Stepping back from SR

[Olly Smith]

It is with a heavy heart that I am stepping back from Student Robotics, certainly for this year, maybe longer.

Student Robotics has two brilliant things going for it; incredibly skilled computer science students, who have produced software, hardware, & online resources that no other STEM competition could hold a candle to, and secondly, the overflowing passion of the volunteers, who work tirelessly to help educate and inspire students to STEM careers, going far above and beyond expectation.

After the results of 1750 [1], and the prior discussions [2][3][4] over the SR2015 game, I can now say that I am no longer passionate about volunteering for SR. Hence, I am stepping away.

I’ve truly enjoyed the time spent working with Blueshirts in person. Both as a 2013 & 2014 competitor, and as a Blueshirt at the 2014 Competition and Smallpeice summer school. You’re all wonderful people, who I‘ve learned a lot from, have great admiration & respect for, and consider good friends.

However, I feel that that defence mounted against the two proposed changes [2] to the flawed 2015 game was hostile from the very beginning, with ideas treated as opponents to be beaten rather than allies seeking improvements, that it gradually devolved into weaker and less rational reasons for keeping the game unmodified, and eventually, became, in my opinion, arrogance masking as ignorance, when presented with the mathematical certainty that two teams will tie in every match. That, and the fact that the decision was made by one person, rather than acknowledging the majority in favour of the change, shows a clear lack of respect from members of the SC for the rest of SR.  Rob, Sam & Chris, I’ll reiterate the above paragraph four and say that it applies to you two as much as everyone else, I have nothing against you as people, merely from a professional standpoint, as the way the whole situation was handled was unprofessionally by people who I have looked up to.

This does also mean that I will not be finishing any of the seven videos planned for release from Kickstart to Christmas.  I feel no obligation to finish them, but will be happy to give the raw footage to anyone who has need of it, as it belongs to SR.

SR is a fantastic cause, but an organisation that needs a hell of a lot of improvement. We all recognise that, and understandably, we all have different ideas of how that can be achieved. My personal view on the issue can be best summarised as;

-Being incredibly talented at computer science does not ensure any talent in the completely different fields of media, human resources, project management, marketing, teamwork, fundraising, communication, and organisation-

I wish you all the very best with all your endeavours, SR or otherwise, and hope that SR continues to grow and flourish as the inspiration that it can be to many. I’ll revisit this at the end of the SR2015 year and see if it’d be right for me to join in again.

Good luck and get hacking,

Olly

[1] Gerrit 1750 : Make the zone tokens worth 2 points https://www.studentrobotics.org/gerrit/#/c/1750/

[2] Mailing list : Capture the flag improvement discussion https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/srobo-game/0WsL2B42fa0

[3]Mailing list : Adjusting the game https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/srobo-game/W_7ZHfHgsMM

[4] Gerrit 1715 : Increase the number of tokens to 7 https://www.studentrobotics.org/gerrit/#/c/1715/

[Alistair Lynn]

Hi Olly-

> It is with a heavy heart that I am stepping back from Student Robotics,
> certainly for this year, maybe longer.

I'm sorry to hear that.

> Student Robotics has two brilliant things going for it; incredibly skilled
> computer science students, who have produced software, hardware, & online
> resources that no other STEM competition could hold a candle to, and
> secondly, the overflowing passion of the volunteers, who work tirelessly to
> help educate and inspire students to STEM careers, going far above and
> beyond expectation.

I echo this. I think credit also has to go the multitude of electronic
engineering students too, and others who have also contributed hugely
to SR over the years. Our current kit looks to be pretty swish, and I
really like how we can be a lot more relaxed and informal than other
competitions despite having, in truth, a much more difficult challenge
with the autonomy requirement.

> After the results of 1750 [1], and the prior discussions [2][3][4] over the
> SR2015 game, I can now say that I am no longer passionate about volunteering
> for SR. Hence, I am stepping away.

