Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

I too was shocked when i heard multiple references during speeches to all the teams talking about how America is the best country in the world and i instantly turned to multiple members of my team and pointed out it was an international competition and the flags from many other countries were proudly flying right above his head. Of course, as a citizen everyone has the right to love their country.. but FIRST is based on a strong belief of gracious professionalism.. and bragging that your country is better than all the others, especially when there's many of them in your audience, is not very graciously professional at all. I think it's wonderful that he sees how important FIRST is, but he also needs to see how important FIRST's morals are.

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

First of all, I'm glad to hear that the few foreign posters thus far were not very offended.
Second, I would like to say that as an American citizen, it is appalling to me that anyone, especially a representative of our government, would speak so rudely to the international community.
It's true that American industry is great, but it's also true that Canada has one of the world's largest petroleum production capacities, China has one of the fastest growing industries in the world, and the European Union is a shining example of international cooperation to form a true global economy.
By putting America out there as "the best," to a room dotted with foreign students, what message does he send? If I were in the position of those students, I would be insulted and threatened.
Rather than embracing the new world economy that is rapidly becoming a reality, the Secretary only perpetuates the nation vs. nation trade scheme of the past thousand years.

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

Guess where the three winning teams came from? (yes, they all did attend other regionals)
The largest Regional in FIRST, held in Canada.

Guess who lead the winning alliance?
A Canadian team from Quebec.

And we had a team, 1114, who made a very strong push for the Chairman's Award this year.

FIRST is an International competition. Yes, it is still dominated by American teams. But the large number of Canadian, Israeli, and Brazilian teams who proved that they know a few things about robotics ;). Yes, there are still many more American teams. But if FIRST truly wants more growth it should look international. I hope to see more of a focus on this in the future. The future of science and technology does not only rely on the United States, it relies on the international community working together to solve the worlds problems.

Getting back to the point of the thread, No I wasn't really offended sitting up in the stands watching the presentation. I thought to myself that it is his job to speak more to the American people, than to myself as a Canadian. Didn't offend me, just hope that in the future we could see more of a focus on growing FIRST as an international organization

My $0.02 Canadian,
Jonathan Norris

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

I didn't mind the speech too much (and I'm Canadian) - he might have gone over the top once or twice, but it's partially his job to be a cheerleader for the country he works for.

On a related note, I thought it was telling that the top ten list in the closing ceremonies referred to "Western culture" instead of "American culture". I might be going out on a limb here, but I suspect that FIRST might actually be succeeding at attacking the outsourcing issue in a way it probably didn't expect.

If you were an engineer and Texas and you lost your job to an engineer in Mexico, would you be most annoyed that you lost your job to someone geographically different? No - Alaska would be a lot further away, but if you lost your job to some upstart student in Alaska who worked for half your salary, I don't think it would be quite the same thing. I think you'd be most upset that you lost your job to someone who didn't share your values or your culture - someone who just seemed 'foreign'.

As well as inspiring and training American students to become excellent, more competitive engineers, in some small way FIRST is helping to build a broader, more inclusive 'Western' culture - we have international teams (1596), cross-border friendships (e.g. 48 and 1114), and all sorts of graciously professional interactions between teams (playing together on alliances, advice on Chief Delphi, sharing parts and tools in the pits, etc.)

If engineers and technicians worldwide could figure out some shared values and get used to working together in a graciously professional sort of way, we might be able to take the 'out' out of 'outsourcing' - if we all share a strong cultural set of values, who exactly is 'out'? I think FIRST is a great way to do this, and in some ways it might be an even more permanent solution.

******

I apologize in advance if any of the above comes across as insulting or arrogant or anything - it's taken me at least half an hour to edit this, but I'm still not sure it's worded right. Personally, I'm proud to be Canadian, but I have an immense amount of respect for what America has been able to accomplish over the last few hundred years. I want to work to make Canada the best it can be, but I hope that doesn't preclude me from being able to work along side some of the amazing American students and engineers I've met through FIRST.

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

Definately...

I spoke to a few international teams (when I got the chance) at the party and what not and not too many of them were offended.

And I think after the speakers saw that the canadian+american teamwork owned, I think they were thinking a little more of what they said hopefully..

Pavn

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

Now that quite a few people have discussed Secretary Gutierrez’s speech, here is what he said in Atlanta. You can form your own opinion as others already have stated here but at least you will have the facts to base them on from his speech.

I was in the GA Dome for his speech but also recorded it from the NASA channel Friday morning. I watched it today and have typed his text for you to read.

I am of course proud of my country and some of what the Secretary said was obviously pro American. He also championed inventions, creativity, innovation and First Robotics. He challenged us to “step it up” and increase our level of innovation and creativity like never before. I believe he was talking to everyone in the audience not just Americans.

Some have mentioned here the Secretary was rude, criticized and bashed other countries in his speech. What I heard didn’t cause me to have that opinion. He was stating his opinion of his adopted country as he was born in Havana, Cuba.

Another has mentioned here that the Secretary said that “America won’t let Indians keep taking their jobs.” Well whatever was said by someone regarding Indians was not said by Secretary Gutierrez.

I myself have been to many other countries, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and at least 5 Canadian provinces ( I just love Canada!). I met with teams from Israel & Brazil last weekend and they were great people. I know that there are great hard working inventive people all over the world not just here at home.

