pic: Leveraging FIRST members?

[Qbranch]

loading photo ...

[Jeff K.]

I'm not surprised..
It's how industry has become, taking advantage of one another in the easiest way possible.
Plain and simple, but there is their help that they are offering which is appreciated. This is the new platform, and it's also inviting to new people to get them hooked to it.

[vivek16]

What they call getting involved with local teams at minimal effort, I call sponsorship.

Although the message is written in a non GP sort of way, it sounds like some good publicity for FIRST and an easy way for teams to get sponsorships. A win-win situation as you would say.

-Vivek

[ttldomination]

To us, it may seem like un-GP and kinda not nice, but to them, it's just Business.

[Schnabel]

When I first read this, I thought "Why are they treating us like this, we are an elite organization that anyone is welcome to, this is just disrespectful". But I started to think, they may not plan for it to end up this way, but in the end this will be good for us. Sure the companies may want nothing but our money for our cRios, but seriously, now they know about us. Isn't that one of FIRST's goals. Now these companies that develop for the new cRio know about this amazing organization that is changing our lives as we speak. In other words, what is bad now has a good purpose for the future.

[Akash Rastogi]

Its how business is run. In the long haul it will be good for teams who are looking for mentors and sponsors. Don't look into the words too much. Its all just business. Be happy NI supports FIRST so much.

[Kyle Love]

This is industry at it's best. This is actually how real life is, its not all like the FIRST "life" a lot of us grew up to, we need to be exposed to this some.

[Cory]

The real world isn't sugarcoated like everything in FIRST tends to be. People speak plainly, and let's be real. While it may be a nice feel good story for companies to sponsor FIRST, the bottom line is the bottom line.

Companies rarely donate out of the goodness of their hearts. More often they donate because of tax breaks, or because they know that by investing in a program that will produce engineers, mathematicians, scientists, technicians, etc, they will be enlarging the pool of skilled workers they can tap into for their own benefit.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Isn't Andy Bell is one of the NI guys who was talking to anyone who wanted to learn about the new controller in Atlanta? I also think he was on a First team in high school. In the last part of the description he is making a call to businesses learn how to help out local teams.

[tennispro9911]

Businesses do what is best for them. In many cases, businesses sponsor FIRST because it produces engineers that have a favorable opinion of the companies that sponsor them. The real world isn't sugarcoated as Cory said.

EDIT: This isn't a bad thing. We shouldn't look at this as unGP. NI is not making any money selling us the controllers, but they are fostering relationships hopefully. It is the same thing as Autodesk giving us Inventor. It is the same thing as businesses giving discounts to students. Businesses want to foster lifelong relationships with customers, and if they can do it while the customer is in college, then all the better for them. At the same time, we get to experience their product, and save lots of money doing it. If we decide to do business with them in the future because we are very satisfied with their product then we also have gained from the experience.

Businesses look out for their own interests, but often when a business looks out for its own interest in the long term, it also benifits the community in the long term.

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by tennispro9911

We shouldn't look at this as unGP. NI is not making any money selling us the controllers, but they are fostering relationships hopefully. It is the same thing as Autodesk giving us Inventor.

Not everything in the kit is free and in many cases FIRST buys components from companies at discounted rates. Without knowing the cost to NI to make the crio, and the cost of them to FIRST a statement about the money making objectives is all just speculation and will lead to nothing but arguments.

Also I think that Autodesk giving inventor is not quite a comparison. The financial investment for Autodesk is much less as the difference in cost between 1 and 10,000 copies of inventor is almost nil. Once the software is developed the cost of a dvd is almost none, where as NI has a physical cost of hardware and manufacturing is guaranteed to be higher.


As for the topic of this thread and the title of that session. It may seem like poor word choice to us, but who is the audience it is intended for? If they are NI sales reps, tech support, and NI users, They are talking about how they are increasing the userbase overnight. Even if the wording represents NI's true colors why should it matter? This might be one of the cases where the ends justify the means. Seriously, who cares if they "leverage" robotics users if we as a community get the benefits that a large cooperation can bring to the table.