Town Hall Meeting Video

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

This would make perfect sense if the goal is to have the best robot performance competition possible. I think that have stated that was not their goal when they made this decision.

If you paid attention attention to what Dean and Woodie have been saying for the past 5-10 years you could have seen something like this coming. They consistently said, "it's not about the robot. It is just the vehicle. Take the good from the sports model but reject the negative side that comes with it." They (The board) are devaluing winning. I know that is going to rub some folks the wrong way. This move makes complete sense considering the goals they have set forth.

I know we will never see eye-to-eye on this, but it's not all about winning for 422 (look at our track record if you don't believe me!). However, I think a key component of FRC is the available pursuit of it. There are bad apples that can spoil this key component: the hyper-competitive veterans that can intentionally or inadvertently intimidate weaker teams. That's not a great tool for inspiration. Yet when we set our 10 year goal my senior year to be one of the best teams in FIRST by 2022, that didn't mean we had to be one of those teams. The pursuit of that kind of goal though gets people on and around the team to focus on this idea of accomplishment actively while the work we put into that goal makes the program better (more resources, better documentation, happier students, more satisfied mentors, more engaged school).

Looking past that, the move doesn't make a lot of sense when you pair it up with other decisions the organization is making. Why are we making games focused on robots that require a lot of engineering? Why are we making the Chairman's Award even more competitive than winning an event with the robot? Why are we making tiers at lower levels of competition but dismissing making higher levels of competition? Maybe I'm overreaching but it feels like we are the runner in QWOP and the FIRST Board is pressing all the keys at once to see what happens.