A competition of Sponsors or High Schools?
 

As I looked through most of the teams registered I saw one occurring problem.
The sponsoring company was listed before the actual High school or High schools. It's just me but would it not make more sense for the actual team to be listed first and then the company who is sponsoring them?
It is the High Schools that are competing against/with each other I would hope.
Not the Companies that are competing against each other.
Being a past Robotics team member and now a mentor I would like to see more attention put towards the students working hard to learn.

The team I mentor on has the problem, the Sponsoring Company is listed before the school.

Oh, well maybe I'm wrong...

Yeah, I brought this up before.
They actually announce the Companies before the School's name at the competitions as well.
I think the same as you do, that we should be First at the top of the list, but I guess FIRST hasn't picked up on my little pet peeve yet!!

That's how FIRST decided to arrange the Team Information Management System. We don't have any choice regarding the matter when it comes to how things appear on the program books.

The team short name, however, can be anything you'd like.

I feel that the companies should come first. In our case our sponsor puts up a large sum of money. My ego is able to play second fiddle to the one who pays for me to play.

Ken Loyd
Teacher/advisor
Team 64

When our team goes to Competitions, we are reconized by our team name and not our sponsors. Are team name also comes up on the score board. But yes, to the first post, I think the high schools should be named first.

I'm going to have to agree on this one. In the pat, our sponsor has given more than $50,000 and I think a little name-recognition is the least they deserve.

<rant>
The one thing that does bug me is the teams where the the competition itself is run more by the engineers and sponsors than by the students. There is nothing that makes me more angry than walking by a pit area and seeing 5 engineers busily working on the robot while a 15 students sit in the aisle and play cards or sleep. I'm not saying that the engineers should have no role at the competitions, quite the contrary in fact. I believe they should be there to teach students when something goes horribly awry and none of the students know how to fix it. For example, when our arm pivot snapped in half two years ago, we had no idea how to get the broken part of the screw out since the head had snapped completely off! One of the engineers then showed us how to drill a small hole to get it out, but he let us actually do it. Yes, the engineers want to win and they deserve to given the amount of time they put into FIRST. However, they should win by being good teachers, not by being good doers.
</rant>

Baxter Bomb Squad
 

In my team we don't even list the name of our highschool. Our sponsor's name, Baxter, does come first, but that is only because our team name is "Baxter Bomb Squad."

I think you are reading WAY to much into this whole thing with ur theory of "if the sponsor name comes before the school name then the kids are not involved" sorry man, but thats pretty ridiculous.

agree
 

I totally agree with rbayer.
The sponsoring companies do deserve respect and so do the engineers. In fact there are many teams that have the post the sponsoring companies name on the team shirts, banners, robots, buttons and other team paraphernalia.

rbayer is also true in the fact that many times you walk through the pit and see students sleeping and doing nothing when the adults take over.

Our team was guilty of that this past year.

Some times adults forget why they choose to help the team in the FIRST place.

To teach, not to win.

Such is life.

__________________________________________________ __
CHARGER ROBOTICS
THE FLASHBACK #168

I think sponsors should go first when announced and on the team list because of what they put into it. The teams get recognized by what they they do at competition (Spirit, Robot, etc) and the sponsors sometimes seem to just be along for the ride.

In my experiences, sponsors have put almost as much effort into helping a team as the students.

On top of that, nobody knows Blargdenville High in Egypt, but they might recognize their sponsor Stuff Electornix, Inc. If that made sense to you, congrats, it makes almost no sense to me.

On the topic of engineers working more than students.. totally right. If an engineer is working on a bot, fine, but if a student isn't being a big part of what the engineer is doing, they aren't learning anything.
But on the other hand, the students need to be willing to help out too.

When a team destroyed our tether arm last year at GLR, we had 2 engineers, 2 parents, and probably 6 students all working on sections of the arm to rebuild it before our next match. Thats how it should be, not 3 engineers working with a student.

The number of students working on a particular section of the robot should always outweigh the number of engineers, and so should the amount of work each of them do.

The sponsors should go first, because in a sense thats what each team is "selling" to their sponsors. You would want to pay for a super bowl commercial and not have it aired until after the post-game, putting the sponsors second is the same way.

