FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

Also, many people who don't become student leaders or never get opportunities to become leaders usually can become leaders in college organizations or the work force (with interest of course), so barring students who haven't been given a title in high school is wrong because they will get many more opportunities to become leaders in their lifetime and hit the "caliber" the OP was talking about.

Maybe even just "FIRST Student Leaders" rather than "Captains".

[asid61]

The purpose of limiting members to only captains not only ensures that you don't get a whole lot of fluff, but also that members can forge more personal relationships. If you allow many people in it's harder to form those relationships.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by asid61

The purpose of limiting members to only captains not only ensures that you don't get a whole lot of fluff, but also that members can forge more personal relationships. If you allow many people in it's harder to form those relationships.

Yeah, I do see the value in it. I guess I just don't see those students who have been elected as Captain on our team to be of higher "caliber" than our other students. I see the students who have proven themselves to be 1. Able to see tasks to completion, or 2. good leaders of others, to be of higher "caliber". Often Captains are included in that group.

[theCADman]

Hey Guys,

Thank for all the replies! I'm happy to say that the group has grown to about 50 members so far!

I would definitely like to clear up some things that were discussed.

"I wanted to know why OP was barring all team leaders who haven't held a "captain/president" title on their team. My broader point being that the OP was talking about how useful it would be to have a network of students of a certain 'caliber' but how he was leaving out anyone who didn't get elected (or appointed) to a position called "captain/president" on their team. A point that other posters have since reiterated"

Well, for one thing this group IS a Captains group. If I wanted to allow others to join, I would have created a general FRC networking page. What I mean by this is, this group was created for Captains to network. This is because each person who was appointed Captain on their respective teams, was appointed for a reason whether the rest of the team was either in support or not. In any well run team, organization, or business, there is always a leader to keep things moving and on track. I simply want to network with those people.

Do not misconstrue my words here. Even though there may have been people of the same caliber / potential to be captains on their team, they for some reason weren't. I don't mean this in a bad way, it's just that this was the way the ball rolled. As many have said, there are multiple networking pages for everyone to join. There you will be able to interact with captains. This group however is for the core group of individuals who were given the opportunity to lead their teams through the many trials and tribulations of build season and competition.

Anyway, I thank you all for your support, and your understanding. I hope to see more Captains join the group!

Best Regards,
Arjun Krishna
Captain Team 334 "TechKnights"

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by theCADman

I would definitely like to clear up some things that were discussed.

...Well, for one thing this group IS a Captains group. If I wanted to allow others to join, I would have created a general FRC networking page. What I mean by this is, this group was created for Captains to network. This is because each person who was appointed Captain on their respective teams, was appointed for a reason whether the rest of the team was either in support or not.

That does seem to make it clear that you indeed meant exactly the word "Captain" from the start. However, you're still not addressing what I see being asked: what is your reason for limiting it to people with that title? Not all teams use military nomenclature.

On the other hand, other parts of your response do appear to be more inclusive:

In any well run team, organization, or business, there is always a leader to keep things moving and on track. I simply want to network with those people.

...This group however is for the core group of individuals who were given the opportunity to lead their teams through the many trials and tribulations of build season and competition.

So it's still not clear that you would keep a "Team President" or a "CEO" or a "Principal Lead Student" from joining the group. Would you mind answering the simple question of whether the specific title of "Captain" is required? (And if not, why did you name the group that way?)

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by theCADman

Well, for one thing this group IS a Captains group. If I wanted to allow others to join, I would have created a general FRC networking page. What I mean by this is, this group was created for Captains to network. This is because each person who was appointed Captain on their respective teams, was appointed for a reason whether the rest of the team was either in support or not. In any well run team, organization, or business, there is always a leader to keep things moving and on track. I simply want to network with those people.

I guess I'm coming from a place where I have seen many "leaders" get appointed in a nearly arbitrary way. Not on my team specifically, but in general.

What is that "a reason" that they were appointed for? It can very wildly from team to team and I'm not sure it is a good metric to include or exclude people by. Sometimes it is because the team believes they will be a great leader. Sometimes it is because they are really really popular. Sometimes it is because the real leaders on the team could not run for the office.

I have seen many teams where the real student who is galvanizing the team and stepping up to make the hard decisions is NOT the captain, but someone who saw that action needed to be taken and took it. Possibly in a situation where the person elected Captain was eager to get a title and feel responsible and the other student was eager to put in work to make the whole team successful.

I would say that if your goal is to network with the leaders who "keep things moving and on track" on teams then you would be better served by opening it up to "FRC Student Leaders" rather than just Captains. I am definitely not advocating a "open to all" networking page because there are plenty of those. But as I don't think you can effectively verify is someone was, in fact, a Captain then opening it up to more leaders is sensible.

This is all just my 2 cents and it may turn out that having a smaller population is beneficial.

[JamesTerm]

Originally Posted by theCADman

I would definitely like to clear up some things that were discussed.

Ah, I get it now... an officer's club.

I'll leave with a little anecdote while I was in the military... when we got out of basic we were in the habit of calling everyone sir... and when I said that to my new boss (NCO staff sergeant) he looked down on his sleeve and then looked at me and said... I don't see any bars on my sleeve. (meaning sir as in offi-sir)

[Rman1923]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

So it's still not clear that you would keep a "Team President" or a "CEO" or a "Principal Lead Student" from joining the group. Would you mind answering the simple question of whether the specific title of "Captain" is required? (And if not, why did you name the group that way?)

