Quote:
Originally Posted by popnbrown
I'm likely naive and ideal, but I think this is too blanket of a statement. Perhaps a true generalization but not a fair one. I think some people, especially many of us here, do things not for a very clear and understood incentive. Perhaps some of us got involved because of a clear incentive but it is not why we continue to be involved.
For example: Teams that have won World Chairman's continue to do the work of a role model FRC team, even though they do not have the chance to win the award for another 5 years. Why is this?
In addition to what you've said above and previously, I think you're implying that FIRST's most unique feature is it's competitive feature. I politely disagree, it is not what drew me (robots were just cool..and all my friends did it) and it is not what continues to draw me (I'm just trying to get my students to write good e-mails  ) to FIRST.
In my experience, Science Olympiad was more competitive than FIRST was.
I can understand it's what attracts certain people, but it is not universal. |
My statement about incentives is pretty much universally true. While social morales and ethics seem to arise from some "unknown" source, economists have pretty much worked through the incentive structures that motivate them. (Yes, sociologists will hate that I said this.) In addition, once the incentive has worked its magic (e.g. winning Chairmans) the cultural inertia (which is an incentive in itself--often called "status quo bias") keeps that effort going. Plus those teams know that in 5 years they can compete for Chairmans again.
FIRST's uniqueness is not in its competitiveness. There are many (most?) STEM promotion activities are competitive in some way. The uniqueness is the on-field competition which copies the sports metaphor, down to the large number of spectators/participants in the stands and the live commentary. The FTC/VEX scale robots are hard to see from the first level stands in Edward Jones Stadium, much less the third tier. It's that "stadium stage" which is truly unique. And that only occurs when there is a dramatic championship on the line, as David wrote about.
And the attraction need not be universal--it only needs to attract a sufficiently large number of students to be effective and justified. Almost certainly you would be in a STEM activity of some type--you're not FIRST's target audience. Their target audience is our 2013 team captain who wanted to be a fashion designer and saw all of this excitement so she joined the team. She's now a mechanical engineering student. Or 1323's captain who switched from the cheerleading squad at Madera HS.
Or let's talk about the ultimate motivation story. Karthik in his talk at Champs told about how he first refused to join the robotics team, but then the mentor appealed to Karthik's love of sports and how similar FRC is to sports. I don't think anyone will dispute the effect Karthik has on the inspiration for FRC teams. The strongest advocates for championsplit have argued that having more teams able to see elite teams like 1114 is the prime rationale for the restructuring. Where would 1114 be without Karthik? Why would we want to create a system that reduces the motivation for Karthik to even join FRC? Are we going to lose the next Karthik by deemphasizing the sports metaphor?