Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?

[Pault]

Originally Posted by Foster

It's not about the robot. Let's say the team has 30 roboteers. At the end of the season, because they were not fully engaged in the season, 10 are not really inspired. With two teams, it's possible that those 10 roboteers will become fully engaged (not as many people, less chance of being overlooked.) and now you've upped your inspire ratio.

The problem is a lot more complex than quantifying what % of the team gets to be involved. Sometimes it takes more than just participation to get inspired. If those two 15 student teams both failed to make it into elims at the only competition the could attend because they didn't have the resources, do you think they would be inspired than the 30 person team that made it to the semifinals in both of their regionals (even if 10 of the students weren't as involved as much as they would have liked to been). I would argue that the 30 person team is better off.

And then there is looking beyond the team. In general, the higher the level of competition FRC has, the more inspirational it will be. And which robot do you think will attract more attention during demos: the defense robot or the robot with a floor-pickup? I guess my point is that just because it's not "about" the robot, doesn't mean that we should just not care about the robot. The robot is one of the primary vehicles by which achieve our end goal: The Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.