[candidate-sr2015] Sam Phippen for Events

[Sam Phippen]

Hello Friends,

I’m announcing my candidacy for the Events position on the Steering Committee.

If I win the vote, then I will only accept the position if the following SC positions are filled by the following people:
• Engineering: Rich Barlow
• Sponsorship: Rob Spanton
• Events: Sam Phippen
• Schools: Jeremy Morse

If this committee is elected we will run the SR2015 competition event in a fashion that is identical to SR2014.

I will resign from the committee on the 1st of June.

We have all also agreed to halt the current charity application process. We expect that it will be halted within the week.

Thanks
—
Sam Phippen

[Alistair Lynn]

Hi folks–

> Hello Friends,
>
> I’m announcing my candidacy for the $POSITION position on the Steering Committee.

>
> If I win the vote, then I will only accept the position if the following SC positions are filled by the following people:
> • Engineering: Rich Barlow
> • Sponsorship: Rob Spanton
> • Events: Sam Phippen
> • Schools: Jeremy Morse
>
> If this committee is elected we will run the SR2015 competition event in a fashion that is identical to SR2014.
>
> I will resign from the committee on the 1st of June.
>
> We have all also agreed to halt the current charity application process. We expect that it will be halted within the week.

I don't understand what you're doing. Could you explain what led to
the form letter and all-or-nothing requirement?

Alistair

[Peter Law]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for standing for a committee position and for the effort you
have put in over the last year or so in this role.

As you've noted previously [1], you've been on the committee for quite
some time. While I'll agree that during that time the competition has
grown and become grander, there are some aspects which have changed
little, and others still which it could be argued have degraded.

When applying for this role previously (July 2013) you said [1]:
> I enjoyed the competition this year immensely, unfortunately
> that experience was not shared by all Blueshirts.

To expand on this a little, the 2013 competition was successful from
the competitors perspective (in fact had one of the best climaxes
we've ever had), but involved lots of hard work from core volunteers
[2]. At the time I agreed with your assessment of the problem, and
still do.

Again quoting from your previous application [1]:
> ... <fire-fighting in> places where the organisation could have
> happened weeks before the competition. I feel that I can organise
> this event in a way that ensures everyone is on the same page
> as to what will happen. This is the only way to ensure that the
> community knows what is going on.

This was a reasonable aim, and I will agree that there was some
improvement during the SR2014 year. Many of the things were handled in
advance, and a great number of things were indeed publicised so
progress tracking was easier.

The most notable of the successes last year was the early and welcome
booking of a new venue. I remain perplexed that this success has not
been repeated this year.

There were a number of other aspects which left significant room for
improvement. Notably:
a) a very large expenditure appeared without any apparent oversight [3]
b) at a number of times it felt like you were unaware how the planning was going
c) setup at the venue ran into significant time-pressures, despite the
many blueshirts around
d) you have openly acknowledged a that communications with the Bristol
branch had to be routed via you, yet did nothing visible to alleviate
this bottleneck
e) I personally was not pleased with the handling of the competition software

Since (a) has already been examined, I'll skip to (b). I believe that
you had commented at the time that you had a limited amount of time to
dedicate to SR due to work pressures. Is this something which has
changed since last year? If not, do you believe that you really have
enough time to fulfil this role and avoid the issues which it caused
last year?


Moving on to (c), the setup at the venue didn't feel very well
planned. I'm not sure how much this was down to you (it was not clear
who had planned it; Rob seemed to take charge at various times), but
it was your responsibility. There were a number of things which many
people felt could have been done differently, and often the many
blueshirts were left without anything to do due to tasks blocking on
other things.

The largest of these were the arenas where (when it finally came time
to erect them) only a very small number of people were allowed (and I
use that word since many others did offer to help) to take part
despite having experience putting up similar structures both for SR
and other events.

What do you plan to do in order to avoid the task ordering issues we
hit last year, and will the details of the plan this year be made
available to the volunteers in advance?


I don't have any further specific comments on (d), though I would
appreciate a statement from you about it.


Lastly, I like to look at (e), partly for the specifics of the case,
but also the general pattern it suggests.

SR has a somewhat troubled history with software for use at the
competition. Following from the comparatively successful SR2013
software you and I spent afternoon talking about what further was
needed, and detailed some requirements [4]. I had understood that you
wanted me to work on improving the software for SR2014, and said I
would do as much in the referenced list post.

I was therefore stunned and insulted when you ignored this and decided
to write something afresh [5]. While I'll admit that the resulting
software (though it bears very little resemblance to the original you
presented) is probably better than the SR2013 suite, and certainly has
been more successful in being used and providing information to
everyone, I remain unimpressed by the way this was handled.

I, among others, have since continued improving the SR2014 software
for use in SR2015. At this point, however, I feel compelled to ask:
Are we likely to experience a similar replacement this year, either of
this or some other aspect of the event?


I sincerely hope that you will consider the topics I've raised here
and respond to each.

Thank you,

Peter


[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/srobo/udNPcp9lsNo/TPJfprxJ4oMJ
[2] "Fire Fighting: How the SR2013 Competition really worked"
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/srobo/iMDSxsp0vVo/discussion
[3] https://www.studentrobotics.org/gerrit/#/c/1535/
[4] "Competition Software User Stories"
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/srobo/rMEgT4j3PiQ/discussion
[5] "really good competition software"
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/srobo-devel/RnKHDXOu_qs/discussion

[Rob Spanton]

On Sat, 2015-01-24 at 23:12 +0000, Alistair Lynn wrote:
> I don't understand what you're doing. Could you explain what led to
> the form letter and all-or-nothing requirement?

I think Jeremy's recent email summed this up well [1], and I share the
general sentiment he expressed in that email. Delivering the SR2015
competition has been my focus since around June last year, and following
through on that commitment to all of the teams involved remains my
commitment.

Thanks,

Rob

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.robotics.srobo.general/6089