Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

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** I work myself up into a lather on this one. Read it at your own risk. **
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I raise my voice in opposition.

While I respect a lot of folks who have other views on this subject, I could not disagree more.

The GOALS of FIRST have nothing to do with a robot competition. The MEANS that FIRST uses is competition.

If it was not for the magic of teams trying to compete, and yes, to win, FIRST would be like 100 other programs that are trying their best and having some impact but not the impact FIRST is having and certainly not the impact FIRST aspires to.

I will say it again, I believe 90% of the impact of FIRST (on the individuals) can be had with just Kids and Mentors designing and building a robot and competing in a game, which, we can accomplish for 10% of the money, effort and energy we are doing today with FRC (less if you talk about using VEX kits).

Why are we killing ourselves doing 10 times the work and only getting 10% more individual impact? I think it is because we aspire to impacting more than our individual kids on our individual teams.

Let's do a thought experiment: Let's image we are going to start introducing kids to basketball the way our culture introduces kids to engineering.

And so it would go. NOBODY would aspire to grow up to be a basketball player.

But that is NOT how we introduce basketball to kids. Instead:

1. We show them the NBA.
2. We make heroes of Michael and Koby and Shack and Yao.
3. And then kids start to imagine that they could one day be like these guys and then...
4. ...they go into a room with no windows and learn how to not to move their feet unless they are bouncing a ball...

I cannot speak for others but I can tell you that I got involved in FIRST precisely because it was NOT the Brainiac Olympiad or the Future Communities of Tomorrow or the Science Fair Superbowl on Steriods.

No it wasn't anything like those. FIRST had aspirations! It was going to make kids want to go out and spend a lot of time doing hard (and often boring) stuff so that ...what?

So that they could BE IN THE GAME! It was about showing them the beauty and the grace that IS science and engineering. Of course, the kids were not going to be able to modify involute geartooth profiles or solve differential equations or implement observer based optimal control theory any more than they were going to slam 10inch ball through a hoop 10ft in the air... ...but FIRST was gong to give them the vision of what it was like...

and that vision would get them through the hard, boring stuff needed to obtain the goal.

In short, competition was the means to the end of cultural change.

That is the FIRST that I signed up for. The one that I think has a chance of being worth all the time and money and energy we all put into it.

Joe J.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

Sorry in advance if some of this does not fit the thread topic. I am a terrible writer but felt a need to throw my thoughts into the ring.

That was just to perfect an explanation for me not to repost it in hopes everyone would read it again.

Now a quick question...

As a student, would you be inspired if you saw that your mentors did not care about how well your robot worked or how well you placed in competition?

I personally, along with many of my friends, would not and could not be inspired by someone who does not share our enthusiasm toward building the most competitive and awe inspiring robot possible. This is precisely how people such as John, Chris, Joe, Paul, Andy, Raul, Ken... have reached me. They share our enthusiasm toward the design and build of the robot, along with how well it competes. They all want to build teh most competitive robot.

If your team has the facilities, and the engineering brain power to create a robot to rival 111, 65, 71, 217... why wouldn't you? Should you take the time to include students in the design process? OF course, involvement is key. But to stand back and let a student design and build a mechanism or drive train that will blow up in their face is a terrible idea. You may say that is inspiration, I say it is an easy way to discourage a student. It's important to find that median point where the student design, the mentor steps in and helps to point out the flaws, and then the student re-designs. That is how you inspire a student to succeed and move forward into an engineering profession.

JT



"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to JVN again." and again... and again... etc.
"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Joe Johnson again."

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

The competition is What catches someone's eye... It is NOT what inspires them to be an engineer. I would like you to name a dozen of these "100 other orginizations" that don't do as well as FIRST, and if you can, I would bet money that you couldn't name 25.
Do you have ANY IDEA how many people are impacted by working with engineers and seeing how they do things? A HELL-OF-A-LOT MORE than those who are impacted by the competition itself... I, for one would much rather build a robot and not compete that compete and not build a robot. It all goes back to the saying "It's not all about winning", which was said by a far better man than myself...
Once again... Competition is the ATTENTION GRABBER, not the body of FIRST.

It is about having fun during 6 weeks of build with your friends and mentors, it's not about getting the gold.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

After some deal of contemplation...My take...

----------------------WARNING------------------------------
Long rambling post. Do not read (or attempt to) if under the influence of alcohol, sedative drugs, or MAOI's. You will pass out.
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1. An inspired person has nothing more than the want/dream of something they feel is meaningful.

2. Wants and dreams are incited by rewards, or expected rewards, alone. Without a benefit of some sort, humans do not progress in any fashion. Rocks and raw mammoth.

