[Chris is me]

I can buy the argument that it's a bit intimidating to talk to them in the pit. They are all very driven and busy, and don't necessarily have the time to embrace their crowd with open arms. It's not a flaw of 1114's nor does it even begin to justify what happened to them, but on a busy day like Thursday I could understand why someone might get a negative impression.

I'll contrast that to an interaction I had with 217 at the Championship. I walked over to get a picture of their robot. Their driver at the time basically invited me in, proceeding to give me a nice 10 minute tour of their robot. They flipped it over, turned it on, showed how all the subsystems worked including the pincher and nonadrive, and talked about their design tradeoffs. It was like asking for a small glass of water and being given a 40 gallon drum.

I would reach some conclusion and say that teams could be even more proactive about being outgoing at competitions if they don't want to be hated, but that honestly shouldn't be necessary. Plus, 1114 really does get it. I happened to be visiting the St. Catharines / Niagara Falls region last summer and 1114 offered me a tour of their facilities before I could even ask. If that's not professionalism and going above and beyond, I don't know what is.

The most surprising thing about the visit, though, is that Simbotics turned out to really be not all that different from any other team. They worked out of a school shop with a handful of mills, lathes, and other equipment. They had worked their way into getting a decent work space, but there were a lot of closets and hallways; I bet they probably started off with just the little shop out back. 1114's shop (and school) is virtually identical to 2791's. I'd say we're a little better off. 1114 has everything they did because they work harder. More sponsors, recruiting engineers to help, the IFI partnership.

The best part of the tour? Not one mentor was present. None. The meeting I was at was 100% students. The students ran the tour and explained the details of every last thing I asked about. It was impressive, to say the least.