[Kate00]

Originally Posted by Dave Lavery, the Kickoff Broadcast

DEAN MENTIONED ALREADY IF YOU THINK THE PROGRAM IS ABOUT ROBOTS YOU'RE MISSING PART OF THE MESSAGE.
THERE ARE A LOT OF TEAMS OUT THERE, AND I KNOW I'LL HEAR BACK FROM THEM ABOUT THIS, THERE ARE A LOT OF TEAMS OUT THERE WHO ARE BUILT SOLELY OF STUDENTS AS A STUDENT-BUILT, STUDENT-RUN, STUDENT-ORGANIZED TEAM FROM END TO END TO THE PROCESS.
I CONGRATULATE THEM WHAT THEY'RE ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH AND DO.
THEY'RE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE WITH NO PROBLEM AT ALL.
DO THE TASK WE'RE SETTING OUT FOR THEM.
IF YOU THINK THE TASK IS ABOUT BUILDING A ROBOT.
MY CHALLENGE TO THE TEAMS IS, PART OF WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO IS GET YOU EXPOSED TO REAL WORLD TECHNOLOGIES PRACTICES, PEOPLE WHO ARE PROFESSIONALS.
IF YOU'RE DOING THIS WITH YOUR TEAM YOU'RE ABLE TO BUILD THE ROBOT AND ABLE TO COMPETE AND BE ABLE TO BE A PARTICIPANT IN THE PROGRAM BUT I THINK YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT IF YOU DON'T HAVE AN ENGINEERING ON YOUR TEAM OR TWO OR THREE OR FOUR BECAUSE YOU AREN'T TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPOSE YOUR TEAM AND YOUR STUDENTS TO REAL WORLD ENGINEERING PRACTICES TO LEARN TO BE INSPIRED BY THE PROFESSIONALS TO WHICH YOU HAVE ACCESS.
SO IS THIS A HARD PROBLEM?
YES.
IT'S SUPPOSED HARD.
WE'RE MAKING IT HARD BECAUSE WE WANT YOU TO BE ENCOURAGED TO GO OUT AND GET PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING HELP FOR YOUR TEAMS TO HELP SOLVE THIS STUFF.
THAT'S HOW YOU'RE GOING TO GET THE MOST BENEFIT OUT OF THE ENTIRE PROGRAM.

It has been made extremely clear how FIRST feels about mentor involvement. In my mind, this leaves no doubt that even what you allege 1114 is doing, no matter how far it is from the truth, is not something to be frowned upon.

That being said, it is very far from the truth. As I have said before, I have had the tremendous opportunity to work with team 1114, and see how their team works. In no way do their mentors design and build them a robot – to the contrary, the times I have been to their shop, the mentors sit in a room outside the shop, not doing very much, while the students work hard in the shop at fabricating parts for their robot. If a student needs help with something, a mentor is instantly there to help them, however, in no way do the mentors build the robot for them. I have no personal experience with their design process for their robot, but when they helped my former team and I design ramps to be built from scratch over the course of a regional, we were very much involved in the process. Their mentors and students (who were as knowledgeable of the design process as the mentors, I might add) helped us sort through our ideas, make them possible, and execute them, in the course of three days. As students, we could not have done it on our own. In no way did their mentors do it for us. With the help and assistance of those mentors, we created ramps that might not have been the prettiest, but certainly worked very well. Students on my team learned more from working with their programming, electrical, mechanical and strategy mentors over those three days than we did over an entire build season. We were inspired. As a matter of fact, after the experience, one of our graduating members lamented that she had not had the foresight to apply to engineering at university, and is still trying to switch her program. Isn’t that what FIRST is about? Inspiration, and exposure to industry professionals?

Karthik, I think you got this wrong:

Originally Posted by Karthik

Have you visited our shop before? It's open to all local teams to use whenever they want.

As seen here, it’s not just local teams who your shop is open to, it’s any team who needs any help whatsoever.

Please, if any of you have a chance, take Karthik up on his offer to drop into the 1114 shop. It’s not just a shop that a robot comes out of – it’s a shop where unadulterated inspiration comes out of.