Quote:
Originally Posted by gblake
PS: FIRST the non-profit business might sometimes pick controversial ways to implement its mission/vision, but I don't think it has purposefully or accidentally stepped away from it with the Championshplit decision.
|
They certainly didn't do it purposefully. Did they do it at all? It's difficult to say, at least until 2017.
So why do we write here at all? What's done is done. There are certain elements that are set in stone and cannot be changed. What good does talking about it online do? I can't speak for others, but for me, I think the leadership is missing something important, and I hope that maybe I'll say something that gets passed on to someone else, and eventually makes its way to the leadership and that makes the little light bulb go on for them.
I say that they are missing something because I have seen three attempts to communicate with the First community about this decision. There was the announcement itself, there was the town hall presentation and discussion, and there was the post-announcement survey. In my opinion, all three of them demonstrated that they didn't understand their audience. All three of those communication attempts showed a complete misunderstanding of how their communication attempts would be perceived.
With that in mind, I think that I have a different way of explaining things that might help one side see the other side's point of view. There are more than two sides, but the biggest general groupings are people who absolutely hate the split, and people who think it doesn't really matter, and that people should embrace the positives of the split plan. People in each general group post here, but it doesn't seem like either side is doing much in the way of convincing. Why not?
In my opinion, what we have here is a case of rationalism versus emotion. The primary arguments for the split are highly rational. They deal with numbers of teams who can participate, and the costs for each team. They could be shown on a spreadsheet.
The anti-split crowd's arguments are frequently emotional. The most common arguments are either that they want to gather all of the best robots in one place, or that there cannot be two world championships, by definition, and that somehow that's important. They sometimes try to argue beyond that, to rationalize their arguments, using the literal meaning of that word. It doesn't often work. The rationalized arguments often ring hollow.
You might think that, as engineers, we should embrace the logical over the emotional. I think that is completely wrong. We use the word "inspiration" a lot. It's in our name. Inspiration is an emotional reaction. The leadership needs to understand the emotional nature of the reaction, and play off of that. Never, ever, dismiss it as irrelevant. In understanding those emotions lies the key to First's continued success.
Think about this. First is not the only student robot competition in the world. There are others. Some have thousands of participants and a global reach. Rationally, the others are just as good as First. However, they aren't as successful. I think that's because there is something about a First event that is highly emotional. Something about the environment we have created taps into some really primal emotions in a way that appeals to us in a big way. Whether students, alumni, or mentors, we want to keep coming back and be a part of it. There is more screaming, cheering, and crying at our events than there are at those other events, because there's something about our events that seem more important.
That's enough for the moment, but I think if you want to understand why there was so much hostility toward the split championship model, first understand the emotional appeal of the phrase "world championship". After understanding those arguments, you may still conclude that the leadership's plan for two season finale events is better than a single event, but you will understand why some people don't see it that way.