Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Ray
This has been my sentiment for a long time. I was just too chicken to say it. And this is from a team who has been to the CMP 9 consecutive years (counting this year) and all but two of them are for the reasons listed above so I think we know what it's like to get there by all means.
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(Once again these are my opinions, not Team 1806's or its sponsors)
Either school of thinking is counterproductive when taken to extremes. Championship needs to be diluted enough to be reasonably inclusive, yet competitive enough to be credible and provide an on field product that keeps sponsors, VIPs, and eventually the general public entertained. There also needs to be outreach and rookie teams there for various inspirational purposes.
FIRST HQ has the tough job of attempting to find the right balance to advance STEM. Problems arise and mistakes get made, even with good intentions. While there are good reasons to go to this format, there are uncertainties and issues with it that make me question if the change is worth the risk of alienating people and degrading the championship experience. FIRST really needs to respond to the concerns of the community to at the very least inspire confidence that there is a bigger, better plan waiting to be enacted.
A lot of the community here(myself included) has been motivated by trying to use the pursuit of robotic perfection as a way to advance their students' abilities as future STEM workforce members and humans in general. By lowering the ceiling of success, a bunch of students and mentors find it much harder to justify sugh a high time commitment involved in trying to build their team into Co-sort-of-World-Champion-of-<City>. Yes, it's still about the students, the sustainability of the team, and the values of FIRST, but when you take away the ability and some of the (admittedly slightly egotistical) incentive to Aim High
TM, the enthusiasm levels and ambition will falter.
Judging from this thread and awesome interactions with the FIRST community in the past, we're not short on passion and by extension enthusiasm. I'd rather not see FIRST make decisions that endanger these qualities.