[mrnoble]

I love it.

My main concerns with FIRST over the years have included:

1) An insular culture. This is a nearly universal problem with organizations, but FIRST has always claimed to be about reaching out and bringing in new people and teams, to show them the fun and success they can have in the world of engineering. It has sometimes succeeded at this, and other times failed. Our team actually dropped out for two years because of the difficulty we had understanding and being included in FIRST's culture after our first go at it.

2) The elite teams. No offense intended, folks, but I side with underdogs and those who are dealing with limited resources.

3) Status symbols. For instance, I don't find the trend toward "status" wheels necessarily good, impressive though they may be to look at.

4) "Dialed-in" drive-trains, frames and manipulators.

Anyway, this game addresses a number of my issues. No status wheels here. Tried and true ways of doing things no longer will work. And the comments from Dean and the leadership at the kickoff implicitly refocused us on opening the game and FIRST culture to allow a chance of innovation and success for more types of teams.

I also love the number of constraints. It really adds to the challenge. Without giving away too much, I will say that the direction that our team's students may be taking their strategy and design means I will not be at all surprised to find more innovative approaches from other teams this year than I've ever seen.