[Alan Anderson]

Others have said a lot of what I would have, though not necessarily with the same tone. However, I want to repeat and/or emphasize a few things.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

So here's my principals:

1) A preferred way to encourage participation in the FIRST program, and thus in STEM education, is to allow all teams the broadest level of participation in elimination alliances.

It's your preferred way, obviously. But in causing certain teams to progress past where they otherwise would have, I think you've diluted the experience. I for one do not believe in the platitude of "everyone's a winner".

"I'm not going to tell you all that you all are winners. At this point you are smart enough to know whether you are or you aren't." -- Woodie Flowers

2) As a corollary, less experienced and less competitive teams learn a tremendous amount from being able to ally with more experienced, competitive teams through a series of elimination matches.

I see you focusing on elimination matches. I don't think that's where most of the learning experience takes place. They are much too stressful a situation for that. It's certainly exciting to participate in them, and I can believe that a team might want to do it again after getting a taste of it, but I don't see any evidence that a less competitive team is going to learn a lot by being allied with a more competitive one in the eliminations.

3) Teams drafting their own second bot creates an insular environment which degrades the atmosphere of coopertition. A team doing so appears to be implying, even if that's not the intent, that it is better than any other team, that it is not interested in learning from other teams that might in in other alliances, and isn't interested in sharing its expertise and resources with other teams.

This strikes me as a very unlikely state of affairs. I have to wonder whether you've actually been to a competition with the kind of "friendly" alliance selections that you disagree with. And I again note that you seem to be focused on the elimination rounds and ignoring the rest of the event.

4) With these objectives in mind, I suggest these changes to be used by event organizers (I can understand the concern about event autonomy, but FIRST can issue guidelines):

NO.

FIRST has no business telling FRC teams and event organizers what they can and cannot do outside the official FRC competition structure. You can certainly suggest the changes you desire, but you should be suggesting them to the people who can implement them instead of to the general Chief Delphi forums audience.

a) Offseason event should decide the intent of their event as to the level of competitiveness. IRI and Chezy Champs stand as the most competitive. Others like the Rookie Rumble will decide that maximum participation among all teams is the objective.

That's enough. I disagree with "maximum participation" as a universal goal, and I strongly disagree with your presumption that you can tell a less competitive event how to run their alliance selections. I find it absurd that you would consider making "level of competitiveness" an explicit measure of event planning.

I could respond individually to the rest of your points, but it would not add anything to the discussion.

--
Alan Anderson
TechnoKats Robotics Team
FIRST Team #45