First of all, what about the teams with no High School and only a sponsor? Some teams have one common sponsor and five different High Schools.

As to this:

This is something that has come up into debate time and time again...and it's taken my 3 years of participation to really figure out my opinion. Now, I am not trying to start a debate, just sharing an alternative point of view.

First off: I am from a team with very little sponsorship and the bot has been student built every year. So, yes, I do understand the feeling of walking into a competition with a robot built by 10-20 high schoolers and realizing that I'm competing against teams in which the high schoolers just polish and drive their bots. It took me a while to not be so frustrated about this, but this is the opinion I have come to...

Deep down, you have to look at what FIRST is about: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. These means, lets get kids pumped up about science and technology. This doesn't say, get kids to build a robot and compete. So looking at the fundamentals of FIRST, what does it matter who built it, as long as the team has worked out a way to excite and inspire the kids?? I think it is up to each team to figure out their system of instilling the spirit of FIRST into each kid, and if they can do it, great!!

Fundamentally the focus of the program is the kids, not the competition. So what does it matter if your robot gets crushed as long as the kids have learned something from it? I say, go to the competition and have fun. Learn everything you can from the other teams …. learn from their mistakes and learn from your own.

My friend Bill said something to me that also helps make my point: “They can't say something like ‘I bled all over that part when I was making it.’ So, it's a lot harder to get the same inspiration when you have no part in actually building the robot, but I believe that I've got no right to rag on teams who build the robots for their kids, as long as the kids are inspired and having a good time.”

I think that’s everything … it’s all good as long as the kids are inspired.

Top billing for sponsors is NO problem...

When schools pay the registration fee and do all the things the sponsors do then they can get top billing. My school doesn't offer the cash... or complain about the thousands our sponsor gives the team. I'm overjoyed that we have our sponsor and that they want to work with my students. I know of other teams that wish they had the same support.

If giving the sponsor top billing doesn't work for you try running a team without a sponsor. Then the school can get all the credit and more power to them.

As for the engineers vs the kids working issue- well Dean addresses that every year. Time to let it die. Motivation is the goal, not equity amongst teams. Build your team to the point where IT is excellent. The robot is just a side project. Winning is nice but it isn't the only goal here and nothing says an adult engineering team can build the best robot anyway.

BTW- in 2000 at the kickoff, Dean Kamen made the statement that one of his goals was to see every Fortune 500 company involved in FIRST. Maybe that explains why FIRST gives top billing to the sponsors.

... but in the end, it doesn't even matter
 

This is one of those types of political issues that I think distract from the purpose of F.I.R.S.T. Does the order of announcement of a team name really matter? Far too often teams got way too caught up in these unimportant matters, when the concentration should be on giving the high school kids the best experience possible. We all are guilty of these at some times. I have seen many teams (including the team I founded) nearly torn apart and almost discontinued due to things like who gets to be in the team name and on the T-Shirts. What part of the team that is announced first is another of these matters.

- Patrick

How about just the "team name" and home town for start-of-match announcements?
 

I don't have a strong feeling about the "order of listing" issue, but for the announcements at the start of matches, using the team name, in our case TechnoKats, and the team's home town would seem to make sense. The sponsors and school names are displayed on team shirts, in the pits, and in the competition programs, so those who want this information have plenty of access to it.

If a team choses to have the sponsor as part of its team name, then so be it. This is up to the individual team. These team names become part of a team's "persona," and there are very good and catchy team names like Baxter Bomb Squad that include the sponsor's name, and there are very good ones like WildStang that do not.

Regarding the whole team name thing, I feel that it is a good thing for a team to have a name that is at least a little "catchy" or memorable. Coming up with one can provide a little creative work for the marketing departments of teams which have no "team name."

I don't find it odd. The order doesn't really matter, and the sponsor's name first is pretty common in this type of thing. For example the hockey rink the Panther's play in is called "The National Car Rental Center". I can think of lots of examples like this. When the announcer says "Team 108 Motorola & Dillard High School & Taravella High School The SigmaC@Ts" noone expects to see a cell phone take the feild. Personally I tihnk it would sound kind of out of place the other way around. I guess FIRST could give teams the choice of how they want it, but I'd tell them to leave Motorola in front. Just like National car Rental paid to get their name on a hockey rink, Motorola paid (in time and money) to get their spot. If anything, I would say they didnt pay for it so much as earn it. Without sponsors there would be no FIRST.

