[BrendanB]

As with most issues in FIRST how about we all wait until competition season so we can see exactly what the Ri3D/BuildBlitz did or didn't bring to the community. I personally have had mixed feelings over the projects but I won't make my final conclusion until we see how this year pans out. I can come up with countless times the community has had an issue with something that builds up to be a disaster and then this event happens and we hear nothing of how awful it was.

I loved Ri3D last year and saw all the teams who used it and it was great to see so many teams show up to competition with something working who previously struggled. This year I was concerned with the direction it was taking when Vex announced they would be building two robots and I thought it would be cool but still didn't feel too jazzed about the idea. Then I heard of more projects starting up and we hit 6 robots being built in 72 hours and really started to get concerned about the future of FRC.

Anyone arguing on the basis of "copying" should also hold their tongue (unless they already know what everyone is building) but they should also talk to those teams. My team has a single robot feature that I believe everyone will immediately categorize our robot or believe we copied off of an Ri3D or BuildBlitz robot which is FAR from why it is on our robot. In reality this same feature was one we discussed during day one and was sketched out before we started following teams' progress on Sunday/Monday and as soon as I saw it my first reaction was, "crap we are going to be stuck with a label from now on". The fact of the matter is we (our team and members of Ri3D/BuildBlitz) all are drawing inspiration from the same place and the argument can be made that while you might think teams are "copying" Ri3D/BuildBlitz there is nothing saying that those teams are being inspired by previous robots themselves.

Our team looked at all 6 robots and saw some neat features in them but nothing on them we said "Oh we should built that robot" or "Let's put that on our robot".

TL;DR- Is Ri3D/BuildBlitz really reinventing the wheel that teams are copying or is everyone just looking back to similar robots for inspiration and we would see these mechanisms in 2014 regardless of the Ri3D/BuildBlitz robots taking place?

EDIT: I will say anyone considering getting together with a group to do a robot in 72 hours should think twice about why they are doing it. Just as FIRST has a scalibility issue it is tackling with districts, what would happen if in 5 years we had 50 72 hour robots taking place? Could be a crazy number but I'm sure it would be very easy to find 50 groups who'd be willing to do it. Do you think that would have an impact the community?