Re: Sharing Designs
 

I see what you're saying, but I think that forcing others to think through different design choices on their own is more beneficial to them than handing them the "best" design on a silver platter.

Re: Sharing Designs
 

EDITED:

I got pretty defensive in response to MK's post, and decided to edit this.

I can certainly understand where MK is coming from, it would be great to live in a Star-Trek culture world where everyone has their basic needs met, and we all spend our time and energy making the universe a better place.

The problem is that, time and time again we have learned that human nature does not work that way. For whatever reasons we are competitive creatures, and without some level of competition we tend to fade into stagnation.

That does not mean people dont care about other people, and making the world a better place. Most people do care, but at the same time there has to be some direct benefit that comes back to them personally as well. It takes both.

Intellectual Property is the life-blood of many american companies. We spend years researching and developing new ideas, systems, products... That reseach is not free. The IP that comes out of it cannot be given away for free, or the people who have created it will get nothing for their years of dedicated work and creativity.

Re: Sharing Designs
 

Yes, because if you are just "given" everything, you learn absolutely nothing and cannot design anything on your own. You stay dependent on those "higher minds" that gave you the design in the first place. This is far less beneficial to society as a whole, for what happens when those "higher minds" stop giving away their designs?

Re: Sharing Designs
 

Which part of 'work together' implies a parasitic relationship?

Re: Sharing Designs
 

We all know what human nature is... :D

Re: Sharing Designs
 

As a rookie team, we would not know where to begin without the help of other team's sharing their information. The shared information has allowed our team to go and come up with ideas that we would never have thought possible. I fully encourage teams to share the information that they have obtained with other teams. This is will not only benefit the teams that are not well established but will also help to develop a relationship and gracious professionalism, which is what FIRST is all about.

Scott
1727

Re: Sharing Designs
 

I am not opposed to the sharing of information--after the point where is is impossible for teams to copy designs from this year! There are many years worth of prior knowlege and designs already posted without having to share this years designs where everyone can copy them.

Re: Sharing Designs
 

To put it simply, when you have two or more groups in the same project, you're ultimately going to have one of them doing more work than the others. And no matter how much you try to make them equal, there will ultimately be someone coming out ahead on the arrangement. (See also: separate but equal.)

The suggestion of a group of documents on how mechanisms work would hold promise, though. Knowing how a well-done telescoping arm works, for example, would do me better than getting the complete drawings from 233's robot last season. At least that's how I see it.

Re: Sharing Designs
 

The difference is that I believe that FIRST is a multinational non-profit organization that aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today. Experienced teams (and individuals) withholding information from those trying to learn are valuing the competition over learning. I don't really care if you ever win a tournament. I don't care very much if we win or not as long as our team does everything right. After you graduate as a youth member of FIRST, the number of tournaments you won will be irrelevant, but what you learn about teamwork, program management, engineering, fabrication, mathematics, and physics will help you the rest of your life.

I suppose it's a mentor/student thing. A lot of students think FIRST is just a robot competition -- but I think it's an exceptional learning opportunity. If someone thinks it's all about winning, they will withhold information. If they think it's about learning, they will share whatever they've learned. It's not like a student joins a FIRST team at 14 years old and reinvents all this from first principles. Nearly all of what all of us know about this has been learned from other people. When we refuse to share that with the next generation of learners, we are cheating them of the chance to do their best, and ourselves of the pleasure of helping someone.

Everyone can follow their own wisdom, but as for me, I will at all times try to answer any question asked in good faith to the limit of my knowledge and experience, especially one from a student or a new mentor. Frankly, I find an attitude an attitude of secrecy disappointing in a FIRST participant. This isn't NASCAR or Formula One. We're supposed to be friends.

Re: Sharing Designs
 

I'd like to bring this back to FIRST and not society at large. There are teams which will take another teams idea and use it verbatim - is this bad? Maybe. Maybe not. For a rookie team simply understanding how said idea works is a step in the right direction. That simple act of understanding may have just turned on a student to a career in engineering. Seems beneficial to me. Are there teams that abuse this, sure but I'm more interested in turning on that one student the preventing those other teams from copying our work.