> However, I feel that that defence mounted against the two proposed changes
> [2] to the flawed 2015 game was hostile from the very beginning, with ideas
> treated as opponents to be beaten rather than allies seeking improvements,
> that it gradually devolved into weaker and less rational reasons for keeping
> the game unmodified, and eventually, became, in my opinion, arrogance
> masking as ignorance, when presented with the mathematical certainty that
> two teams will tie in every match. That, and the fact that the decision was
> made by one person, rather than acknowledging the majority in favour of the
> change, shows a clear lack of respect from members of the SC for the rest of
> SR. Rob, Sam & Chris, I’ll reiterate the above paragraph four and say that
> it applies to you two as much as everyone else, I have nothing against you
> as people, merely from a professional standpoint, as the way the whole
> situation was handled was unprofessionally by people who I have looked up
> to.

Over the course of the week before the rules freeze, I pushed hard for
the alterations you're referring to. Without going into details, since
this is a public list, I think they would have made for a better game.

However, I don't think that the result indicates a fault with the
process, or those who argued against the changes.

Sam and Rob argued for keeping the status quo because they thought the
changes made it a worse game. Rob gave a full explanation of his
argument against the changes in a comment in 1750, and while I
disagree with the premises of his argument, I certainly acknowledge
it's entirely valid. It's important not to be precious with one's
ideas but ultimately I don't believe that's what these discussions
were about. My only real complaint with how things happened is the
standard SR failure-of-communication problem, on all of our parts.

Chris is the maintainer of the rules. The rules is not a country or
even a charity, it's a document—an engineering project. The BDFL model
works very well for plenty of major open source projects (Linux and
Python come to mind) and while I disagree with the final decision that
he made, I have no objections to the way in which he conducted this
process.

The rules discussion is done. The game we have still has a lot of
points in its favour, and I can imagine any number of interesting
robots, clever tactics and fun matches that can come out of it. Yes,
there will be ties, but I'm certain we can find a way to deal with
that.

> This does also mean that I will not be finishing any of the seven videos
> planned for release from Kickstart to Christmas. I feel no obligation to
> finish them, but will be happy to give the raw footage to anyone who has
> need of it, as it belongs to SR.

Neither you nor any other volunteers outside of the committee are
under obligations to SR. It's a volunteering organisation and we're
grateful for any help we can get, but nobody should feel they're being
pressured by SR.

Thank you for the offer of the raw footage, I hope we can carry on
your work and get something awesome done with those videos.

> SR is a fantastic cause, but an organisation that needs a hell of a lot of improvement.

There are a lot of areas of SR that would improve with changes, some
of them big changes. It would be amazing if that wasn't true! SR is
not an organisation run by businesspeople with a history of community
building or management. We are engineers and enthusiasts; many of us
are still students. We're all learning as we go.

If there's something that needs changing, what we need to do is come
up with some new ideas and get the ball rolling on a new path.
Complaining about things, as much as we—I in particular—love to do it,
doesn't tend to get results. Action does.

We all know that SR has enormous difficulties in communication. It's
our major failure. That's why SR(A)WN is now happening—it's not a
panacea but it's a good start. It didn't need appeal to a higher
authority to get going—we just sat down in a doing and wrote the first
one.

> -Being incredibly talented at computer science does not ensure any talent in
> the completely different fields of media, human resources, project
> management, marketing, teamwork, fundraising, communication, and
> organisation-

Engineering hubris is something most of us are guilty of to some
extent. Sadly, it seems to come with the territory. I'm sorry if
that's made you or anyone else feel unwelcome at all, I'm sure I speak
for everyone when I say it's not our intention to exclude anybody.

> I’ll revisit this at the end of the SR2015 year and see if it’d be right for me to join in again.

Even if you're not volunteering there, I hope you'll come along to
watch the competition this year. It should be quite a spectacle.

If you do decide to put on a blueshirt again come May or so next year,
it would be great to have you back.

Alistair