[Gabriel]

Please note that this is a long rant written late at night, however I have a some reputation points to spare and I think that it is important to say:

The more I read about Dean the more I realize that our idol-worship of him is misplaced.

I didn't hear his speech at nationals, but I have heard him speak on many different occasions. He may be a fine engineer but he is arrogant, hypocritical and usually just plain wrong.

I've heard him countless times talk with pride about how many states he's convinced to allow the Segway (using his huge team of lobbyists). In the same speeches he frequently makes fun of lawyers, lobbyists, and government.

The Segway was supposed to change the world, it is a disaster. Read the book on Ginger, its a fascinating look at how a great toy was hyped as a world-saving device it never had the potential to become. Dean was so caught up in his grandiose vision that he couldn't see the forest for the trees, he couldn't understand that his product could never deliver what he had promised even when real visionaries like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos actually told him so. As a result, Dean has lost a great deal of credibility (something he himself admits readily). This is a frequent problem with Dean, he latches onto big picture ideas he doesn't really understand and proposes solutions that, while clever, don't work. Take the Segway, or the iBOT wheelchair that didn't win approval until this year, or even in a sense FIRST itself. The fact is that FIRST isn't about what Dean thinks its about. We aren't transforming the culture and we shouldn't be (and how wrong is it for a guy who famously abstains from popular culture to criticize that same popular culture he has no knowledge of!) Dean sees FIRST as a big-picture thing, about transforming the culture of the United States, but it isn't. Take the number of students who participate in FIRST, subtract the number who are inspired by FIRST, subtract the number who were already interested in Science/Technology, subtract the number who like FIRST but come out of it choosing a career path other than engineering. The number of people fulfilling Dean's vision ends up being so small as to be insignificant on the national level. However, FIRST isn't really about that, its really about inspiring individuals and communities, and here FIRST makes a HUGE difference. Most of the people at FIRST get this, Dean doesn't.

Dean is certainly genuine - I will give him that - but he isn't all that he is cracked up to be. Dean is no more worthy of our cult-worship (which we seem all too ready to hand out) someone like Donald Trump. Its the image we're worshipping, not the man.

How about instead of talking about Dean constantly we start talking about the mentors who actually make FIRST worthwhile. They are the inspiring ones, and they are the ones who are worthy of our attention.

Has Dean ever actually mentored a team? I know that Dave Lavery and other FIRST leaders do... why doesn't Dean?