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I do believe the topic at hand was bringing a group of girls to a regional, and there was some questions and some criticism as to why it was done. After getting the answers from the team, it spawned a new set of questions. Are girls accepted as equally as we'd like to think or is it just a "unwritten law" that girls shouldn't be technical when it comes to FIRST?

I don't believe we've strayed off topic, if we had done so it would've spawned much more meaningless things. This thread is actually very interesting to read and to understand people's backgrounds.

Thank you all for some great reading material!

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I must say that I'm personally surprised to look back through this thread and see how huge of a deal some people made out of a little thing.

For what it's worth here's my perspective.
Aviation (my field) in general is a predominantly male field. The number of females in the field is rising slowly and steadily but it is still largely male dominated. For the record, my flight instructor is female, and she's also one of my closest friends (relax, she's my age). I'm on the flight team at my college (for more information go to www.nifa.us). We have 4 girls on the team and about 15 guys. The people who get to compete in regionals and nationals are the people who show that they are in the top 5 in their events on the team (we hold cuts throughout the season). So basically whoever goes to competition is based on merit and coaches decision.

Re: pic: We left the boys at home
 

Thank you. The discussion has again wandered off into the "why" of Team 842's decision to send an all-girls team to the San Diego Regional. You either agree with their decision to do so, or you don't. That topic has pretty much been discussed into submission at this point, and we are now into "me too!" mode. But the thread was re-opened to allow discussion about one very important aspect of that expereience that has been glossed over so far:

Having made the choice to send this particular sub-set of their team to an event, what did Team 842 learn as a result?

I think that if you talk to them about the experience, you will find that they learned both some expected and unexpected lessons. A few have been briefly mentioned already. They deserve further discussion, because they are important, and very revealing. And there are a few more that have yet to be mentioned, including some surprises.

-dave

p.s. and I will repeat a thought from my earlier post: if you don't find someone from Team 842, wrestle them to the floor, sit on them, and threaten to not get up until they tell you about their "Digitally Enhanced Scouting System" you are going to regret it! :)

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Team 842 -
I started this thread by asking how your team did this and what you learned.
Dave is encouraging you and making hints again. :) This time about surprises.

It would be wonderful to hear 842 students' perspectives and experiences.
Thank you to the mentors and students who have posted already.

Jane

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Thanks for vectoring the thread again, Dave. Now I am on the edge of my chair, because I love surprises.

My team (like most in FIRST, I suspect) needs to get more girls involved. At recent FRC events our traveling crew has been about 25% female and that tracks closely with overall participation. Having worked with, and reported to, several scary-smart female engineers during my quarter-century in the profession, I refuse to believe that my team's level of female participation can be attributed to individual capabilities. I know there is talent that we are not utilizing -- and by finding ways to bring it out we can make the team more competitive.

Eagerly awaiting lessons from 842's experience. :)

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Well... I know you want to hear from the girls and maybe more boys from the team, but they are a little shaken by the responses on the thread. They are talking amongst each other and are formulating what they learned from the experience. They hope to post their response soon. We were just doing what we thought was right as a team. We didn't realize what we stumbled on. The responses have been very interesting and powerful. There have been many kind words on our behalf, and I felt that you all should not be left hanging, so I post this to let you all know they are not ignoring you. Thanks

P.S. Nobody has asked us about our Digitally Enhanced Scoring System, any more hints from Dave and he might as well take out an ad in the FIRST program. We are getting ready to add another dimension to it for Nationals. We are in Galileo, stop by and check it out, we will have a set in the stands and one in the pit. See Ya!!

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Please ask the team to take all the time they need.
Changing the culture is hard work. :)
Thank you -
Jane

P.S. here's another thread to keep you busy....
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=56632

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842 rocks!

anyways, I chuckled at the comment about the 842 guys programming....what's that all about, Karen? :)

We got to see the .xls results of the scouting system at the AZ regional (and it must work well, since 842 picked 1726 to be on their alliance). The data loggers are indeed named after the 7 characters in the old Disney movie.

And as for the whole equality thing....life isn't fair, and it's good to see some folks realize this and push the other way to try to even things up a bit.

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I too concur with squirrel. 842 totally rocks! In looking at this experience, I was talking with squirrel and asked if this was something that we could do as well. We have a number of females on the team, and I would be willing to do the same with our female members if it would help change the culture.

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Ok, I think I see some definite contradictions here in this one statement. Why is this "elite" crew of 4 able to go early, and in that sense "going while the rest of the team doesn't go" and then denied the same seperate status as the rest of the team when it came to a non-FIRST sanctioned activity?

This is just telling the team members that they are there to work on FIRST related activities (uncrating the robot for instance) and nothing else?
FIRST is supposed to be "the hardest fun ever". Apparently (unless I am missing something here) your team has designated the "hardest" to the work category, and not the fun one. That's not right in my opinion.

But isn't this seperation from the rest of the team is also telling them that they are "special" and have that priviledge to go to the event early?

I don't understand this at all.

They made it, they qualified to go early, why not have an extra day of activities rolled into that? If they don't deserve the fun, why do they deserve the work?

An equal balance must be found between play and work.

Dean once made a good quote intergrating the popular Nike quote. His quote was as follows:
"Play Hard? I say Work Hard".

I personally say there has to be a balance to each for you to have fun and be sucessful in all you do.

I'm sure the students and mentors on 842 realized this, and thus a fair agreement was reached between the team that they obviously went with.

To all the people who say it's "sexist, or biased, or discrimination" towards the male members of 842, I would like an actual male student member of 842, or a whole bunch for that matter, to reply to that and give a true feeling about that.

No inhibitions.. Just tell us why you agreed with this descision (or if you didn't, feel free to tell us, but also explain why.. and how you felt when the team decided to do it anyways IF that was the case, and how your team came up with it from an insider's point of view.

And, as for my comments to 842.. I'm not going to say "you go girls!" for ditching the guys and competing themselves, and I'm not going to say "way to go guys" for letting the girls go on their own..
No siree, I'm not going to be accused of being biased one way or the other here like so many have already I will just say one thing to 842.

Great Job Team!!! :)

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Well, I don't know about his team, but I know that there is an advance team on the TechnoKats that goes early so that they can uncrate the robot and such. Also, the school usually wants to leave at the last minute and plan to be at the even right on time (never happens) and the advance team goes to help set the pit up right as the doors open. This team is more to make sure that we don't waste any precious time at the competition.

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Elgin, this has already been answered in this thread. See this post. One of the team leaders gives a pretty clear explanation.

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Thanks Eric.. I went back and read that.. and It answered some misconceptions I had but also raised more questions. But whatever. I think the excellent and well thought out point made here by Dapub sums up the political world of FIRST in a nutshell. (which I have realized, goes further and further every day i talk to people.)
Yay for social networking. :)

Anyways.. Great Quote:

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I had stayed away from this thread for a week and now I am intrigued to learn about this DES system. I will take you up on your offer to see you in Atlanta. Our team is traveling without our robot as we did not advance nor did we move off the waitlist as we had hoped. Our team will be participating in the FIRST workshops, volunteering at the event, and sending two - three students to your pit for at least a day.

I'll pm you with a specific request.

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We will see you there!!