[Basel A]

There have been a few posts in this thread that try to walk the line, saying that FIRST being about and not about the robot are compatible. In my opinion, this is simply balking at the question being asked. Working to be better at robots has a cost. Let's look at a few cases.

Many FTC teams rely on FRC students to be mentors. However, there are a number of FTC competitions during the FRC season, so the seasons could overlap. Students who mentor FTC while also on an FRC team will necessarily do less for their FRC team than they would if they weren't mentoring. For the FRC team, this has a cost: if the best FRC students are mentoring FTC, the FRC robot quality could suffer.

At an offseason FRC event, is it better to give everyone who wants a chance to drive the robot or is it better to be more selective and use it as a training ground to identify and develop the best drivers for future FRC seasons. For teams large enough where this is an actual choice (if you have 14 kids who want to drive, you can't choose both), the former could be more inspirational.

I know of a few teams who host an event at the end of build season where they demonstrate their robot to sponsors/community/etc. Clearly, this is great in advancing FIRST's goals. However, it takes away a day of working on the robot. There's even a team that hosted such an event despite the fact that their robot wasn't performing nearly up to their standards, and they really could have used the extra day. Would you have made the same choice?