Posted by Ken Patton, Engineer on team #65, The Huskie Brigade, from Pontiac Northern High School and GM Powertrain.
Posted on 4/8/99 11:56 PM MST
In Reply to: Re: watch out.... posted by Dodd Stacy on 4/8/99 8:06 PM MST:
Dodd,
Sorry for jumping off topic a bit. Thanks for redirecting me...
I agree that its an advantage for some teams to go to more regionals than others. As I said a few days ago in another post, I'd go along with a one regional rule if we had, say, 1000 teams competing around the country. Until then, I think we can use all the teams we can get to have as high a profile as possible so we can make this thing grow (I see that as the key measure of our success in FIRST). But, bottom line, multi-regionals is an advantage.
You relate the number of regionals a team attends exclusively to funding. I agree, but I think there's another factor: how you allocate your money. Our team goes to 2 regionals, the ones we can drive to in ~1/2 day, Chicago and Ypsi, because they are the most cost-effective to attend. I know only the rustbelt and northeast teams get this 'advantage.' Additionally, we have 'only' 20 students on our team, while many teams have double that. I think that number is okay (some disagree btw), because everyone gets an important, critical job that way, and its more of an honor to be selected for the team. But another reason is that it is cheaper. These things help enable our team to go to two regionals and still do the PR projects that we want to do. I think Greg Mills from Baxter said something similar in a recent post - they sent a skeleton crew to one event to save money.
My 'practical' defense of six weeks: It doesn't upset my/your life for too long. If the time were made longer, it would be harder on everyone who puts their heart/mind/energy into FIRST. Because we would just do it for a few more weeks.
My 'philosophical' defense of six weeks: If the students see that, as a team, we can do an 'impossible' job in an 'impossibly' short time, they will be more inspired. Inspired about engineering and about teamwork. Newcomers to FIRST are amazed that we can do this. I think we should keep amazing them!
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The competitive free market reference: What I mean is that the 'big time' programs, because they want to remain competitive, will likely increase their lead over the 'not so big time' programs, because they will apply whatever 'advantages' they have (money, people, facilities, ideas, pick your favorites) over a longer period of time. So the 'gift' will end up being a curse IMO.
In defense of 'trying to win': In my opinion, it is okay, in fact its right, to try to win. By win, I mean 1st place gold medal all the chips lets go see slick willie. Please note I say *try* to win, with the emphasis on try. If you believe you can win, you will prepare yourself to win. And if you prepare yourself to win, YOU HAVE WON. Regardless of what place your robot gets, since ***sarcasm on*** everyone knows thats a crapshoot! ***sarcasm off***. My sincere thanks to Jeff Burch for the sarcasm alert, and my sincere admiration for Dr. Stuart Walker for writing about the try to win philosophy.
I like your 'knock their socks off' approach. I'm not sure it represents a balanced model for the typical engineering product development process where you have to meet requirements on time, but I still like it. I'm going to check our photos of your robot and see if I can figure out what you are up to!
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Thanks for putting up with my posts. See ya in Florida. I'll be flying down on our team helicopter.
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Ken