Date: Sunday, 3rd December 2023
Author: Muyao Zhang
A Reflection before Sailing off into Hello World 3.0
After many weeks of bustling preparation for FLL National Championships, we finally managed to encounter with 44 top teams nationwide. During a fully packed day on 2nd December, we displayed our specialty, expressed our enthusiasm and teamwork spirit, learnt new lessons from our mistakes, and gained new experience by sharing with other top teams.
Even though we didn’t make it to World Festival, our FLL journey will proceed into the era of Hello World 3.0 and now, we cannot wait to share with you our review of FLL National Championships. Sit tight! I will cover 4 pros, 4 cons and 2 takeaways in this blog.
PROS — TO KEEP
Tip #1: Be wise with logistics.
On Saturday morning, our team arrived at the venue, Macquarie University, at around 7.30am to prepare and rehearse. The organiser is very considerate this year that the Pits, Judging and Robot Games are all planned in one building, which saves lots of time and energy of commuting. Like what we learnt from other teams before, we used a trolley to carry around our props, booklets, posters, and many other materials for later use.
Tip #2: Be sincere in building connections.
To cater for our biggest highlights of Hello World 2.0, we prepared gift bags containing jumbo-sized badges to promote Aboriginal art masterpieces and QR code to promote our website (https://flljourney2023-24.com), which proved to be very popular afterwards. So, when we finished setting up posters, our team spread out to distribute gift bags to peer teams and develop acquaintances with them.
Tip #3: Be respectful to winning teams and volunteers.
In the middle of the closing ceremony, every time after the hosts announced awarded teams, our team stood up to applaud for the winners as well as to pay our respect to them while we were also very eager to hear our name to be called. During our participation in FLL, we always put Gracious Professionalism as our top priority, and we firmly believe that learning is more important than winning.
Tip #4: Be supportive to each other.
During the judging session this time in FLL National Championships, we paid particular attention to every area of Core Values and focused more on supporting each other in presentation instead of talking over each other.
CONS — TO CORRECT
Personally, as the team captain, my biggest take away from FLL National Champions is to be more proactive and determined in assigning team roles. Rather than seeing one skilful teammate take on an important task, I should assign it to a group of responsible team members so that they can motivate and support each other.
Problem #1: Failed to prioritise important tasks before too late.
Right after we arrived at venue in the morning, our team started off with setting up, sort of omitting the importance of rehearsing for presentation together on laptop. Later, our luck didn’t quite help us at all when we were unable to connect to Internet in the judging room, and therefore, many well-prepared online resources in our presentation had to be skipped over due to lack of Internet connection. What’s worse, spending too much time to fix Internet issues at the beginning of the presentation also shortened our judging time and challenged the judges’ patience greatly.
Our solution:
I think from Hello World 3.0 onwards, we can organise different tasks into a timetable for competition day and prioritise certain jobs for a particular time session. We also need to improve the assignment of team roles, and for some important job such as IT support, we need to share it among a sub-group of responsible teammates who will report back to the team captain immediately once any problem cannot be fixed in a timely manner. Regarding the materials which depends on technology such as Internet, maybe we can prepare a Plan B (such as an offline version) which is compatible with offline conditions.
Problem #2: Storage and transport of robot can be done better.
As soon as we started our first practice session before round 1 of Robot Game, we suddenly found our robot fell apart due to transport reasons and we had to spend some time to fix it. Fortunately, our skills allowed us to restore it quickly for Robot Game.
Our solution:
I think from Hello World 3.0 onwards, we should place our robot in a sturdier container to carry around. Again, the improvement on assigning team roles could help here. For example, we can assign a sub-group of responsible teammates to look after robot, and they share a prioritised duty to check and maintain the robot throughout the day.
Problem #3: Innovation Project — short of other options for solution.
According to the feedback regarding Innovation Project that we received from judges, we lacked other options for solution besides our website. In fact, from Hello World 1.0 to 2.0, even though our research expanded to Aboriginal masterpieces and pixel art, and even though we received suggestions from First Lego League HQ to land in social media, the main solution for us to share with rookie teams is solely via website.
Our solution:
I think that from Hello World 3.0 onwards, for every single problem identified, we should find 3 or at least 2 different options as a set of solutions to cater for different occasions or different needs. Because different options have different strengths, this set of solutions can be as inclusive as possible. For example, besides the website, Apps, YouTube channel and social media can also be included as various options to share our stories with rookie teams.
Problem #4: Innovation Project — short of presenting decision-making process.
Similarly, based on the feedback regarding Innovation Project that we received from judges, we didn’t present the decision-making process, in other words, the process of how we reached the final solution from initial alternatives. For example, before we decided to proceed with website and blogs, we had thought about other platforms such as YouTube channel. However, we didn’t cover this process of comparison and selection actively in our presentation even though we answered passively to judges in Q&A session.
Our solution:
I think that from Hello World 3.0 onwards, we can pay more attention to including the decision-making process in our presentation, and if this process is too wordy and takes too much time to explain, we can use some innovative ways to present it vividly, such as via a series of comics, a short video, etc.
TAKEAWAYS — TO LEARN
Item #1: Be thankful.
Surprisingly in pits, I found many paper slips with grateful words on them were placed on our table and other tables around us. This is a very practical way to be thankful to other competitors and to show Gracious Professionalism.
Item #2: Be thoughtful.
In Pits area, I also found that team Project Bucephalus kindly offered Robot First Aid to other teams on site. Even though FLL National Championships is very competitive, besides our website and blogs, we can still reach out to help and support each other by sharing our materials (e.g., batteries, stationery, medical kits), skills and techniques on site with rookie teams.
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