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Posted by Dodd Stacy, Engineer on team #95, Lebanon Robotics Team, from Lebanon High School and CRREL/CREARE.

Posted on 4/8/99 8:06 PM MST


In Reply to: watch out.... posted by Ken Patton on 4/8/99 3:54 PM MST:



Ken,

Blunt is fine. Let's return to the subject of this thread, the sense of some teams with limited resources that the ability of better endowed teams to attend multiple Regionals is inequitable. In my posts, I have used 'lucky' as a euphemism for well financed and 'less lucky' for not so, equating that roughly with the ability to attend multiple regionals or not. From what I've seen and been part of, ALL the teams give 200% for six weeks, well financed or not. The simple fact is that well backed and supported teams have the OPTION of competing and then spending Saturday PM thru Tuesday 5PM (I think) with their bot virtually every week throughout the season, ie: 6 days out of seven. In theory, and those people would be absolute mad-ones, and I admire all those who approach this limit. Team 47 comes to mind. The teams without the money don't have this option, period, end of story.

Now you may assume I'm addressing competitive advantage, the liklihood of taking home the gold from the Nationals, numero uno, blah, blah. While there's an undeniable competitive advantage to the teams who CAN spend more time with their machines, that's not my personal motivation. I'm in the fraction trying to push the creative envelope, please the crowd, knock some socks off, show our kids about swinging for the fence, purely for the beans of it. Seems like we aimed a bit too far out this year and ran short of time to make it all work. So I wasn't looking to have Dean and Woodie save us from ourselves at week six. I was snorkel deep in the most satisfying/maddening/challenging part of the year when somebody said 'put it in the box - it's 4:45.' Those of us who need Dean and Woodie to turn us off to have a rest have my sympathy. Those of us who don't, also have my sympathy, because we've had our creative outlet snatched away unnecessarily and arbitrarily. I say arbitrarily - I haven't heard any reason for the six weeks other than saving people who can't pace themselves, the devil in the mirror. Is it necessary to impose this solution on others?

Addressing your post directly, I don't understand the competitive free market reference. I don't expect well funded teams or anybody else to scale back their effort during the additional time I propose - each team could do what they choose with it. Those who are well funded and like frantic work in the pits are fine by me, and they have a wonderful opportunity for memorable and inspiring experiences. If you believe that better development work is more likely to occur for your team in the FIRST pits than in a less frantic atmosphere, we differ in our approaches. I don't think we differ on effort and ideas being bigger determinants of success than multi regionals, but we might define 'success' in somewhat different terms. With the time we'll have after the Nationals, we can make the effort required to successfully implement our central technology idea for this year in time for the Rumble, and succeed by doing what we don't expect any other team to do in this year's Nationals. If some other team beats us to it, they're a better team than we are this year.

My proposal is not intended to provide advantage to some teams at the expense of others, nor to help them somehow 'catch up.' It takes nothing away from anyone and requires no one to change their behavior. It gives the gift of time - which better funded teams advantageously enjoy now - to all teams. I have no idea whether or how this might effect any outcomes, but I think it could vastly change the process and the FIRST experience in positive ways for the teams who have less to work with.