First of all, looks like FIRST has had a busy month, if they've been personally answering all of the "Concerned Citizens" letters that they've been getting lately (and it sounds like they've been getting a lot!). I have to really give them credit for listening to feedback and seeming to be dedicated to addressing the issues involved.
Secondly, it's unfortunate that things have progressed this far that a large public letter was necessary to address FIRST's transparency issues. I've been having this conversation for at least the last 5 years, and this is the first time that it's all really boiled over the top.
Lastly, to the apologists and the naysayers saying that transparency has CAUSED the issues and we should leave the full-disclosure to the "important people":
In the leadership class I'm taking, we had an exercise - 5 people in a group, Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald and Goofy. The first 3 could only communicate with Donald individually, and Goofy could only communicate through Donald. Unbeknownst to everyone, only Goofy had the goals of the exercise, but needed information from all of the other members.
In the teams that succeeded (mine!
), Manager Goofy (me!
) explicitly told Middle-Management Donald what the goals of the exercise were. The teams where Goofy held all of the cards and all of the plebeians below were left in the dark failed miserably.
Our teams are going to fail, either through frustration or through bad team management, if the Goofys in Manchester/Detroit aren't more open with which direction the organization is going. I don't think these prestigious mentors are asking for a GPS system to tell us EVERYTHING we want to know, but simply asking for a MAP so we can find our own way to the promised land of "inspir[ing] young people to be science and technology
leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that ... foster ...
leadership"