[GGCO]

You, my good friend, are a hero. I've been contemplating writing a thread very similar to this one myself, but you nailed it. Absolutely nailed it.

I'll just add some of my thoughts.

Number one. Competitions should be viewed as a celebration. I agree with FIRST here. However, teams need to learn how to celebrate for one another. That means congratulating the best and most competitive teams - who by-the-way worked their butts off for their outstanding robot. I'm pretty sure JVN had a great thread about this "culture change" within FIRST, and I'd love to see FIRST really put a lot of effort next year into jump starting it. However, they'll also need to change their attitude towards competition and teach people how to win/celebrate.

With regards to your second point, I couldn't agree more. Robotics is nerdy and we need to embrace that. Our society needs to become more nerdy, but intelligent people don't need to become like society. Ex: will.i.am should become more like your average FRC student, not the other way around.

I also think that this desire to make science and technology fun is a symptom of a much bigger problem. First, problem solving IS fun. At least for people who are going to become the future problem solvers. We do this because we love to innovate and create. It's a blast already, and we don't need FIRST to do anything (other than make it more challenging) to make it more fun. So we have to ask, who are they pandering to?

And why is there such a big concern with getting [insert minority here] human beings to become engineers? We don't need [insert minority here] engineers - we need good engineers whether they be [insert minority here] or not. It shouldn't matter as long as they can effectively solve problems with others.

I've come to the conclusion that FIRST is confusing making problems solving experiences accessible with making it fun. There's a big difference between the two. I would love to see a FRC team in every community, but not because I want every high schooler in those communities to participate. Rather, I want every higher schooler to have the opportunity to participate. Because the reality is that there are some people who just aren't cut out for the FRC. They either lack initiative, creativity, or people skills and are unwilling to obtain them.

On to your third point. I too thought it was odd to see this kind of promotion from FIRST. Using the logo as a game piece was fine especially because of the inherent challenge of designing a manipulator that could pick up all three types of pieces, but where I thought they went overboard was with the FTC kits. (Yes, I'm still complaining about them. Don't like it? Stop reading this. Now.) There were too many silly constraints that hampered innovation and stifled creativity. Also, I thought it was FIRST shamelessly squeezing a few extra dollars out of already cash strapped teams who needed, or couldn't get, the parts need required.