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.