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GRACIOUS Professionalism
Like the post that started this, I will make the disclaimer that my remarks do not necessarily represent our team's collective opinion, but my own.
First off, the idea of BattleBots is ANTITHETICAL to the ideas behind FIRST. Going around a field beating other robots to bits is not Gracious Professionalism as can be defined by anything. There is nothing gracious nor anything professional about bullying around another robot. I saw several robots at nationals that probably should have been called because they were really nothing more than BattleBots.
Secondly, about the media: We've always known that the television market will go after the bad before the good. Hence why you'll see eleven murders and rapes on TV and nothing about someone who just made valedictorian of his/her class. Or for that matter why we see more football than less violent sports: they're only interested, for the most part, in things that will catch the average American's extremely short attention span, or what will sell advertising.
There is no reason for FIRST to change how it operates to pander to the mass market media. On the contrary, they could line up a media sponsor and/or find an efficient method of getting the media from every FIRST team's town to report on progress as it happens in regionals and in national competitions. FIRST is growing, and growing quickly...now's the time to spread the word farther beyond where it goes now.
The point of FIRST is not only to amuse those observing its product but to further educate students and teach them to INNOVATE. Therefore, teams need to understand how to think outside the proverbial box and leave the box-with-wheels prototype. FIRST is not about more of the same, modifying the previous year's, but INNOVATION. I saw a great many robots out at nationals that really were boxes with wheels. There is nothing innovative about a box with wheels at all. Think outside the box and truly find perhaps the deeper reasoning for why FIRST is what it is.
Okay, that's enough ranting for now...
Aaron Knight
Webmaster and Videographer
Team 891 ... Neverending Chaos...
Your lucky number: 3.14159265358979323846....
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