Here's the problem with the minibot

[Wayne TenBrink]

One thing I liked about the whole minibot thing - especially in conjunction with the withholding allowance - is the way that we managed to cram an entire product evolution cycle into such a short period of time. In week 1 there was a huge diversity of designs & performance. By CMP, most will conform to a few basic types and perform within a few tenths of a second of each other. This may not be what we wanted to see, but its the way the world works. The crowd copies success and that forces the leaders to go the next step. Eventually everything homogenizes and gets boring. It was a fun and educational challenge to live through, but I certainly hope they move on to something else next year.