Thread: A Request
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Unread 11-05-2014, 10:40
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Re: A Request

I suppose I would be one of those people you are asking to stop looking down on FTC, so I feel like I should explain why I do. I would not say FTC is necessarily inferior to FRC, it does have its strengths. FTC teams are far cheaper for a high school to fund, and make it much more feasible for FIRST to reach its goal of a FIRST team in every school. Coming from a high school in Iowa, almost every 4A school in our area had at least 1 FTC team, while Iowa still only has 6 FRC teams in the entire state.

That being said however, FTC is not as exciting, from an outsiders perspective, as FRC. I know that for those of you who compete, its extremely exciting, but even up close, the robots are just slower, the field is smaller, and once you get to the Edward Jones dome, and people look down on this tiny field you can hardly see, they will start to wonder about that huge field over there where everyone is cheering.

If our goal is to inspire broader acceptance and interest in STEM beyond people in FIRST, if we want a FIRST event on national TV, it will be an FRC event, because FRC is and will be for the foreseeable future, the flagship FIRST program. I'm not saying you can't learn a lot doing FTC, I'm not saying you can't be an amazing engineer after being on an FTC team, but if we want to hook people outside FIRST, we will do it with FRC, not FTC. Thats why I see it as "FRC-Lite".
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