I don't have a problem with the sponsor's name coming first, this way the last thing you hear, aside from the team name, is the high school. Anyway, noone is going to remember the high school's name, it is much more practical for a team to be recognized by their number and team name.

On the alternate topic of this thread: last year we were a rookie team working with the University of Washington, and we had a little bit of a problem with high school involvement. This year thing are looking much better, but what I really want to reant about is the difficulty of working with a college. There is almost 100% turnover in the college student mentor group, so the question arises, who is mentoring who. Oh well, I guess we will see how it goes..

You've got to keep in mind that (usually) it is the sponsor that is putting out the big bucks for a team to be able to function. And as someone said before, some schools have a bunch of high schools involved with one team. We just incorporated the high schools involved with our team into our team name (N.E.W. = Appleton North, Appleton East, Appleton West.)

Rbayer - I completely agree. It really irks me when I see engineers working on the robots in the pits and whatever - not because I don't think they should be involved, but because I feel it's a better learning experience for the kids to actually be able to do something, and work on the robot than to stand around and say "Oh, cool. Look at what my engineer is doing." That's why I love our engineers. In the pits, and especially during the build season, if we need to build or fix something, our engineers step back and say, "get to it," rather than saying "oh, ok - watch me while I fix the problem." If a kid can be inspired by just standing around and watching an engineer work, that's fine - but I really think they are missing out on a lot of the experience of being in FIRST if they just sit back and polish wheels or something.

All in all, I don't think 'sponsor before school thing' is a huge deal. Just because the sponsor's name comes first doesn't't mean that the students don't do any work. How you can even deduce that just from how the team is announced at a competition is beyond me.

- Katie

This same subject comes up every year like clockwork, taking the view that the students should be doing all of the work also requires that you have a group of students who are capable and willing to do the work. On our team, as well as on many other teams there is a group that is hands on that wants to fix, and build parts for the robot then there are others who would rather walk around and watch the event. If a team has all students working on the robot, great, all engineers, hey that's their deal also great. I still stand to my feeling that FIRST isn't about creating a team of machinists and welders, you don't have to wrench on bolts to be excited or 'inspired' to go into engineering. In fact as an engineer my job NEVER requires that I machine anything or assemble anything.

Ohhh well this thread should have 100 more posts going either way before the kickoff

My team's robot is pretty much done completely by students. We get a bit of help from former team members but they just contribute a few ideas and give us advice as we need it. We also have some teacher support but they ususally just supervise us. In our pit you will see students doing all the work.

I do not think that most of the companies that donate money to a robotics program do it for the name recognition. Do companies like Johnsons & Johnson really need to build name recognition? When i look at the names i personally am more concerned with the school that its from rather than the company that gives them money.

Of course, this is coming from a guy whose on a team that hasn't seen a sponsor or an engineer in over two years, so...

I really think its pretty much arbitrary...It doesn't really matter that the corporations get their names announced first, if the High Schools were announced first its not like it would really change anything.

Also, I'm sure that the motivation for many corporations is name recognition. The engineers and people involved might not care about the companies name being up their, but the people who justify the amount of money being put into the program probably do. So, I think its a good thing to show those people how important the sponsors are and how much good publicity it is. I think it comes down to that we should make every effort to try to make the sponsors feel good so we can attract more of them, cuz more sponsors means more teams involved means more kids who can get this wonderful experience. Theres really no reason we shouldnt do it, is what Im saying.

I agree with Chris. I think the sponsors care more about what FIRST is all about than getting their name shown on a FIRST score board. If it was the other way around, think of it, it would be like the Bud Light Boston Bruins, or the adidas NFL.

When I first pitched a FIRST program to my administration, I was told in no uncertain terms that there were strings attached to using my sponsor's name. (In this case, top billing.) For those teams that have NASA sponsorship, top billing is also an issue.

You will probably find that many sponsors have expectations about how their team behaves and performs at competitions. The team is a reflection of the sponsor (as well as the high school) and usually the sponsor has a vested interest in that reflection being positive.

