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Originally Posted by rourke
Keep on track here. Collaborate for growth.
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. FIRST’s growth may flatten out into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.....
I’m suggesting we change the shape of the curve to: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256.....
Here is FIRST’s growth percentages taken from their 2005 Annual Report:
1996 – 59% more teams than previous year
1997 – 61%
1998 – 32%
1999 – 36%
2000 – 38%
2001 – 38%
2002 – 25 %
2003 – 22%
2004 – 18%
2005 – 7%
(and I understand 2006 is around 5%)
Must change the inflection of the curve!!!
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Ya know...alot of people look at me awkwardly when I say...growth isn't exactly a good thing.
My take is...growth is great when there is enough money in the pot to take from. While the idea of having every high school in a state with a FIRST team may sound nice, financially it is just not feasable. In a time where the job market is flat, sponsors are also very hard to come by. I feel this is why Dean is putting pressure on the politicians...but once again, money from the government will only take you so far. Not only that, but once again, growth means more teams, more teams means more regionals, more regionals means more money needed, more money needed means higher registration fee's.
Honestly, Rourke's explanation and take on collaboration was so good that I am finding it hard to come up with a counterpoint other than what I just said, and the ol' "I think seeing a bunch of robots that look the same is boring" idea. That, and I feel that it is also essential for teams to learn how to fail. Failure is in my eyes, the key to success. If you can deal with failure, look it in the eye, and conquer it, the hard stuff won't really intimidate you any more...and you can only get better. That is what the charm of a good ol small market or traditional rookie team is. They don't get much help, they have to scrape, and search to get by monetarily, designwise, strategy wise, and everything...but you know, that is a wonderful thing for a team to experience.
You really haven't experienced FIRST until you have something bring a team together like having almost nothing. Thats why I am against collaboration.
-Andy Grady