Chief Delphi - Sharing Designs

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Re: Sharing Designs

Quote:

Originally Posted by M. Krass

...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.

This is not NEARLY the same thing as this thread is about... I think that alot of people got offended by alot of other peoples posts, and because of that we end up a with close-minded arguement in wake of an openminded discussion.

The bottom line is... If every single team had the same robot, then there wouldn't be much of a competition at all, would there? The difference between showing a team a finished result and giving the team a finished design is that with the later... the team actually learns something. It's the same reason that they don't give me the answers to my chem problems with the questions. They just give me a final result, and have me figure the rest out on my own. It helps me learn more, which is part of what FIRST is about. My team prides ourselves on being student built, and if we were offered a professional design... I doubt we'd take it. This brings us back to human nature as a whole... Our will to compete insures that there will never be a Startrek Utopia where everybody shared everything.

Re: Sharing Designs

This discussion really is about cooperation/competition , or FIRSTs "co-optition". Its about helping others without giving away your stratigic (sp?) advantage.

If a team, other than my own, asks for help I will help them with THIER design. I won't design it for them, for I believe that the process by which they come up with thier strategy / design is as important as the design itself.

We, in 1058, don't share our designs before the competition. We will explain how (and why) we designed our robot the way we did at the competition so that they may learn from what we did and apply it in the future, if they so desire.

One of the things I try to teach the kids is that this is a competition, and the goal of a competition is to win. However, it is what you do to achieve that goal that defines the person, and not achieving the goal itself.