Hey Matt,
Thanks for logical questions. I'll be happy to try and address them for you.
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Originally Posted by Matt Adams
I think it's that sentance that has me confused and what prompted me to post. Why would you be better off? What are some of the drawbacks you had to weigh when deciding to build 3 of the same robot?
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Without going into all the inner workings and politics of our Teams, let me best try and explain this. If we were to pool our best engineers and students onto one team, and have them design and build one robot, we could probably build a more competitive robot. Many times functionality is sacrificed, because it would take too long to implement the change on all three robots. Also, our manufacturing time is greatly increased.
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Originally Posted by Matt Adams
You collaborated to have better robots - but not to create an all dominating force with an unfair advantage. Am I wrong?
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No, you've sort of got it right. If we had one team, we would have a robot that was better than these three. But, if we existed as three separate teams, chance are our triplets would be better than the non-collaborated robots.
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Originally Posted by Matt Adams
My personal opinion is under-mentored teams that build poor-performing, unreliable robots are, generally (exceptions exist), not particularly inspiring. I think there are many who understand this point (but may not agree it).
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Exactly. This is one of the main reasons for the collaboration. We too feel that a high functioning robot is more inspiring than a poor-performing one. This collaboration was initially designed to setup teams with limited resources for more success. While the collaboration occurs, the newer teams are given valuable time to align themselves with more resources, to allow for a transition into Independence. This collaboration is not a permanent solution, merely a model to lead new teams toward sustainable success.
It's it my firm belief that not only does FIRST need to grow to accomplish it's mission of a culture change, but it needs to establish strong sustainable growth. This is the driving motivation behind the collaboration.