Posted by Mike Soukup at 2/3/2001 2:39 AM EST
Engineer on team #111, Wildstang, from Rolling Meadows & Wheeling and Motorola.
In Reply to: Here? or over here?
Posted by Jessica Boucher on 2/2/2001 6:45 AM EST:
Not meant as an attack, but what makes you think that most people are building scouting systems for recognition? The reason my team (team 111) is making a DB is because we want to have excellent scouting data on other teams, which should help us in the competition. I'm leading the effort for our team and recognition is not what I'm after, it's a successful scouting program that will help our team. We've also decided to link up with SOAP (btw a great bunch of guys that I can't wait to meet in person) so we can share all our data with the whole FIRST community. We're sharing the data because my team believes in gracious professionalism that FIRST pushes; well at least I do and if the students don't get it yet, I'm failing at my attempts to promote it.
I also disagree with the statement that a non-affiliated group is necessary because there's such a big time crunch on teams. If it weren't for the scouting software myself and a few students are developing, we wouldn't have had anything to do for the past couple months, since robot software comes only at the end. It also gives the students who are interested in CS & CompE a chance to get exposed to real software development, not just the limited work done for the robot. I'm glad I've had the chance to expand our team beyond ME & EE, and give the students exposure to the crazy world of CS & CompE that I love. Hopefully by being a member of my group the students will get excited about a future in software development. That's what FIRST is all about, right?
Phew, enough rambling for me (I could go on for ever). Hope this makes sense
Mike