[Chris Hibner]

I attended both of JVN's presentations on Wednesday. The design process presentation was great as always. John's a pretty funny guy when he wants to be, and the humor made the presentation entertaining, as well as informative.

The panel discussion on consensus in design was really cool to see. All of the panelists represented teams with historically successful robots. There were plenty of different ways that each team was run, but something they all shared is a strong process oriented approach to problem solving and engineering their robots. It definitely drives the message home that the successful teams are good year-after-year because of the process in place, as well as the leadership that keeps it all on track. While people may say that it's a lot easier when you have a lot of resources like these teams do, I say that maybe they have the resources for the same reasons that their robots are good: they have a plan in place to get what they need and they won't stop until they achieve the plan. When a team becomes successful, more good people want to join the team and it just builds on itself.

I would highly recommend attending these next year if JVN decides to do them again.