Quote:
Originally Posted by LindsayKnowlton
Well, I might as well tell my opinion on this issue....
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That's a lot of harsh words coming from somebody with no first hand experience working with the collaborative group, and little experience with the robot build team.
To 515 and 1447 - I'm proud to have worked with your teams this season. If our three robots don't run in a single match all season, I'll still be proud to have worked with you, because you're just that great. I hope that the experience has been as good for you, both personally and as a team, as I feel it has been for our team (whether our students have recognized it yet or not). Not only do I have pride in my team, but in both of yours as well, and in the achievements that our teams have made together. I also would like to apologize on behalf of anyone who may have ever made you feel, in any way shape or form, unwelcome.
To the Niagra FIRST bunch - Having experienced a collaborative build season, I'm amazed at what your teams accomplished.
As far as the Chairman's Award goes, we make the decisions we do because we think that it will benefit the FIRST community, or the community at large, while making our team as a whole a more inspirational experience, and through this process we strive to be the best team. When we are judged as the best team we'll win the Chairman's award. We didn't enter into a collaboration because it would "look good" on our award. For that matter, it wasn't to look good to the FIRST community (I doubt anyone would enter into such a publicly contested arrangement to look good), or to be more competitive either.
Another misconception appears to be that collaboration is easy, or taking the easy way out. I assure you that it was not easy. In all my years on this team I can't recall a year where we worked as hard as a team (or in this case, three teams) as we did this year. I can also assure you that there is a strong fundraising effort, and that building identical robots had little to do with saving money. Perhaps we just didn't organize it right, but there's probably little cost difference between what we spent and what it would have cost to build three different robots. There was also no "copying." From the beginning we worked as one group to design one robot and build three of them.
I'm proud that my team is part of a "triplicy." I think that the experience forged bonds between both teams and people from different backgrounds, who otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to interact, while maximizing our resources to spread the message of FIRST. One aspect of a successful season is knowing the limits of your resources and being able to not completely spread everything to thin. Overtaxing the resources leads to burnout, and that's one thing that does not lead to a healthy sustainable team.
I don't mean to say that collaboration is a perfect solution, because of course it's stressful, but I have yet to see a FIRST team (whether they are part of a collaboration or not) in which everything is perfect. One of the wonderful things about FIRST is the diversity among how teams are run and operated, and I think collaboration (identical robots or not) is one of the many effective methods.
~Allison K