For our gathering, the Secretary may have concentrated his speech on the USA a little much but that is part of his job. He oversees a diverse Cabinet agency with some 38,000 workers focused on promoting American business at home and abroad. He also formulates telecommunications and technology policy, fosters minority business development and promotes economic growth in distressed communities.

I was glad he was able to address the First gathering but understand others if they felt that he was speaking primarily toward Americans. I would hope that others also think as I do, that their countries are the greatest in the world!

Dave


There are likely some punctuation errors and I may have left out a couple of words but this is what was said.

Friday morning, April 28th, 2006 at the Georgia Dome,
John Dudas, Undersecretary of Commerce said about the Hon. Carlos M. Gutierrez, Secretary of Commerce:

He fled Cuba with his family as a young boy and came to the United States. He learned English from a bellhop in a hotel in Miami. Sold cereal out of the back of a van in Mexico. Worked his way up to become CEO and chairman of the board of one of America’s most successful companies Kellogg’s.

Carlos Gutierrez, Secretary of Commerce said:

I want to thank Dean Kamen and Mayor Franklin and representative Bass for supporting you in what you do and for having the foresight and the vision to know that what you are doing is going to create the future of our country.

Our economy grew once again at a very fast pace just in the first quarter and it confirms once again what we have been saying. That we have the most vibrant, the greatest country, the greatest economy on the face of the earth. There is nothing, nothing like it in the world and there is no developed or industrialized economy that is performing like we are. The reason that we are performing this way and the reason that we have led the world economy for so long, is because of our innovation, it’s because of our creativity, it’s because of our ideas, it has been our ability, our ability to invent new things. If you look back at the history of the last couple of centuries, inventions that have changed the lives of people all over the world, they have been created here in our country. Think about it, the light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, computer software, you can go on and on and on. This has been the country of ideas, the country of innovation, the country of creativity and the country of invention.

What’s happening now is that we have picked up three billion new competitors. Of course we have 3 billion new consumers. We also have to think about it as we have 3 billion new competitors. So whatever we have been doing for the past 20, 50, 100 or 200 years, we have to step it up. We have to grow it, we have to increase the pace, we have to step up our level of innovation, our level of invention, our level of creativity like we have never done before.

In his state of the union address the President called for a national movement to develop a national passion for innovation. A national passion for science, a national passion for math, a national passion for the creation of new things, new ideas and new inventions. A national movement, something that we can all get behind and say we are going to innovate like never before in our history because we are going to become even more than today, the most competitive economy in the world and we’re going to show the world why we are the leaders of the economy today.

So, First is very much leading the way and I can’t tell you how important it is what you are doing here today and how symbolic this is that we are having this session today in the year 2006. This is the future, this is what our future is all about and you are leading the way, you are a great example for citizens all over the country, you are role models of what we want to be as a nation in the future.

So I can’t tell you how much I thank you and on behalf of President Bush, on behalf of Americans all over the country, thank you for your leadership, thank you for what you are doing to make this the greatest country on Earth.

Thank you very much!

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

Are you sure that is right? Im reading that and it doesn't make any sense. There aren't just three billion additional people now competiting in the engineering field because not everyone is an engineer.

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

I don't think he means just in engineering. India and China both have over one billion people each, so the two of those combined with several other developing nations comes out to the three billion that Secretary Gutierrez cited.

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

Thank you that makes sense. I wonder if people in the United States would actually be willing to do some of the jobs that the Chinese do. I ended up doing something that someone in China does normally just to double check their work. It had to be the most boring job in the world. This measurment had to be done on every single display that my company creates and I think on every single plasma display. It's called kickback voltage and it invovled staring at a multimeter. Please someone correct me if Im wrong. Im still in my second year of college and Im only an intern.

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

Normally testing like that would be done with an automated test fixture here in the US. The circuit under test would be hit with a bed-of-nails connection, powered up, and fully tested with automated test equipment.

A test fixture like that might cost $100k to design and build, but if you use it to test 1,000,000 circuit boards then the automated test only cost ten cents a board.

In other parts of the world they may not bother with the test fixture. Instead they will pay some 12 year old girl $1 a day to sit and test boards all day long with a meter. If she happens to touch the live circuit and get electrocuted there are 100 girls waiting to get her job.

In a way this helps to illustrate what the speaker was talking about when he said how great the US is, and that greatness is the direct result of innovation and a continuous cycle of improvement. In China they can build the same products in factories that american workers can, but they have no Osha, they have no child labor laws, they have no worker protection laws, they have no minimum wage, and employers are not held accountable if workers are injured or killed on the job.

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

Whoops.. Bad example. I honestly can't say what the other company was doing but what I was doing was pretty close to what you described minus the whole automated procedure. Impossible to kill onself with also since the device was being operated at a low voltage. Sorry about that.

Re: Strikes me kind of uneasy...
 

I have to Disagree with you and agree with you ken.

That is the mentality of many americans. Everyone looks at the cons before they even notice that there are pros. I am Indian and have engineering realatives over there. Maybe that is A downside in some parts but in most of India that is not it. A few family frineds work across and awnser your very Customer Support questions, etc.

But just because there are few cases, not saying that there are none, but saying there are very few, that all people seem to focus on is THAT ONE ASPECT.

arrrg....