound IMO it should be three, as we've had successful teams of
that size before (and that's sufficient for someone to be ill / drop out
and for the team to keep functioning).

Several people wrote:
> ...about the start of term dates

I subscribe to Peters position, it's about the team leader agreeing to
how SR operates, rather than finalising what the team is going to look
like. For which the 22nd seems a reasonable deadline.

Lilafisch wrote:
> In previous years I always had teams that then still had to get a
> teacher involved. For that they need to meet a teacher, currently we
> just give them a week to get the teachers agreement.

This is of course less than ideal; IMO we should keep the deadline, and
treat people who miss it on a case-by-case basis. Making it clear to
participating teams that there's a deadline they have to meet is what
makes things happen promptly.

Peter wrote:
> > [Do we always have contact with adult team leaders]

> This feels like data we should already have. I'm guessing that a
> combination of priv/teams.git and Jeremy's head would contain this. It
> would be useful to know the number of teams which we don't have the
> contact details for the adult team lead of.

Last year we had contact details (including phone number) for the
responsible adult via the signup form, except for EMM where it turned
out the gentleman who filled out the form was a competitor.

The previous year, the school in Poole had a teacher fill out the form,
who subsequently did almost nothing, which is what the team leader
agreement should counteract.

~

Lilafisch wrote:
> Some of the kickstart schedules will depend on the location of each.
> However it won't hurt to start a collection of things that need to
> happen at every kickstart, including plans for the mini/micro games
> and what topics need to be covered in presentations.
> Since you are happy to take some responsibility for this I'd propose
> these actions:
> - start a thread to discuss the micro/mini games; keep an eye on it
> - start a thread to discuss the talks; keep an eye on it
> - dig out old mailing lists discussing the micro games, kickstart
> talks, kickstart improvements maybe include a conclusion of those
> old threads in your starting email of eacht of those threads.

These all sound like excellent plans, however I infer that the
suggestion is for me to do this, yes? At this point I'm not volunteering
to arrange Kickstart content, only to corral/arrange the schools/teams,
sorry! I shall leave content mangling to Sam. Also, thesis thesis thesis
thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis
thesis thesis thesis thesis flat-badgers thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis.

--
Thanks,
Jeremy

[Sophia Maria]

Hi,

These all sound like excellent plans, however I infer that the
suggestion is for me to do this, yes?

No not at all, sorry for not being more clear!

This was me telling Olly, who seemed motivated, how he could get involved.

cheers

lilafisch

[Olly Smith]

On Friday, August 22, 2014 11:26:22 AM UTC+1, jmorse wrote:

Lilafisch wrote:
> Some of the kickstart schedules will depend on the location of each.
> However it won't hurt to start a collection of things that need to
> happen at every kickstart, including plans for the mini/micro games
> and what topics need to be covered in presentations.
> Since you are happy to take some responsibility for this I'd propose
> these actions:
> - start a thread to discuss the micro/mini games; keep an eye on it
> - start a thread to discuss the talks; keep an eye on it
> - dig out old mailing lists discussing the micro games, kickstart
>   talks, kickstart improvements maybe include a conclusion of those
>   old threads in your starting email of eacht of those threads.

These all sound like excellent plans, however I infer that the
suggestion is for me to do this, yes? At this point I'm not volunteering
to arrange Kickstart content, only to corral/arrange the schools/teams,
sorry! I shall leave content mangling to Sam. Also, thesis thesis thesis
thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis
thesis thesis thesis thesis flat-badgers thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis.

I can take care of the kickstart presentation in it's entirety, and i'll make sure that it's in an easy to digest manner that allows flexibility for multiple locations. Here's a rough rundown of what i'm thinking:

1. Intro video (same as last year)
 Blueshirt speaker: 10 min welcome to SR (london/soton/bristol) speech

10-15min talk/Q&A regarding the IDE, python
2. Blueshirt: "we've rejuvenated our youtube channel with over xxxminutes of tutorial content, here's a trailer"

 SR youtube trailer plays (30sec-1min) [Lila-before you ask, it'll be a tight squeeze to get all the videos done in time, and even then, even then there's now way kids are gonna sit through 1hour of videos]
Video finishes with Andy B's outro from "A history of SR's electronics" "The new kit is gonna blow you away"-fade to black
3. Speaker talks about the new kit, how awesome it is, look at the shiny tablet etc
4. Game animation video
 Blueshirt gives game Q&A

"Good luck and get hacking!"

I reckon 35-60minutes

-- I'm now away for Ludum Dare until Tuesday will get to planning this properly then --

[Sophia Maria]

Hi,

I can take care of the kickstart presentation in it's entirety, and i'll make sure that it's in an easy to digest manner that allows flexibility for multiple locations. Here's a rough rundown of what i'm thinking:

 ...

the point of the minutes I linked was: less video, more actual speakers. The goals I listed are not so much about making videos but more about starting a discussion about what we need to cover in talks, what will be in videos and what game activity the students will have.

cheers
lilafisch

 

[Rob Spanton]

On Fri, 2014-08-22 at 23:13 +0200, Sophia Maria wrote:
> the point of the minutes I linked was: less video, more actual
> speakers. The goals I listed are not so much about making videos but
> more about starting a discussion about what we need to cover in talks,
> what will be in videos and what game activity the students will have.

I'll just add to this that the whole idea of the new "quickstart" (that
term... bleurrrgh) format is that we spend as little time in the
introduction bit talking at teams as possible. This is key to
preventing mass boredom. So please let's limit the intro section to 20
minutes max, plus maybe 10 minutes questions max.

Rob

[Olly Smith]

Fine by me, less time means less work for me. So we don't get off topic, i'll leave discussion here, and come baack to this on Tuesday. if it's important enough, you can make a listpost yourselves:

Quickstart

4.40 intro video (same as last year)
1 min Blueshirt, "that's what SR is, now this year, we've revamped our youtube presence"
30sec SR youtube trailer video outro "now for this years kit, it's gonna blow your mind"
3 min blueshirt talk about what the SR kit is "made by Blueshirts, free to all teams for the year, it uses X & X & X also X, you'll be collecting it at the end of the day"
 Total 9.10 minute intro leaving 10 minute Q&A