[OZ_341]

I have not decided how I feel about completely abandoning the 6 week build concept and I do certainly agree with many of the points that Jared made earlier. But I also have some concerns that would make me hesitate.

Most of my concern surrounds the loss of creativity and the heavy-handed benchmarking that will occur.
At the FTC level there is a great deal of "benchmarking" that happens due the the competition structure and the ease of rebuilding. There are still many imaginative teams, but there are also teams which heavily copy from successful designs.

Sure this happens in FRC, but there are limits to how much benchmarking you can implement. If FRC opens up completely, teams that have high speed manufacturing talents and the manpower can wait until the "smart teams" figure out the game and do a complete redesign based on the most successful robot systems.
I watched this happen in 2008, when Team 121 came out with an awesome design and reveal video at the end of week 3. It was a great machine. Countless struggling teams immediately dropped their design plans and adopted the "Tusk and Roller" pickup system. Sure those teams probably had a better year on the field, but those kids lost the opportunity to go on a journey of discovery.
In 2008 our ball pick-up design was not going well and there was tremendous pressure from a large faction of our kids to just give up on our design and adopt what Team 121 was doing. We certainly had the time and the talent. But even though I loved that design, I refused to allow it. I made them stick with their plans, improve their design, and go on that journey of discovery. It was a HARD year, and it was certainly not the best machine in FIRST that year, but it did win the Philly Regional, and more importantly those kids learned something that year about believing in yourself and having confidence in your ideas.
If we change to a completely open system there will still be plenty of creative teams, but being successful will no longer mandate imagination, simply having manufacturing muscle and manpower will be enough. My fear is that it won't be all that different than school life, where many talented kids wait for the "smarter kids" to figure things out and then simply collect the fruits of their labor.

I know this happens now in FRC to a certain extent, but it will bring this practice to a whole new level. As I said, I have not decided how I feel about this proposal, but it is one of my concerns.