Quote:
Originally Posted by ToddF
The original question was, "Why are we bagging?"
The short answer is: Because FIRST wants it that way.
This is despite all the good reasons people have given for eliminating the bagging requirement:
- less stress on mentors and students (this has been debated to death)
- money currently spent on practice bots could be better spent
- more time for rookies to become minimally competitive
- better quality robots at any given competition for everyone
A more useful way to look at this issue is, given that every year this same issue is raised and debated, why has FIRST not changed things? Why do they seem to be ignoring the expressed desires of many of the teams to eliminate bag day? They seem to be pretty responsive to other legitimate complaints people raise.
My theory is that FIRST has made a management decision that keeping bag day is more supportive of the long term interests and goals of the FIRST organization than eliminating it. To me, the most persuasive and least debatable point in favor is that being able to work on your competition bot until game day saves teams money. It seems to me that helping teams save money is way, way down on the priority list of the FIRST organization. If they wanted to help keep the costs down, they could do so very simply: reduce the budget allowable for the robot. FIRST, in fact, has gone the other direction, raising the budget in 2013 from $3500 to $4000.
Why would they do such a thing? Because it forces teams to do more fundraising to stay competitive. It increases the amount of community relationship building a team must engage in.
Everyone says over and over that FIRST is about inspiration. It's not about making things easier or less stressful or cheaper or even more competitive. It's not about the robot. It's not about the competition. It's about spreading the message.
Read through the criteria for the highest awards FIRST gives, Chairman's, Dean's list and Woodie Flowers. These awards are only peripherally about technical excellence and success on the field. They are given for communications skills and successful PR.
Think about that. The organization which hosts "the super bowl of smarts" gives it's highest awards not for technical excellence, but for excellence in PR.
So, when asking why are we still bagging robots, the question really is, "which is better PR, bagging or not bagging?" I think the answer lies in the line all our students and mentors deliver to everyone who asks us about FIRST. "We have six weeks from kickoff day to design, build and test our robot before it has to go in the bag." That line is PR gold. Why would FIRST ever give it up? To make things easier on the teams? To make it cheaper? To REDUCE the amount of community relationship building necessary to be top tier? I don't think so.
[Full disclosure... I hope FIRST proves me wrong and eliminates bag day. I'd love to be able to work to improve our competition bot right up until our final competition. But, I don't think that's going to happen.]
|
The other angle though, is that more competitive robots = a more exciting competition to watch = more sponsors attracted from passers-by who happen to see a regional and go "Oh this is cool, I want to support this."
More competitive robots = more exciting competition = easier to sell to sponsors (both at the team level, and the HQ level).
More competitive robots make it easier to make FIRST loud.