A competition of Sponsors or High Schools?

[Collin Fultz]

Originally posted by meaubry
[We are all 1 week away from one of the most exciting and invigorating 6 week time periods, that most people involved will have an opportunity to participate in. This upcoming 6 weeks of work, sweat, thinking, designing, building, talking, discussing, turning wrenches, wiring, programming, drawing on chalk boards, eating pizza, drinking mountain dew, with the students - is what the FIRST experience is really about.

word my homey. in seven days...it won't matter. all that'll matter is how fast can you turn those screws, not whether it is a student or an engineer turning the screws and who's name comes first.

[Madison]

Originally posted by Andrew
I want to apologize to Dave and to NASA for my loose wording of my earlier post.

However, when FIRST enters the information in TIMS for NASA sponsorship, it puts the NASA center first. This is a FIRST thing, not a NASA thing.

Andrew
Team 356

We are free to change the order to our liking. I'd imagine that FIRST places NASA on top precisely because of the reasons Dave mentioned; they aren't aware of each teams sponsorship arrangements, and it is best left to the teams themselves to decide.

If a team doesn't change the arrangement through TIMS and gets into trouble for it, there is no fault but there own.

[Gadget470]

Solution: Alphabetical Order. Think about it.. if the school is something like Quitzelton High, they go after, if it's Aardvarkville, they go first.


(No i'm not serious)

[Marc P.]

My two cents:

Where do all the politics come from? Why do people rant back and forth as to what comes first, the sponsor, or the school? Are we so swept up with political correctness where we cast aside the true spirit of FIRST to argue whether students or engineers should build a robot? I joined FIRST so I could get hands on experience in the world of design/development engineering, both mechanical and electrical. I did not join FIRST to watch and say "gee, that's cool," or say "that's nice, when do we get to go to florida?" I guess that's just my opinion, coming from a team with no sponsor but our own fundraising efforts, and not enough support from our "school" to pay the registration fees. As far as getting "inspired" about science and technology, there's only so much that can be learned through watching and waiting, but an entire world of wealth that can be learned through doing.

[Elyse Holguin]

Team Hammond is not a technically a school activity in Hammond... we're sponsored by the School City and have a S.C.H. worker as our coach, but we are a joint effort of the 4 high schools in the city... very rival high schools i might add, which sometimes leads to those funny 5 minute snack room disputes... our schools give very little recognition to the robotics program for the most part. so when i put beatty machine in front of school city of hammond it was because the people from beatty machine put so much more time and effort into our program than the vast majority of the school system.

[skrussel]

Well, now that we have started complaining about who gets first billing, can

"boo hoo, no fair, other teams have more money than we do!"

be far behind?

NOT gracious, and NOT professional. Move on.

[Robb Gerber]

This has turned into a thread with two arguments...

...as far as billing I like the current format...everyone, company, corporation, foundation, and school gets credit.

but as far as Inspiration goes I agree with Gadget and Mark P.
You've got to be involved, get your hands dirty to really get inspired. Last year we saw teams with "engineers" build amazing bots only to see other teams of "students" advance past them. We saw "engineers" feverishly work on the bot in the pits while their kids handed out buttons. Its great to have engineering mentors but if FIRST Teams become nothing more than a professional sports franchise where the team with all the $$$ can buy the best players or "engineers" to build a super bot, kids may as well tune into "TLC Robotica" for their inspiration.
Its all a fine balance.

oh ya, I also find it interesting that it seems to be mostly engineers who think "who builds the robot" is a trivial issue.

[Not2B]

Originally posted by Robb Gerber
oh ya, I also find it interesting that it seems to be mostly engineers who think "who builds the robot" is a trivial issue. [/b]

Yeah - that's kinda sad. It's hard for alot of the mentors not to want to do everything because it looks so fun. But I try to stay hands off as much as possible during the build season.

Encourage your engineers to work on their OWN robots during the off season. That will get some of it out of their system. (Durning the 2002-2003 off-season, I managed to build several BEAM bots, a 6-legged bot, and I am in the middle of a human-tracking bot.) My goal - engineers in the pits only for safety. I don't care if we win - now I just have to convince the others.

[Mike Soukup]

Originally posted by skrussel
can

"boo hoo, no fair, other teams have more money than we do!"

be far behind?

Probably not

I will not argue about what is the correct way to structure a FIRST team, nor will I argue about who should turn the wrenches.

But I will assert that people should not judge another team for the simple reason that they know next to nothing about the other team. They know what works best for their own team, but not what works best for other teams. Unless you observe a team for the entire build process, do not criticize them or their methods because you do not know what goes on behind closed doors.

Do not make assumptions concerning a team's student participation based on what you see a few students doing at competitions. Seeing students hand out buttons, hit on people on other teams, sleep, watch the competition from the stands, or work on the robot is not an indication of the team's makeup. All teams have students who step up and contribute whenever possible, and other students who like to avoid work and slack off, and everything in between. Some teams are large enough that <50% of the students work on the robot and the rest work on other aspects of FIRST - web page, strategy, marketing, animation, playing field construction, scouting, video, etc. They have no formal role at competitions except to cheer and support their team. Do not criticize or judge another team because you see idle students.

I will not assume another team's bot is built by students if it is the proverbial 'box on wheels' nor will I assume another team's bot is built by engineers and merely 'handed' to the students to drive if it is an engineering marvel. I ask that everyone else does the same.

Mike

[skrussel]

A good and thoughtful post.

Ops, wrong section. My bad.