Thread: The Sad truth
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Unread 24-10-2007, 13:57
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Re: The Sad truth

After being on a team who's budget didn't get approved until a week before registration I have developed a unique opinion on the matter. Many people fail to blame themselves in situations like this. Yes it is true that FIRST isn't perfect and they could improve on some things but the same is true for us. Many teams who have money issues should sometimes blame themselves. In my teams case no one really takes the fundraising seriously many are like well i sell a cheesecake here or a dinner ticket there but no one really has the drive to go out and fundraise. So our money issue was brought on by ourselves and because of our sub-par fundraising attempts our robot may not be the greatest and we may not enter the 3rd event like we wanted but I do blame FIRST for this fact. In general the people at FIRST try to keep the costs fair to teams they set prices and we must deal with them and if the prices for events haven't changed in a while we really can't complain because we knew what we were getting into when we signed up.

Also isn't engineering about doing something to the best of your abilities and using what you have. Perhaps we need to go back to a minimalist perspective. Sure 10+ wheel drives are nice but do we really need them, and that 3rd motor is great but is it a necessity, and do we really need to purple anodize our whole robot. These are the questions we must ask of ourselves. Sometimes if we spent just a bit less on extra stuff on our robots then maybe teams will have the extra money for that 3rd competition or they can ask for a little less from there students and schools. Maybe we should all look at the older robots and see what people did before 2 speed transmission and light sensing cameras. These robots will tell us that with just a bit more time and thought we can do the same for less.
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