[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by popnbrown

So my point was that my only conclusion regarding incentives is that for these students to be doing what they do is, if they did not, they would not be part of that team. The expectations of these students are well beyond those of building a robot and competing.

Why should the poke just be winning the competition or being the best robot builders? Why can't we emulate the poke to be something greater, to be what the same as those amazing HoF teams which you mention above?

I think Adam mentioned this, but I don't see the motivation to win as being contrary to the end goals of FIRST. I just think it's limiting the potential of what can be achieved.

Your confusing the end results of what is a tremendous program with what lures students to the program and what are the underlying incentives that drive teams. The beauty of FIRST is that students don't realize they are working hard at learning while they are having fun. Why are they having fun? Because they are in a COMPETITION. Yes, there a few students who are just into the engineering and never see the competition, but they are in the minority. But the bottom line is that the students don't know that they are going to gain all of this experience beyond building robots to compete until they've been on a team a while. And it's the maintaining that motivation from competition through the sports metaphor that we're most concerned about.

But I'm interested in what your vision is of finding motivation beyond the competition poke. My biggest question once you articulate that is how you use it to recruit new students from beyond the boundaries of FIRST and those already with inherent interest in STEM? If you can clearly articulate that vision and how it might be implemented then we can discuss that. I will begin, however, "offering more championship slots" is not a vision and has not be adequately linked to a cause and effect that reaches the target audience I've described.

If you want to both promote STEM and take on motivations in Western culture, that's too much to ask of FIRST. I must part ways with you on that. FIRST has a singular mission. Adding a second one muddies that too much.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

You're missing the point here. I'm not arguing that the elite teams aren't, in large, influential off the field as well. What I'm arguing against is the mentality that many have taken in these debates. The mentality that the high end teams both inspire more than other teams, and the implication that as a result their desires should trump those of other parties. I both reject the premise (there are countless teams that are not "elite" that are among the cultural leaders in FIRST) and the implication. Even if the elite teams were doing more to inspire than others, it doesn't automatically mean that their whims trump those of FIRST's organizational demands or other teams. Elite teams should not necessarily have a veto power over how Championship is held, regardless of how certain individuals feel about the incentives it lays forth. While I know it's not intended be to arrogant, this attitude certainly comes off as arrogant. It reads like "We're really good at this, we know what's best for everyone!" Overall, I simply reject the concept that trickle-down inspiration is the only way to go.

...Yet the vast majority of them have remained intact in their commitment to the goals of FIRST. People have cried "Doom!" before, but the end has yet to come. That doesn't mean that they're wrong in this case, but rather than there are plenty of other perspectives to be considered here.

Let's start with the justification voiced by many in other threads for why the championsplit should have coequal fields rather than tiered qualification (to paraphrase): The top elite teams inspire other teams and should other teams at the 2 events should have an equal chance of interacting with those inspiring teams. Therefore one event should not be allowed to have a concentration of elite teams. Now those same elite teams are in fact NOT more inspiring and therefore deserve no special treatment. If that's the case, then you should have no problem if the championships in fact do have a tiered qualification system so that the top 400 go to one event and the next 400 go to other. Your position is inconsistent if you both opposed tiered events AND argue that elite teams are not anymore inspirational.

Regardless, you are missing my point--this isn't about catering to elite teams. My point is that FIRST needs the celebrity of elite teams in the sports metaphor to attract students from the broader society. No one has yet proposed a workable alternative model that will be as successful as the sports metaphor to reach widely across our society. Remember Kamen's goal is to change the culture so that scientists and engineers gain wider recognition and students aspire to be like them. You may not remember this ad campaign, but in the 1980s there was a hugely successful ad campaign with Michael Jordan who's pitch line was "Be like Mike." And the implication was obvious--emulate a celebrity pro athlete. This is a fundamental truth of marketing. You may not like marketing truths imply about us, but they are what they are.

So it's not about elite teams trying to "trump" HQs decision; it's about the usefulness of elite teams for promoting the mission of FIRST. Every successful sport needs its elite celebrities. In my favorite sport, track & field, this has become a real problem because too many of the celebrity athletes disappear in non-Olympic years. The sport is now heavily dependent on Usain Bolt, and he was gone last year so interest dropped significantly. In 1960, 80,000 spectators showed up for the US-USSR dual meet at Stanford. This year other than the Prefontaine meet in Eugene (about 13,000), no meet will draw more than 10,000 spectators and most less than 5,000. The elite track athletes now avoid meeting each other because the current incentives tell them to do so. I certainly want FIRST to avoid the fate of U.S. track & field.

Finally, I would say that the elite teams have stuck around because there has always been a unified championship to pursue. And the fact is that the other changes have often made the competition better. But now we're looking at a truly fundamental change. How will elite teams respond? And what if FIRST also designs games that have many features of this year's game? If those 2 factors happened in combination, you would start to see the mentors who drive those teams start to drift away.

Originally Posted by jman4747

But don't you? I can't do a survey that large. I can and have interacted with people in my immediate community and that's what I will comment on. If that isn't a valid analysis of outsider opinion for you than don't read it. A lot of students are and want to be builders. How does selling some other team in another state or country help my team or community? I'd much rather recount our drive and efforts and the fun involved with building our robots and competing at FIRST events.

You are assuming most everyone is motivated by winning and whatever else you are when clearly we and others we have talked to exist.

Your statement shows that you may be misunderstanding what's the mission of FIRST. It's not to appeal to members of already existing teams. Your attitudes about the attractiveness of STEM are already changed. As I've said many times, FIRST is aiming to reach well beyond your team. It wants to attract students who aren't inherently builders. That's great if that's your motivation, but why stymie the ability to attract others to the program because you have a specific preference? Why should your preference trump everyone else?

And given that preference, I'm don't see why allowing certain teams to focus on competitive excellence as their motivation conflicts with your preference to be motivated by the engineering challenge? Is there an inherent conflict that I'm not seeing?

And if you don't see how expanding FRC helps your program, then we need to have a separate conversation. Remember that your team was started in 2012 because FRC is expanding, so you have been directly impacted by that outreach. And others will benefit in the future as well.

BTW, I am not using personal anecdotes or statements of personal preferences. Please point to any of my posts that allude to my personal motivations for participating in FIRST other than I think this is a fantastic educational program that has the potential to reach a wide swath of the student population. What I have done is relayed what I have learned in my professional experience as an economist which includes an extensive knowledge of the research into the effect of incentives. I also have been a keen observer of sports action and management for even longer. I have tried to avoid any references to my own personal preferences. (It's something that I've developed in my professional work. In one week a few years ago I was called both a "Gringrich Republican" and a "commie pinko." Quite an accomplishment! )

And most importantly I am NOT making sweeping generalizations that "most everyone is motivated by winning and whatever else." I am saying that many students and mentors are motivated by competition, and based on the postings here and elsewhere on CD, the teams that are referenced as being inspirational (see my passage above) are motivated in a large part by competition. And what those teams do on and off the field is inspirational to other teams, even those not motivated by competition. (And I do have the empirical evidence that almost everyone is motivated by incentives. That premise is the basis of almost all economic research. I'd be interested to know if you have contrary research. Winning competitions is one type of incentive.)

Finally, I respond to your posts because we are having a public debate about the fundamental mission of FIRST and I believe that your opinions are representative of a much larger group than just you. I don't view you as an isolated voice--you're expressing concerns and viewpoints that others have stated elsewhere and probably by many others who haven't said anything. So, yes I will challenge your statements and the sources of your statements because they carry weight.