[Ivan Malik]

There is one thing that this thread has solidified, the regionalisms of FIRST teams.

I have talked with FIRSTers from the upper and lower Midwest, New England, Michigan, Atlantic coast, Canada, never had the pleasure to really sit down with many of you from down south or out west, but there is a huge difference in what each area emphasizes at its core. Take for instance Michigan and the upper Midwestern teams. They will in the broad sense make robot performance more of an emphasis than those in NE. NE emphasizes the community (chairman's if you will) more than teams in Michigan. This is not saying that both don't emphasize both robot and community or that one does them better than the other, but each have evolved to have something different as their "go to" guiding principle. This also does not apply to any single team, but rather when you look at the community as a whole.

Debating who is best without parameters means that people will fill in the blanks with their core guiding principles. This means that we are all talking about different things. No amount of data or facts and figures can back up something if the something is not the same. This is not bad either. It is just something that people need to realize when talking about topics like "who is the best." This is without taking into consideration regional biases and competition systems. That is a whole other problem.

FIRST has its own culture, people need treat it like one.