Team 2980 2013 Open Source Robot

[eedoga]

So the voting bit...

It is really a way to take what we build out of the hands of the kids so that it isn't a popularity contest. We act as though the community is our client, or as our board, who has commissioned us to design and build a robot for a competition. The community, and now Boeing are the ones who are footing the bill after all. The kids present to their client in such a way that the client can make an informed decision about the product being presented.

I think of the kids as thinkers and tinkers...The thinkers tend to dominate things like the design process, while some of the tinkers have really good ideas that they just can't put out into the world in such a way that they are easily understood. In smaller groups those ideas that would get lost are often able to see light...(the big trees are sparser making room for the small trees to grow...) The team also has a bias towards listening to a thinker over a tinker...The things a thinker says have more weight, while they may not have more value...When the community walks in, they have little to know idea which is which. The community assumes all of the kids are thinkers, just because they are in a club where we build robots and do math and physics and stuff...So to the community each group has equal value, and it is just the strength of their ideas that matters.

While this hasn't always led to the best robot, it has prevented hurt feelings...and I would argue it has led to the best robot we as a team are capable of thinking of at the time. The community tends to want to see our team stretch both mentally and physically, so they usually don't pick easy designs, or designs that seam like cop outs. Also once the community decides it is a lot easier to bring the team back together because no one feels left out of the design process. We didn't not choose team A's design, the community did, and we can all stand by that impartial judge a bit more easily.

In the end it really comes down to ability to present ideas in a way that makes sense to people who may or may not understand any of what you are talking about.

I hope this response makes sense in the way that I intended it to.

Edoga