[Justin]

Originally Posted by seanwitte

Having a large development team is great for a public domain project, but not for something that has been traditionally very guarded. These are things that I would question if I were FIRST.

I think one of the good issues that this thread raises is...why is it so guarded?? I can see things like the game have to be guarded from people how have the desire/ability to transmit that information to teams. However we hear a lot about how FIRST is short on staff, etc. I think that if they decentralized more some good things could come from it. Teams have a lot to contribute and a lot of ideas on how FIRST is/should be/could be run. Yes there is the team forum and yes direct results come from that but why not give teams some power to truly effect things. It might serve the spread of FIRST better if FIRST were a more bottom up rather than top down organization. There are lot of alumni that are not on teams any longer and might be put to constructive uses. I haven't seen a lot of FIRST trying to do that.

It is also interesting to me that so many people think that FIRST is guarded/secretive/etc...perhaps because to some extent it is. However I also wonder if this isn't because of the oligarchical nature with which FIRST is run. I guess your opinion on whehter it should be this way depends of if you view FIRST as a service provider and teams a customers or whether you view FIRST as a community. Dean and Woodie to some extent are the co-rulers of the FIRST universe, I understand it is their creation and their vision and that naturally creates a desire for them to retain a good deal of the control over it. The question is, and I'm sure many will scoff, does this situation serve the overall goals of FIRST best??

Justin