3. Competition is a very effective, perhaps the most effective way of reaching young, busy, wandering teens. Without an aim, we are easily distracted. The goal of bettering a peer is inherent in our phsycology, and thusly is something that keeps us occupied.

4. FIRST gives us the chance to better our peers, in an engineering atmosphere that encourages us to become engineers. Very effective. Competition keeps us motivated.

-First realization: FIRST is effective as a career influencing activity because it is very real-world, and includes something to keep its members motivated. Competition.

5. People, when engaged in competition are more fruitful when they occasionally triumph. People that win consistently become used to it, and as a result become complacent. But more hurt, sometimes are the teams that are the underdogs, and consistently lose. Sometimes, they become discouraged and lose interest. Big no-no for FIRST, which is trying to inspire all people, not just the winners.

6. Teams are the cable that holds FIRST competition static. When one cable pulls tighter than others, cables break, and/or the structure shifts, a bad thing.

-Realization #2: People are engaged in something when they compete, but after huge, seemiongly unrecoverable losses, they can lose interest and move on.


So, it's reasonable to say that competition is vital to FIRST, and to keep it strong, all teams must compete to their greatest ability. However, to keep losing teams involved and engaged, its the responsibility of the best teams to "Bring The Bottom Up!" by offering immense support, friendship, and a big one, alliance selctions. By bringing outwardly, less capable teams into the fray, you level the field, and encourage them. If everyone in FIRST could hold to this, to an extent, we would have a tighter bond, with more effective results.

So, good teams keep playing really strong, but remember the underdog! Competition is what keeps FIRST alive, but in order to have effective competition, we all must be active players. If we aren't, Joe's example comes into play: The better teams are the better players, and everyone else become discouraged and goes home.

I apologize for the rambling. Take it is as you will, nuke it from space, etc.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

Cody, Why can't we be impacted by both? Why can't we be impacted my the time we spend designing and building the robot as much as we are impacted my hearing thousands of people cheer for our robot in the finals or walking up to receive an award for the robot we have built?

To compete without building a robot... would you please explain this to me?

Competition is, as was said by many people greater than both of us, a means for FIRST to convey it's message. Tell a first year team member that you are going to build a robot that isn't going to compete, let me know how long it takes for him to walk out of the room or off of the team. That is not inspiration at work.

Your partially right, it isn't about getting the gold... it's about building the best robot that you believe you can.

^^^^^^^ That is what it is all about.

JT

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

Yes a lot of people are impacted by working with engineers. Also remember that John, Jay's and myself were/are high school students who were inspired by people/teams in FIRST.

So now onto my point.

You say that the competition is the attention grabber. I say that the competition is what makes FIRST so great. As Jay said:
The very basis of FIRST is built upon inspiration. Were would we find the inspiration first off to build the robot if we didn't have other robots to compete against. We all know that teams such as Beatty, Wildstand, Huskies, RAGE, Thunderchickens, Cheesypoofs, and many others will turn out robots that are awe inspiring. These are the teams we strive to beat. Our (Mentors and Students alike) desire to be as good as possible. With this desire to be able to beat out these known teams comes the need be competitive.

Can you be competitive and inspire high school students as well. YES! By all means inspiration and competitiveness go hand in hand. If you design a robot that can do absolutely nothing then how inspiring is that to you? Most likely it is realtively inspiring to you, especially if you are a rookie team, because you atleast built a robot.

Now if you build a robot that is completely different than any one else and takes it to the next level, how inspiring is that to someone. For me if you build a robot that I did not picture throughout the season then i am really inspired, and i was inspired by teams such as Wildstand '02, Beatty '01, Hotbot '04, Techno-ticks '03. These teams inspired me and my team mates to build a better robot. They also inspired us because they showed us how some of the simplest, and some of the more complex designs can both win.

Now I personally can still be inspired by teams who do not do well. However it is a lot harder to be inspired by a team who doesn't do well, than by one who does great. i.e. Last year at FLR was the first year that our team really cheered for ourselves. Why? Because our robot that we had built and that could possible win the regional, was very competitive. However if you look at some of the previous years our team really had no spirit, why because we didn't have the competitive edge that we did last year.

So basically once again I am just re-itterating that a competitive robot leads to inspiring more than just your team. No matter what students should be inspiried, but that inspiration should never just come from thier team, it should come from every team in FIRST because they should all strive to be the best in FIRST.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

**********here's to picking apart someone's post because you don't agree with them:ahh: ******

I never said that you couldn't, I only said that MOST of the inspiration for an aspiring engineer comes from the satisfaction of building a working mechanism, not having people cheer for him/her.

If you had the robots pre-made... NASCAR drivers compete without building their cars.

Who has said that? Also, If he's in the room in the first place, he had better be more interested in the mechanical design than competing...

