[ExTexan]

What a thread! It was only started at noon today and by the time I read through it I was logged off! Lots of great thoughts, loved it.

IMHO, there is not a master plan here from Dean, FIRST or anyone else. No more than Michael Dell had a master plan in his garage or Bill Gates had a master plan when he represented that he had an operating system ready to go!

FIRST started and I would think that if the NASH Equilibrium could be applied to it, it is predictable. It started with advocates of the initial principles and grew until it became statistically significant to real life. It now includes great people, competitive people, lazy people, people with apathy, people wanting something out of it only to their advantage, etc....real life huh!

Is the fact that teams are failing bad? Obviously I would like for every team to be sustainable but that will never happen. Does every business or organization survive? It can be a valuable experience because the students involved might learn why the team failed. In most cases that mirrors real life...poor leadership. Better to experience failure early, learn why and be able to see it coming the next time than to always be successful and not know how to deal with failure.

GP seems to be analogous to employee involvement, team building, focus groups and all the other buzz words you hear in the corporate environment. You are in competition with your co-worker for rankings, etc. and yet asked to work together in a team. Real life!

To me the bottom line is that FIRST is a program that offers opportunities galore. Not only for my son who is learning valuable lessons (mostly through the failure mode but that's OK) but also for me to be involved with him and to have the most fun of my life volunteering and enjoying all the great people involved with FIRST. And CD mirrors all that I said, again and lastly IMHO.