Now a returning team simply copying is not what I would like to see. I know I don't permit it on our team. Innovating and improving on previous (or current) designs is fine. Quite often our design discussions will include statements like "Oh do you remember how team XXX did that in 200X?" then someone will go and find a picture and we will talk about how and why their idea worked well (or poorly). Then we will talk about if it applies to what we are doing and if so try to make it better. We also have many crazy ideas and over the years many of those ideas have worked their way onto our robots for good and bad. I don't feel that this depends on "Higher Minds" but rather simple creativity and hard work.

Choosing to share a design now or later is a team by team choice. Our team has no rules on what can / can't be given away before the competitions. I work with engineers who help other teams and we have a fun time sharing ideas some of them even show up in final designs. However no other team is going to create our exact (winning :-)) robot, so I am not worried.

Either way I am always blown away at competitions by the creativity show by all the teams. I am not at all worried that we would EVER end up with 2000 identical robots.

Very few things are black and white in this world. Don't believe me read FIRST's rules. Always gray. :)

Joshua

Re: Sharing Designs
 

This is FIRST, not the real world. I believe my role is to help more than just the students on our team. I do program management and related tasks for money in the real world. At FIRST, and in other volunteer organizations, I do it for free.

As for blackberries, you don't have to plant them, they just grow. Stop by next August and pick up a couple of tons...

Re: Sharing Designs
 

Does anyone recall how teams 60/254 did in 2004? What about teams 22/60/254, 217/229, or 1114/the other triplets did in 2005 (among many other teams)? These teams worked together in their respective years and did very well design-wise and in the rankings.

Like Maddie said, working together on projects will make all of our lives easier in the long run and still allow us to push the envelope with new ideas and mechanisms. If you’re worried about getting credit for stuff you’ve done, the majority of the FIRST community is more than happy to be up front of they’ve copied or borrowed an idea or design from another team. Of course there are some bad apples out there, I’ve run into one in particular, but that’s just life. It’s not a big deal.

Despite apparently not having a team this season you never fail to teach the students, but instead of teaching them how to make Straw Man Fallacies I would suggest teaching them something about mechanics, electronics, or programming instead.

By the way, Blackberry and/or Chicken farming is a profitable market. If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t do it. Not to mention they taste great and can be prepared in a multitude of different ways. Or maybe you meant the PDA Blackberry...

Now I’m getting back to working on my robots with other people…

Re: Sharing Designs
 

Our team has always been open with ideas we regularily post updates of our robot and ideas our website.

If a team does copy our design we still have credit for coming up with it, I mean we'll know and they'll know, so what else matters?

...besides mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery..

http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education..._id=1137707811

Re: Sharing Designs
 

I know that. M.Krass went off on a tangent asserting that protecting proprietary information somehow means that you profit at someone elses expense (a real world situation).

Some of the things we experience, and some of the culture in FIRST translates into engineering / real world experiences and culture, and some do not.

The competition aspect of FIRST puts a lot of energy into the program. Over the years I have seen teams attempt to do off season projects (work on a shifting transmission design, or take the robot places to show other people about FIRST) and sometimes NOBODY shows up - nobody is interested.

The competition between teams is important. What happens before and after ship date is like two different worlds. New students get to ship date and think, wow, this has been great. We have to tell them "you aint seen nothing yet".

Look at all the teams that take so much pride in 100% student designed and built robots. Why is that? Ownership.

I know that FIRST is not a robot building contest. And I know if you take the robot competition out of FIRST the program would fizzle and die.

Being competitive is a part of human nature. The standard in FIRST is similar to what happens in the real world. People design things, and keep it secret until they are ready to release their product to the market. Then everyone gets to see what they have been up to, and if possible, knock-off products start showing up 6 months to a year later.

Same in FIRST. Many teams openly share what they have done in the past, but want to keep this years design under wraps until ship date, or the 1st regional.

I dont see any conflict there.

Re: Sharing Designs
 

...a team forgets to plug in their battery before a match and your team, competing against them, realizes this. You can keep that information to yourself and win the match as a result; or you can share that information, potentially still win and earn increased qualifying points because your opponent's score will be greater than 0. Profit isn't synonymous with earning money, Ken.

Experiences in FIRST are not meant to translate into the real world, they're meant to change it.

If Chrysler figures out how to make an efficient, affordable hydrogen-powered vehicle, they can choose to keep that technology to themselves and charge consumers a premium for it or they can make that technology available to all manufacturers.

One choice let's their shareholders buy a nice new house and a big screen TV. The other keeps our planet inhabitable for another 1000 years.