[Racer26]

I can't help but to be reminded of a post I made following Championship 2010, and Dean's speech there that offended some manual laborers (we've lost these jobs, and don't want them back).

My [spotlighted] post then, and I stand by it now, said that if we want to grow the programs so that every child has the opportunity to be involved, we have to think with a WORLD-centric mindset, and not the AMERICAN-centric mindset that still seems to dominate many FRC teams (Calling CMP Nationals, and not Championship), and even FIRST HQ itself (talking about "american" problems, and "this nation" and the like, when most of what is being talked about applies the world over.) As a long-standing mentor on a CANADIAN team, I find this america-centric mindset offensive. It flies in the face of FIRSTs stated goals of changing the culture.

FIRST continues to make abject stabs at the VEX program, and as many before me have said, this flies in the face of their stated goal of changing the culture, which FRC, FTC, FLL, JFLL, VRC, BEST, BotBall, et al are doing.

When people intimately tied to FIRST HQ such as Dave Lavery are making statements which DO follow these ideals (dont waste time on turf wars, grow the turf instead), I can't help but wonder what the motivation behind taking such (IMO) obvious stabs at VRC's success is.

The way these stabs are detracting from the program, and making SEVERAL well-known and well-respected mentors lose a great deal of faith in FIRST is a very sad thing.

One thing I haven't noticed, is IFI responding to the abject stabs at their success by pulling equally underhanded tactics. IFI remains a huge supporter of FIRST, even after the debacle surrounding FVC changing to FTC, and replacing the IFI controllers with the cRIO. If they wanted to, they could quite easily stop supporting FIRST altogether, and the quality of the FIRST program would surely suffer for it. I for one, am glad to see IFI taking the moral high ground, and not doing this.

Kudos to you IFI, for your continued support of FIRST and its stated ideals, even in spite of tactics aimed squarely at your success.