I don't want to belittle the importance that high schools play in the competition. However, usually, the sponsor is performing the service and the high school is the one being served. In that respect, it seems reasonable to throw the poor sponsor a bone.

Andrew
Team 356

From a different angle, the topic "A competition of Sponsors or High Schools?" could also be about what you brought up. Students should be the one building this because it's their project. Too many teams show up just to drive what their engineers built.

The competition is for High Schools not their sponsors. FIRST isn't a competition of sponsors, the intention I won't believe is to have all teams with big name sponsors that can build a robot for the kids. Note "for the kids," not by the kids. I don't think who goes first in announcement matters at all, I assume that is up to the team and sponsor, they submit the information that gets read off before matches.

Sponsors getting top billing in just their name isn't a bad thing, but building a robot for the kids when they do little or no work on it is bad. You can't learn by osmosis in something like FIRST.

Yes, Matt Reiland, it's true not all engineers need to machine things, but the build process is a mechanical engineering program and I'm pretty sure Mech. Eng's need to machine and assemble things.

Gadget,
Yes - Engineers do turn wrenches - but that and your comments are "off topic" - the topic of this thread is about "whom gets top billing (name is listed first)", so before this thread turns into the annual debate about which way is better or "who builds the robot"?
I suggest not going there, because that debate is circular and unending - I've seen it, read it, and participated in it for 7 years now.
We are all 1 week away from one of the most exciting and invigorating 6 week time periods, that most people involved will have an opportunity to participate in. This upcoming 6 weeks of work, sweat, thinking, designing, building, talking, discussing, turning wrenches, wiring, programming, drawing on chalk boards, eating pizza, drinking mountain dew, with the students - is what the FIRST experience is really about. Some teams are more fortunate than others (and that depends on how you look at it I suppose) in that the experience, is shared with Educators, Engineers, Parents, Mentors, Friends, and other Students. Some teams are not, but that doesn't mean that the experience isn't a valuable and important one to them.
Frankly. I really don't care who gets listed first or last. That, in my humble opinion, is as trivial as who builds the robot -- I hope everyone gets to experience something very very special this season.
Good Luck to all, enjoy the ride!

As Mike said, who does what work on the robot is off-topic in this thread. Since this topic comes up so much, go back and read some of the thorough discussions on student vs engineer built robots: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...?threadid=2648 and http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&threadid=2296 plus more if you search hard

After reading those, if you want to continue the discussion start a new thread, but expect it to get heated :rolleyes:

Mike

Side Note
 

as stated in the beginning of my post, I was refering to the topic itself not the subject matter.

Without getting into the areas of discussion in the rest of this thread, I do need to correct one item in this quote. NASA does NOT require top billing in the names of teams that receive grants.

The very first requirement listed in the grant application is that NASA must be listed as one of the team sponsors, but other sponsors can be listed before or after NASA, as appropriate (as determined by the team). We believe that it is appropriate to list NASA as one of the team sponsors, since the awarded teams are receiving $6000 from NASA, but we also recognize that teams will have additional sponsors that may be contributing more funds or support to the teams (in fact, one of the purposes of the grants is to help rookie teams get "breathing room" to allow them to bring in long-term sponsorship while they are building their first robots). If the team determines that it is appropriate to list other organizations with "top billing" based on their support, that is fine with us.

We just want to be clear about what is, and is not, expected by the teams that are receiving NASA funds. There is at least one case in past years where a team turned down a grant award because they did not completely read the grant application forms and had the same misunderstanding noted about about how the NASA sponsorship should be recognized.

If your team has received a NASA grant, and been told anything different than this, your source of information is incorrect.

-dave

hmm, well,
 

id say GM deserves to be announced beofre our school. that and we have kids from 13 different schools. hahah, so i guess nevermind

I want to apologize to Dave and to NASA for my loose wording of my earlier post.

However, when FIRST enters the information in TIMS for NASA sponsorship, it puts the NASA center first. This is a FIRST thing, not a NASA thing.

Andrew
Team 356

word my homey. in seven days...it won't matter. all that'll matter is how fast can you turn those screws, not whether it is a student or an engineer turning the screws and who's name comes first.

We are free to change the order to our liking. I'd imagine that FIRST places NASA on top precisely because of the reasons Dave mentioned; they aren't aware of each teams sponsorship arrangements, and it is best left to the teams themselves to decide.

