Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

I was recently at GTR and noticed how well a great collaboration can work out and i tell ya it was a sight to see!

On another hand, does it hinder the ability to win awards? Think about it, if one of the collaborated teams won an award, how does the judges go by and talk to the other collaborated teams? Do they just win the Judges awards? It was a thought i had while watching the awards ceremony on Friday night.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

I do think that 1114 has an advantage of winning judged awards over 1503 and 1680 who really have little or no chance of getting any judged awards since 1114 is at the lead of the Triplets. But if it is an issue for them then they can make the choice to break up the allaince. So far I don't hear those two complaining about the arrangement.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

Even in an award situation, there are more awards than technical awards. Even if teams collaborate, each team can have its own niche in the collaboration.

They don't all make the same animation. They don't all make the exact same inventor files. They could, but they don't have to. Spirit, Sportsmanship, Safety, Entrepreneuership - though these could be affected by the collaboration, they don't have to be.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

I actually do wonder if anyone has ever collaberated on any other aspect of their robotics team?
Collaberating on fundraising actually might make even more sense than collaberating on building a robot. Maybe even a Chairman's award. Team spirit is more a spontaneous thing where teams just decide to have fun with other teams. We witnessed a sportmanship collaberation at GTR when a whole bunch of teams helped team 4 build a spanking new robot in 6 hours from scratch.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

Even if they have the same machine features, they still have to "sell" them to the judges. One award (I believe it is GM Industrial Design) revolves around the ability to pick a certain advantageous design aspect and describe it in concise terms. In such situations, each of the three teams would probably have a equal shot.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

Even if one of the three wins it, the other two should be able to take pride in knowing that the award applies to their robot also.

Obviously it isn't as good as winning it for your own team, but when you take part in a collaboration you have to be able to accept things like that.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

The spirit of fundraising collaboration is a good one. Teams 461, 1646, and 1747 have a modified situation. We are under the umbrella of Purdue FIRST Programs, who has many of our big-name sponsors and thus splits up those funds. However, that makes a few financial affairs a lot easier to work out. Instead of community industries (such as Purdue Schools of Science, Engineering) being fought over for sponsorship by multiple teams, all of the teams benefit from big sponsors.

At the same time, each of the three teams has individual sponsors whose efforts help take care of other things the team needs. It's a win-win situation. If NiagraFIRST has a similar situation, I am not surprised.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

1114 has won the Entrepreneurship award numerous time and I would not be surprised it is because of the way they handle the Triplets finances. I bet they are a model for financial handling of a FIRST institution.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

All of this collaboration with awards got me thinking.

How long will it be before teams start collaborating in their animations? Do you think we will see two identical animations in the future?

We've already seen identical robots, so whats keeping teams from making identical animations? I can see how it would be tough to judge one animation over another,(well mabye not tough, more like impossible) but if teams from different areas collaborated, they could at least win their local regional.

Personally, I wouldn't like to see a collaborated animation, just because I like to see the creativity and innovation each team has. But thats just me.

Mike C.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

Not identical animation but perhaps a part one and a part two or even a whole series!
NOW THAT WOULD BE SOOOO COOL!

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

Well, I know for a fact that judges will give awards to both teams. At Wisconsin, both Martians teams won an award (I apologize, I don't remember who won what).

As to the Triplets, those kids seem to celebrate the accomplishment of one team as a group accomplishment from what I've seen.

Geez, the three teams have been the subject of the public eye this year more than any team I can remember in any year!

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

That's because their robots have been so dominant this year.
When you're at the top everybody see you.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

I think the issue would depend on how the collaboration was managed. If all the teams contributed to all parts of the robot, then I dont see how they could (should?) win a design award, since three teams worked on the one design.

But if each team designed a specific subsystem of the robot, then I dont see any reason why one team could not win an award for their drive train (for example) or another team win for their arm or collector or shooter...

At first this seems a little unfair, because that team only designed one part of the robot this year, so they could concentrate all their resources on that one subsystem. But any team could also do that - use the FIRST KOP chassis and drivetrain for example, and only design a shooter that is attached to the rest.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

The Martians Team 494 and More Martians Team 70 design the robots as one group. They build the robots as one group. At the end of the build a coin is flipped to see which robot gets labeled 494 or 70. The students then compete to see who can do a better job of explaining the robot to the judges. If the judges feel the design is worthy of an award the team that does the best job with the judges wins. Here are the 2006 regional awards won by both teams (Team 70 has almost all first year students).

494
Regional Winner (Buckeye)
Finalist (Wisconsin)
Radio Shack Innovation in Control Award (Buckeye)
Motorola Quality Award (Wisconsin)
Xerox Creativity Award (West Michigan)
Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award (West Michigan)
70
Regional Winner (West Michigan)
Finalist (Wisconsin)
Xerox Creativity Award (Buckeye)
Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award (Wisconsin)

It has been my experience that a design can not win without students explaining it properly. It becomes a competition between the two teams to see who are the best informed, and the best presenters.

Team 494 and Team 70 are from the same high school and do the same fund raisers. This year Team 494,70,and 1213 did a fund raiser together, to help 1213 stay afloat after losing their sponsor.

Re: Does collaboration do good and evil?
 

I have always and still do love the idea of collaboration, both in the case of the triplets (one experienced team helping to get others started) and Division by chicken ( I don't know if they collaborated this year but last year it looked like 2 great teams playing off each others strengths)

As far as awards with the non technical awards they could go to anyone because they aren't impacted by the robot. As far as technical awards they could be given to the team that designed one aspect of the robot, for example an award for amazing Autonomous would go to the team that did the programming(if that was how work was divided up)