"Gracious Professionalism"

[itsjustmrb]

Gracious Professionalism is all of the things stated above and not taking them for granted. If you have more resources (time, money, knowledge, location, expertise, tools, parts, etc.) you should share with those that are less fortunate no matter what the circumstances may be.

[yash101]

Here's what Gracious Professionalism, and a little Good Sportsmanship is:
Keep a smile on your face (sad/neutral face can sometimes have a negative connotation)
Respect others, even if they don't respect you

Cheer for everyone, even it they are on the other alliance. I not only do that, but I wish them good luck, and ask them to play hard, especially because a close and well-played match it the best to watch

Offer Help to anyone, even if they aren't on your team. At a competition, someone was trying to move a robot by himself and nearly dropped. I gladly asked him if I helped. He didn't say yes, but I at least think he would be have a good connotation for me

Introduce yourself professionally (Mr. Forbes and others at the Tucson Tussle, please tell me if there is anything I can improve)

Listen to others. I they ask you to move out of the way, listen to them. If they ask you for a tool, put your best effort to get it to them.

Know all the subsystems of the robot and those other things, even if they aren't your field on the team. Even though I am a programmer on the team, and I love playing with sparks and supercapacitors at home , I still try to understand mechanical and those other fields though they aren't my cup of tea on the team. That can be helpful because then you are a resource for your team. You can answer any questions asked, boosting your reputation.

Congratulate others of their victory and inspire the losing teams to do better if you can or just tell them good luck

Shake hands with your opponents after the match and congratulate how they played

Don't Brag. It looks very awkwards and can be mean. (Mr. Forbes and others at the competitions, please tell me if I can improve in anything!

There are a lot more things to watch out. As a matter of fact, there are so many, you could probably write a 1000 page book and that won't hold all these thumb-rules.

And again, anyone at these competitions, please give me information about what to improve. No one's perfect, but there's always room for improvement

[DELurker]

All of the above...

Other examples:

Carry materials to events that you know you won't need but that other teams commonly ask for. Document, organize, and label these so that they are quickly available. Quickly know when something someone asks for is not available.

Be available during both Qualifications and Eliminations to lend a hand to other teams who are having problems. Have your scouting team send timely word about teams that seem to be having issues, whether mechanical, electrical, or programmatic.

Politely ask teams who are having issues if they would like your assistance. Do not assume that they want your help. If you do help, work with the team, making sure that you are collaborating with them rather than just doing it for them. When you are done, they should clearly understand what was done and should agree that it is working.

Cheer and acknowledge good play.

Treat your own team as well as you treat everybody around you. And vice-versa.

Treat the volunteers, judges, and inspectors well, regardless of what is going on.

Above all, have fun and work to make it possible for everyone else to have fun, too.

[JustbeingJFK]

Gracious Professionalism means that you help your competitors as much as possible but you still compete to do your best. For Example, When My team when to the WPI Regional, we helped a couple of teams that were having problems, needed to use tools, or need some advice.

[E Dawg]

Gracious Professionalism is, at its core, the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated. Would you like everyone to cheer for you? Then cheer for everyone else. Would you like help from those who are best suited to give it? Then give help to those who want it.

If I could choose one word to sum up Gracious Professionalism, it would be: SERVICE.

[Pault]

Rather than try to define GP, I'm going to give an an example. I've been wanting to recognize this team for a while, so now is my chance.

This year at the WPI regional my team's robot was far from ready to compete. As a result, on Thursday we had about 10 different tasks going on in our pit at any given time in an attempt to reassemble and rebuild parts of our robot (we made sure it didn't get too unsafe). The team next to us, Smart Robotics (3930), saw our struggles and actually cleared out of their pits, allowing us to expand into them for as long we needed to. I feel like that is something very unique for a team to do, especially a young team like them.

[yash101]

Originally Posted by Pault

Rather than try to define GP, I'm going to give an an example. I've been wanting to recognize this team for a while, so now is my chance.

This year at the WPI regional my team's robot was far from ready to compete. As a result, on Thursday we had about 10 different tasks going on in our pit at any given time in an attempt to reassemble and rebuild parts of our robot (we made sure it didn't get too unsafe). The team next to us, Smart Robotics (3930), saw our struggles and actually cleared out of their pits, allowing us to expand into them for as long we needed to. I feel like that is something very unique for a team to do, especially a young team like them.

That's quite clever and nice of the team! Hopefully, they won the gp award! So, did they just use the pits together, or did they donate their pit to 3959?
That's a good example of GP.

[Pault]

Originally Posted by yash101

That's quite clever and nice of the team! Hopefully, they won the gp award! So, did they just use the pits together, or did they donate their pit to 3959?
That's a good example of GP.

They pushed a lot of stuff off to the other side of the pit, and just didn't really have any of their own team members in it (they got inspected and set up early, so they didn't need to do anything in there). It was mainly for Thursday, after that we didn't need the extra space as much.

[yash101]

That makes sense, but it is still quite nice of them!

[Kevin Leonard]

There is nothing in the world to make you feel hope for humanity than the company of gracious professionals,

This year, at IRI, when our robot experience catastrophic damage, SO many teams helped us out to get our robot working. I'll take a quote from the thread we posted post-IRI about the damages from one of our college mentors, Carl. THESE teams exemplify GP.

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

Thank you to Team 868, especially Charles, for your assistance in trying to get us back up and working. Even though we didn't pull it off for the 2-speeds like we had hoped, it was really awesome to have competitors like yourselves helping us out even though we had a match against each other shortly after. THAT was gracious professionalism. Also thanks to 11, 71, 195, 1310, and 1625 as well as Chris Picone and Nick Lawrence for lending us tools and brainpower for the attempted repairs throughout the weekend. And thanks to 16 and 27 for being understanding pit neighbors when our stuff undoubtedly spilled into your space during the turmoil that was the Friday of IRI 2013 for Team 20. Additional thanks to all of the great teams and volunteers who provided the most inspirational product on that field. We were hoping to really help raise the level of competition, but we came away with a great experience nonetheless.

ALSO- before the competition even started, we were lent(read "given") a Banebots motor from team 3847.
We offered the the compensation for the money the motor cost- they refused it.

[yash101]

That is quite professional, I think. These motors cost something like, $30. If you have a few lying to spare and another team needs some, they aren't something unaffordable for most teams, unless the team wanting donations is like us where we blew our BAGs every few matches!