You can build the best robot possible without competing. Who was Dave competing with when he did the MARS robots?

A person that only tries his hardest because he is getting something, is a VERY SHALLOW person indeed.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

I'm going to try and add a little to this debate by telling a short story.

5 years ago, Steve Rourke (Engineering Director at the GM plant where I work and founder of NiagaraFIRST.org) came to me and asked if I'd be interested in helping out a high school robotics team that he was starting out. I was interested, so I went to the first meeting and was really intrigued by the videos he showed.

I was attracted by the high tech robots playing an exciting game. That's what first got me hooked. We had some fun that first year and built (in my mind) the best box stacker in FIRST. I had fun, the kids had fun. Everyone learned a lot and a lot of our students were inspired to pursue futures in science and technology.

The point is that I probably wouldn't have joined if FIRST was just a robotics club. I am a very competitive person, the game is what got me hooked.

I believe there are a lot of other people out there like me.

Now, I'm in my fifth year. I'm still inspiring kids to become "future technology heroes" and getting better at it every year. I think I am making a real difference with these kids, and it's all because I got hooked watching a robot competition.

That's what makes FIRST special!

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

EXACTLY! It got you hooked! If FIRST made the robots for the teams and there was no engineering involved, would you still have joined, or still be part of FIRST right now?

P.S. I fully realize that Derek's post was not meant to support my own point of view, I am simply pointing out than in a post that is on "the other side of the fence" A point that I have been saying is agreed with.


while competition got him hooked; it's the engineering that made him stay.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

Cody, nobody is saying anything about engineering not being inspiring, I am interested to see where you got this idea.

Also, FIRST gives you a kitbot, you can evolve off of that. It is well designed and a great base for teams with limited engineering and machining capabilities. But there is still alot of engineering involved in adapting the kit frame or gearbok into a competitive robot.

JT

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

I will be watching this thread, but I am not going to make any more posts, as it has become blatently obvious that very few people are TRYING to understand what I'm writing. The over-all trend of this is becoming an argument, and not a discussion at all. If it is not apparent in the thread, it is wholely apparent in my inbox.


No hard feelings :D, Just trying to sink my teeth in a good debate.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

Tossing my $.02 in, as a student on a young team.

If you have no game to compete in, why build the robot at all? It becomes a science fair, a show-and-tell. The inspiration comes BOTH during the build season and the competitions, but none of it would be possible if teams didn't have a REASON to build their robot.

At kick-off, we all see the game for this year. We all think, "I want to play it; how can we make our robot do well at that?" Maybe we don't consciously think that, but isn't that the underlying concept embedded in the minds of every student on every team? We want to do well, and many times we measure how well we have done by the standards set by others - the essence of competition. The competition IS the "hook," as Cody said. The competition gives us something we want, something we want to work for. Doing well, making a robot that functions well (whether that's compared to your own expectations or to what other teams do) is the motivation for all the hard work and all the effort put in during the build season. And that's where a good bit of the learning takes place for students. We learn specifics for whatever projects we're working on, but more importantly we learn concepts that we'll carry for our entire lives. We learn from mistakes, successes, utter failures...but why do these come about? Because we're striving for something, we're striving to accomplish a goal set because there is a competition. The game lets us set the goals for which we strive. From these goals and our desire to reach them comes the end for which FIRST was founded: inspiration. The game provides the structure we need to reach that stage.

I think the inspiration springs from striving to reach a goal. The game lets us set those goals. Without the game, would there be goals? I don't know; there might be. But they wouldn't be as high, and the higher you aim, the more exciting it is. Excitement inspires.

HOWEVER...this is only the way FIRST has inspired me. If the mentors on a team were only concerned with what I was getting out of the experience, I'd still be inspired...in a completely different way. To me, FIRST seems like it's set up so that it's nearly impossible to be involved for much time and not be inspired in some way. Working with mentors will inspire any student interested in engineering; at least it should. I think, though, that the amount of effort, energy, and desire you put into the season as a whole will affect the amount of inspiration you come away with. Having your mentors focus entirely on making sure you get a feel for real-world engineering and making sure you learn as much as possible will inspire you, but will the students put as much effort into it? That's questionable in my mind. I think the mentors should concentrate on showing the students how to be competitive, and on passing on to them the attitude of gracious professionalism even when you lose.

FIRST comes in levels. The individual level, where students lives are changed one-on-one. The team level, where most of the focus seems to go and where a good part of the measurable inspiration comes from. The program level, where teams are inspired by each other and motivated to continue to strive. The Real World level, the end goal for FIRST, where people only slightly involved are touched and inspired by the accomplishments of the entire 1000+ teams. All the levels mean something, and all of them inspire in different ways.

