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Originally Posted by Alexander McGee
I am a bit bothered by your assertiveness in this matter, as well as the way you seem to address the FIRST community. We are not ignorant nor are we unintelligent, and the “world is flat” digression is a bit condescending.
There are people who do not like collaborations. Period. Read some of the posts in this thread and others, you will see. Blatantly telling them that they are wrong and need to “embrace” it is unacceptable. People are entitled to their opinions and are certainly not going to change their minds any time soon.
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Alexander,
It's clear that there are people who do not support collaboration. If I may put some words in Steve's mouth for a moment, I believe his "world is flat" analogy is refering to the fact that FIRST has clearly said collaboration is here to stay. Obviously there will be people who don't like this, but what Steve is suggesting is that those who disapprove, try and accept it's presence and make the most of it.
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Originally Posted by Alexander McGee
Yes, you will tell me and have that your students are inspired by what they have seen, but aren’t there better ways? I don’t pretend to know how your teams operate, and am not going to make any assumptions, but how inspired can your students be when there is spite surrounding you at the events? Everywhere I went at GLR, I heard spite about your teams and how “unfair” it was all day long. Is this really what you want?
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Let me assure you our students are inspired, as they tell me on a daily basis. I'm sure this doesn't satisfy you, but they'd be glad to tell you in person if you took the time to stop by our pits. Yes, we're aware that many people were not happy with the success of our teams at the competition. I'm sure my students realized this as well. But, we were also overwhelmed by kind comments from enthusiastic mentors, students, judges and general FIRST supporters. The positive comments definitely outweighed the negative. These comments definitely inspired our students. (Granted, I'm sure most people with the negative comments chose not to come forward with them)
Yes, not everyone likes the way we operate. Should we abandon our approach, to satisfy the critics? Obviously not. Team 254 is always unfairly criticized by the FIRST community, has this stopped them? No. They keep doing their thing, inspiring thousands along the way.
This collaboration has benefited our community, our high schools, our sponsors and our students. We've been able to affect the lives of 4 times as many Niagara Region high school students. We've energized our community about FIRST. (Expect 1114's Chairman's submission to be posted in early May, which details many of these topics) Of course we don't like the spite, but it's a small toll to pay on the road to a culture change.