Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Zondag
Who will decide if this pilot is a success in 2009? Internally, the FIRSTinMichigan project has financial goals, expectations on how the events will be conducted and how many teams we can help to fund. These will be our internal measures of success. On the outside, how will FIRST NH determine if it is a success? I'm really not sure. I agree with you that there must be some standards by which FIRST will measure our "success" in 2009, but I do not know how or if this will be done.
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That's the problem.
"Internal" goals are subject to change without anyone in the community ever knowing. Internal goals can be moved lower after everything is said and done, and success can be [wrongfully] claimed. This is more or less exactly what
Winston Smith did for a living.
This is a non-profit organization were are all a part of. This is not a business that has to protect its property, products, and ideas. There should be no secrets or private internal goals. What is there to hide? It should all be publicly available with complete transparency about why they are doing everything, for exactly what reasons, and exactly what they want to accomplish.
As such, this "pilot" in Michigan should have a very rigid set of goals released to the public well before the season kicks off about what they attempt to accomplish. And these goals
cannot just be unquantifiable goals, like asking everyone if they had a happy time. They need to be hard numbers.
For example, this would be the start of what quantifiable goals for this program can be:
- Currently, A% of schools in Michigan have strong STEM-related curriculum or FIRST teams. And due to B, C, and D reasons, we believe the current growth strategy will not work for expanding this presence. As such, we are currently looking at this district-level pilot program for meeting the above goals.
The new pilot program in Michigan is being pursued to increase the number of teams in the state by a rate 30% higher than the average growth in Michigan over the past ten years, as well as increase the team retention rate by an average of 50%. The average growth in the number of teams in Michigan over the past ten years has been an average of E new teams per year, and the average retention rate has been F%.
In order to successfully execute this plan, we currently will need to grow the infrastructure of the existing FRC program in G, H, and I areas. We currently have J number of volunteers in the state; five years ago we have K, and ten years ago we had L. Though measures M and N, we are looking to increase the number of volunteers available for these competitions, and to successfully train them to fulfill these positions as well as current volunteers.
Also needed to grow this new program are large sources of new capital to fund these improvements. Over the past ten years, the average growth of capital to fund teams and competitions and the state has been O%. In order to successfully carry out this new district model, we will need to increase that by P%. This will require an aggressive campaign to bring in funds through measures Q, R, and S.
In the case that these conditions cannot be accomplished by T date, our fallback plan details are U, V and W. In light of such happening, any new models of competition listed above will be put on hold until the conditions listed above can be satisfied.
As such, I also want an objective assessment of this new district-level competition as opposed to other avenues of growing the message of FIRST, and why they feel (and can prove) this new program is better, especially in regards to quantifiable goals, such as the cost per person to participate, average time necessary to have a competitive robot, etc.
FIRST is inspiring us to careers in STEM. So now it's time to use these skills to make decisions based on numbers and not on bellyfeel.