Brief

This document shows the history of what happened regarding competition selection so we can learn and improve in the future.

Competition 2023 Roster Selection

The method and timeline of selecting comp attendees in 2023 was questioned a few times through the winter term leading up to comp. This was because:

• Roster was decided in January, 4 months before comp

• Comp list was discussed in 1 meeting before the Discord role was added to peoples' accounts

• Comp list was under very little outside scrutiny and was not made obvious to the general, wider team

Reasons for the above occurring includes:

• Lack of visibility in leads meetings - they aren’t locked to just leads, but there is low-to-no attendance of regular members, and no initiative to share meeting events with regular members

• Lack of communication between leads about when or whether or not the travel team names were finalized

• The number of cars was intended to be finalized early, to book enough of them. This pushed forwards the entire decision-making process, albeit unintentionally

Issues seen at competition were:

• During competition, the team was not a fluid unit, and was instead divided into 2 main groups by role - either working on the drone directly, or working on presentation and report

  • Caused communication difficulty and felt like there was a disconnect

  • Members who did not have space in the pit were distant from the rest of the entire competition, and did not network or associate much with other teams or sponsors

  • Uneven distribution of responsibility

    • Even then, some responsibilities were not covered at competition

• Lack of conflict management and a communications rift within the team in January led to an event in which the technical adeptness/ project scope of attendees was questioned

• In the week leading up to comp, it was felt there was injustice in how the travel team was chosen

  • Whether or not attendees should be required to commit to spending time working on the project prior to comp (at least in the week prior to comp, when the team is spending time making fixes, flying, and preparing every day in the bay)

In future competitions, we aim to minimize these faults and provide a more justified, open method of selecting comp attendees!