[Steve W]

Stephen, you know that I respect you and the team. I am also known to be against collaboration. I will admit that the triplets have improved and that there has been more student involvement. I will admit that there has been a lot of inspiration from your robots.

However I have seen only 1 robot for the past 2 years. I have not seen the inspired students and schools splitting off to form their own teams. These are the things that need to be addressed. If every team was sent a copy of plans and had all of the machining done so that they just needed to assemble, would there still be inspiration. If GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan etc shared and built from the same plans were would the diversity come from? How do we stimulate creative juices if we do not think individually. Many teams mentor other teams but do not build the same robot. The creativity is shown with individual accomplishments that inspire. We also learn from our mistakes and those of others.

I believe that we must stand out and be seen. We need to inspire others to exceed our potential, to use their own creativity and ideas. Heck to coin a famous phase " To boldly go were no man has gone before". This is FIRST. Is there anything wrong with a lot of strong teams staying together and being the best? That I cannot answer but I know that eventually all of the "Mom and Pop" teams will disappear as they will be unable to compete against the mega teams.

I work in a field that specializing on products is slowly increasing. This has caused the problem of narrow areas of knowledge and abilities have become diminished. We should be doing the exact opposite. Expanding our areas of knowledge and abilities. By doing this I believe that we can find new and exciting solutions.