Just like there's no one way to run a team, there's no one way to inspire every single team or student. There doesn't have to be. I know I (and many of my teammates) thrive on the competitive aspect of it, but that should never be the only approach. There should never be one approach to any problem, whether it's shifting the global attitude or taking weight off the robot.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

Its somewhat unfortunate that this thread was split off from its original content. In the other thread people, specifically mentors, were getting upset with some of the rule clarifications that FIRST put out in the last few weeks

upset to the point that FIRST was going to 'get an earfull' at the end of the season.

My intention of quoting Dean Karmen's remarks from a few years back was to put things into perspective. Dean was speaking to mentors when he said "when you start to feel like you are involved in a robot building contest then you are in serious trouble!"

I know that I think and see things differently from most people. Maybe I have a weird view of life or engineering or FIRST?

When I was a kid my dad was a technician at Sylvania. He brought home stuff for me to tinker with. I learned to solder wires when I was about 6 or 7, made my own tube amps when I was a teenager, tinkered with transistors and re-invented the tape recorder to figure out how they worked.

When I had to pick a HS I was going to be a technician like my dad, because that was all I knew. The only engineer I had ever met was a guy from work that my dad went fishing with a few times. He had a Chris Craft cabin cruiser, a diesel Mercedes Benz, and a brand new '69 mustang Mach 1. Thats all I knew about him. I dont think I ever actually talked to him.

Fortunately my guidance counselor in 8th grade steered me towards engineering, told me I had the grades in math and science and the aptitude to go to Hutch Tech, the magnet school in Buffalo.

All through HS and all through college I never met, or talked to any engineers! Not until I had graduated and started going on job interviews. I guess you could say the 2nd engineer I knew was me! I look back on that now and it blows my mind!

Most people in our society think engineers are people like Edison, super intelligent beings who think deep thoughts and flashes of inspiration come to them out of the blue. Thats not what engineers do. Thats not who we are.

There is a method and a process - a design cycle we go through that anyone can learn, to take a need, to take a problem, and to create a new solution.

For me, inspiration comes from two things: seeing what someone else has accomplished, and then seeing HOW it is done. For example, go to DKs home, Westwind, for the kickoff meeting and you cannot help but be inspired by his personal accomplishments. Its an awesome experience, a beautiful mansion on the top of a mountain in NH, FILLED with engineers and teachers and corporate leaders from all over the country. The question comes up immediately: HOW did he do this? How did he accomplish all these things.

For me, that is where inspiration comes from. When someone takes the time and energy to show you how its done. It opens a thousand doors, it enables you to choose a destination, to plan a path, to aim for a goal.

I'm not a competitive person. I have a Hobie Cat that I sail every weekend in the summer and Ive never raced it. I have a racing bike and I ride it for fun and exercise. But I am an ambitious person, always doing new things, I have a full time job + my own business. I love the lifestyle of being an engineer, of taking on new problems and creating unique solutions.

The most frustrating thing to me is wanting to do something and not knowing how. Thats why I continue to be involved with FIRST as much as I possibly can. I know what its like to be 14 or 16 and for your future to be nothing but a foggy mystery. I know engineering. I can explain it. I can show students where the path is, and where it leads.

Thats why I'm here.

Thats the only reason I'm here.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

Cody, I think I do understand what you're saying, so let me try and address it.


This is definitely true for many individuals. But as Joe and Matt B. said earlier, FIRST isn't just about trying to affect those who are on teams. If we wanted to teach kids about engineering skills in an exciting way, we could save a lot of money by switching to Vex. We need to remember the biggest goal we're trying to achieve. We're trying to change culture. To do so, FIRST has to do more than impact the 30,000+ kids in the program. We need to impact 300 million North Americans. (And other parts of the world to) The best to do this is through the competition. People are attracted to competition. Just look at the Winter Olympics. Millions of people tuned in to watch people skating in circle, or gliding down hills. Is this something that people normally watch? No. Would it be entertaining if it wasn't a race? No. Would we watch if we weren't told that these were the best athletes in the world? No. Do people watch this and become inspired? Heck, Yeah.

That's what we're trying to do with FIRST. Not only inspire the young people who are doing, but inspire our society who is watching. We need to make it exciting for them so it will catch their eyes. What will accomplish that? An intense competition, with high quality robots. This is why the competition is essential. Not because it may inspire the students in the program, but because it's our best avenue to affect a much needed culture change.

I dream of the day, when kids who never been on a FIRST team say, "dang, I wish I could be like Dr. Joe, he's so cool. Look at his awesome swerve drive. I want to do that." When that day comes, we'll know that we've reached our goal.

Re: FIRST Philosophy 101
 

I have a feeling my first post may have dragged this off topic. Sorry about that.

JT