[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Alex.q

I disagree with your coach, but every team is different. On my team, we have a slogan "student led, mentor driven," and many of the decisions are made by students, from structure of meetings, to schedule and division of labor, to what we do in the offseason. I have seen our team change directions multiple times and reorient itself to improve our skills and our finished product. I don't know how your team structures its leadership, and I'm not recommending you demand your way, but I think you could try to explain to your coach and mentors what it is you want to change, how you would change it, and your vision of how that would influence the team. If he still ignores you, commit yourself to designing and building a good roobot despite the limitations of your team.

I already done that, I had the whole thing CADed out and presented a very professional and complete presentation on it yesterday. In fact, everyone commented on how great my idea is and how great my presentation was. The vote was a tie between those two designs. But the thing that scared the people away was the complexity and the level of detail that I went into. I explicitly stated that it is scalable down to a less complex version. Today, we had a re-vote, their main platform was the simplicity. Mine was that their idea filed before in a previous year and that it would be ineffective as anything. It simply will not kick high or far enough.

Originally Posted by davepowers

I can relate to this very much, in many ways. I would do anything, at any time, for GUS, and sometimes seeing kids with different perspectives toward the program frustrates me. But everyone receives different life experiences from FIRST, some small, some huge. So just remember, if you keep doing what you're doing, and honestly giving it everything you've got, you are making a difference, even if it doesn't show at this moment, at some moment in the future, it will. If you're always right, or always have an idea that will end up being successful, people will start to listen. The best way to motivate is too inspire. So keep doing what you're doing, it will pay off. I can promise you that.

-D

See the above response. Apparently, my ideas are "too perfect".