[robochick1319]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Re: the team resources discussion, it is amusing how discussion of this always progress nearly identically to political discussions on socioeconomic disparity. I think it'd be nice to see a bit more understanding of the facts that there are teams with limited resources who are not in that situation simply due to incompetence or lack of motivation, and that teams with more resources are, indeed, at a competitive advantage (in the most general sense - I am not going to argue the specifics of how big this advantage is and how it scales). There is no perfect meritocracy distributing support to FRC teams. This obviously does not justify bitterness towards successful teams - but I think a lot of the vitriol we see when this subject is brought up is as much a result of frustration at the perceived condescension towards disadvantaged teams as of the disparity in resources itself. I don't think I'm the only one who has noticed this.

Well said. I am FIRST alum and a FIRST mentor now. I have seen teams with huge budgets and teams with shoestring budgets. Even my team has had feast and famine years. The goal should be for teams to do the most they can with the resources they have. Socioeconomic disparity is a real thing in the real world so trying to stop it in FIRST seems counterproductive. Besides, if we start placing too many restrictions on teams we will lose the diversity and innovation that makes the program so great.

It reminds me of this campaign from Android.