2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[KelliV]

Originally Posted by TEAM1100soft506

Please do not take anything in this post or the previous one to be the
viewpoint of my team, but as the viewpoint of a lone observer who is entitled to his own opinion

Thank you for owning up to your mistake, and claiming it was yours and not your teams. I've met your team, been to your build space, and am very close to an alumni from 1100 I know they are fantastic and hope one day you too will have a space in the Hall of Fame.

That being said, yes, HoF teams sometimes have large sponsors that "foot the bill" per-say. What you do know is the team I was lucky to be a part of was fortunate enough to, at the time, have full sponsorship from one large corporation. What you might not know is students on that team don't come from money. Many of us have parents with second jobs, and worked through high school ourselves. I fund-raised thousands of dollars over four years on the team. We are blessed to be in such a close proximity to Motorola that they decided to sponsor us.

Motorola was not the group that decided to send computers to Africa, volunteer their hours at events, and organize hurricane benefits. The people on the team were. Nowhere did Moto force it's engineers to help the students and stay late at night, they did it themselves. Motorola didn't make the students want to help out in the community, we did that ourselves (albeit with some pushing from our parents some-days). I've said it before and I will say it again, teams are not who sponsors them, they are the people that make them up.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that yes, it does stink to lose to a team who seemingly is sponsored by a huge company you are correct in saying that it hurts, hurts bad. But sometimes it takes something like that to get kicked into high gear and change something about yourself and your team. DO BETTER. GET BETTER. Volunteer man-hours don't cost anything but your time so put it in and make change.

/end commentary

What I would change is have the fields broadcast to the pits. I really wished I could have seen more dome action.

The Chairman's speech was VERY short, thanks Libs for letting us know it was going to be longer.

Also, Einstein went long. But this is year 11 for me and it has yet to be short...