If a team doesn't change the arrangement through TIMS and gets into trouble for it, there is no fault but there own.

Solution: Alphabetical Order. Think about it.. if the school is something like Quitzelton High, they go after, if it's Aardvarkville, they go first. :)


(No i'm not serious)

What's become of FIRST?
 

My two cents:

Where do all the politics come from? Why do people rant back and forth as to what comes first, the sponsor, or the school? Are we so swept up with political correctness where we cast aside the true spirit of FIRST to argue whether students or engineers should build a robot? I joined FIRST so I could get hands on experience in the world of design/development engineering, both mechanical and electrical. I did not join FIRST to watch and say "gee, that's cool," or say "that's nice, when do we get to go to florida?" I guess that's just my opinion, coming from a team with no sponsor but our own fundraising efforts, and not enough support from our "school" to pay the registration fees. As far as getting "inspired" about science and technology, there's only so much that can be learned through watching and waiting, but an entire world of wealth that can be learned through doing.

Team Hammond is not a technically a school activity in Hammond... we're sponsored by the School City and have a S.C.H. worker as our coach, but we are a joint effort of the 4 high schools in the city... very rival high schools i might add, which sometimes leads to those funny 5 minute snack room disputes... our schools give very little recognition to the robotics program for the most part. so when i put beatty machine in front of school city of hammond it was because the people from beatty machine put so much more time and effort into our program than the vast majority of the school system.

Same old whining every year
 

Well, now that we have started complaining about who gets first billing, can

"boo hoo, no fair, other teams have more money than we do!"

be far behind?

NOT gracious, and NOT professional. Move on.

This has turned into a thread with two arguments...

...as far as billing I like the current format...everyone, company, corporation, foundation, and school gets credit.

but as far as Inspiration goes I agree with Gadget and Mark P.
You've got to be involved, get your hands dirty to really get inspired. Last year we saw teams with "engineers" build amazing bots only to see other teams of "students" advance past them. We saw "engineers" feverishly work on the bot in the pits while their kids handed out buttons. Its great to have engineering mentors but if FIRST Teams become nothing more than a professional sports franchise where the team with all the $$$ can buy the best players or "engineers" to build a super bot, kids may as well tune into "TLC Robotica" for their inspiration.
Its all a fine balance.

oh ya, I also find it interesting that it seems to be mostly engineers who think "who builds the robot" is a trivial issue.

Yeah - that's kinda sad. It's hard for alot of the mentors not to want to do everything because it looks so fun. But I try to stay hands off as much as possible during the build season.

Encourage your engineers to work on their OWN robots during the off season. That will get some of it out of their system. (Durning the 2002-2003 off-season, I managed to build several BEAM bots, a 6-legged bot, and I am in the middle of a human-tracking bot.) My goal - engineers in the pits only for safety. I don't care if we win - now I just have to convince the others. :)

Re: Same old whining every year
 

Probably not :rolleyes:

I will not argue about what is the correct way to structure a FIRST team, nor will I argue about who should turn the wrenches.

But I will assert that people should not judge another team for the simple reason that they know next to nothing about the other team. They know what works best for their own team, but not what works best for other teams. Unless you observe a team for the entire build process, do not criticize them or their methods because you do not know what goes on behind closed doors.

Do not make assumptions concerning a team's student participation based on what you see a few students doing at competitions. Seeing students hand out buttons, hit on people on other teams, sleep, watch the competition from the stands, or work on the robot is not an indication of the team's makeup. All teams have students who step up and contribute whenever possible, and other students who like to avoid work and slack off, and everything in between. Some teams are large enough that <50% of the students work on the robot and the rest work on other aspects of FIRST - web page, strategy, marketing, animation, playing field construction, scouting, video, etc. They have no formal role at competitions except to cheer and support their team. Do not criticize or judge another team because you see idle students.

I will not assume another team's bot is built by students if it is the proverbial 'box on wheels' nor will I assume another team's bot is built by engineers and merely 'handed' to the students to drive if it is an engineering marvel. I ask that everyone else does the same.

Mike

Well said, Mike!
 

A good and thoughtful post.

Company names before team names
 

Ops, wrong section. My bad.