FOLDING TEAMS!!

[Patrick Wang]

If you'll look in the one of the team charters presented by first, one of the goals is to "Build a team before building a robot"

No matter where you go, no matter what you do, you'll end up doing just this.

For a successful organization to prosper, which is effectively what each FIRST team is, an organization, there are many factors invovled in keeping a project like this going.

Instead of thinking, why teams fold, perhaps the better question is to appreciate how long a team can persist.

There are an innumerable numbers of factors involved in running a team, and making the year a success. Leadership, Money, Community Support are just a few.

When I think of a FIRST robotics team, I think, wow, that's a group of students and engineers who have worked together to basically form a business. It's the real thing guys, the money isn't just for fun anymore.

My personal opinion, while battlebots seem to be a "good" robotics competition, people forget that FIRST is not simply a robotics competition.

I forget who I heard it from, but I remember someone saying, "Competing in the Robotics competition is only half of FIRST. creating an effective team is the other half"

I'm not saying that teams have not faced trials that have broken or tested them to their limits, in fact this is true for our team two, which has a primarily student leadership.

While we have had our conflicts, and even had people leave the team over them, the fact that we survived through them has only made us stronger.

There is no better emulation for the real-thing than the real-thing.

I appaud every team who participates in FIRST, and my respect goes to those who have persisted for so many years.

No matter how much money your team may have, there is no team without the people.

I hope that some people will resonate with this idea, this is what I've gotten out of FIRST.