Can we all agree that the meaning is "Student Leaders" meaning Presidents, Captians, CEOs, Tribal leader, Cult master, or whatever the hell we call the student leaders? Like this whole thread has made Mt. Everest out of an Anthill (I know the original saying, this is exaggerating a step further, mainly because words are hard and it's just a name).
Maybe to avoid confusion we can call the group "FRC Tribal cult team master warrior President and CEO leader captain (in a non-military way) bleh".

Also, your question is recursive. Unless we name the group "FRC Tribal cult team master warrior President and CEO leader captain (in a non-military way) bleh", we can't possibly account for all of the types of names that teams give to leaders. So for the same reason naming the group Captians might somehow in a different universe exclude Presidents and CEO's of teams, there is no name to umbrella everyone (except for "FRC Tribal cult team master warrior President and CEO leader captain (in a non-military way) bleh"). I think that's what his team calls the student leads, and as he made the group he labeled it as such...

Being a member of this group, I can assure you that it is not to exclude anyone but to collect a certain group of people. We also include many types of leaders. We also, don't really check if you're a captain or not, it's kind of on the honor basis. Not targeting or making fun of anyone specifically, but lets put the rivets in the coffin for this thread.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Rman1923

Can we all agree that the meaning is "Student Leaders" meaning Presidents, Captians, CEOs, Tribal leader, Cult master, or whatever the hell we call the student leaders?

I'm perfectly willing to assume that, but Arjun (he created the group, right?) appears to be going out of his way to use only the title "Captain" when describing the group's desired membership.

Being a member of this group, I can assure you that it is not to exclude anyone but to collect a certain group of people.

Arjun stated quite clearly yesterday that the group is exclusive. He doesn't seem to understand that his choice of label makes it hard for many of us to divine the extent of that exclusivity, and I don't think his attempt at clarification did a good job of settling the question.

I would be most satisfied to find that the intent is to include all elected or appointed team leaders. I am highly unsatisfied by seeing "words are hard" used as an excuse for a lack of clarity.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Rman1923

Can we all agree that the meaning is "Student Leaders" meaning Presidents, Captians, CEOs, Tribal leader, Cult master, or whatever the hell we call the student leaders? Like this whole thread has made Mt. Everest out of an Anthill (I know the original saying, this is exaggerating a step further, mainly because words are hard and it's just a name).

Unfortunately "Student Leaders" and that list you gave have entirely different meanings. "Student Leaders" on our team are a group of officers including Engineering Captain, Communications Lead, Business Captain, and more. I would guess on your team "Student Leaders" only refers to the one or two students at the top?
If I were running the group I would replace "Captain" with "Student Leader". If Arjun doesn't want it that way then that's his prerogative. I just thought it would be worth discussing.

[theCADman]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

That does seem to make it clear that you indeed meant exactly the word "Captain" from the start. However, you're still not addressing what I see being asked: what is your reason for limiting it to people with that title? Not all teams use military nomenclature.

On the other hand, other parts of your response do appear to be more inclusive:



So it's still not clear that you would keep a "Team President" or a "CEO" or a "Principal Lead Student" from joining the group. Would you mind answering the simple question of whether the specific title of "Captain" is required? (And if not, why did you name the group that way?)

Alright guys. Since my last reply, I'm happy to note that we've grown to around 60 members.

Now...if we are truly going to dwell on this, then here is my answer: This group was named FRC Captains Round Table, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT SOUNDS COOL LIKE THAT. You know....Knights of the Round Table sort of thing....

Also, say you are given the title Team President, Team Leader, Principal Lead Student, CEO, or anything else that is the equivalent of a Team Captain, then you are DEFINITELY ALLOWED TO JOIN. People who have held the title in the past are also allowed to join the group.

I will stress that this group will not let in: Coaches, Team parents, any student who isn't Captain or the equivalent (which includes sub division heads etc), or Mentors (unless they were captain or the equivalent in the past).



This will not be a group for general student leaders within the team, and if anyone wants to make that happen, by all means please start a group for that and I would love to join. This group, is for the afore mentioned list of Team Leaders.


I hope this helps in everyone's understanding!

[Alan Anderson]

*sigh*

I apologize if I'm being unreasonably dense, but your answer didn't help me much. Your reason for choosing the name "Captains" still isn't clear, which makes me worry that I don't share your understanding of what it means. Worse, though, it looks to me like you're saying two different things about the intended membership.

Originally Posted by theCADman

This group was named FRC Captains Round Table, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT SOUNDS COOL LIKE THAT. You know....Knights of the Round Table sort of thing....

I'll accept without further discussion the fact that you think it's cool, even as I see no explanation of why you think "Captains" is a cool name. De gustibus non est disputandum, though.



Here's the part with which I'm still having difficulty:

I will stress that this group will not let in: Coaches, Team parents, any student who isn't Captain or the equivalent (which includes sub division heads etc), or Mentors (unless they were captain or the equivalent in the past).

So in that part you're including "sub division heads etc" as the equivalent of Captain, but...

This will not be a group for general student leaders within the team,...

...here you're saying "general student leaders" are not invited. It's clear that you don't consider the phrases I quoted to be the same thing, but that ends up making me not know what you do consider them to mean.



It was said earlier in the thread that words mean things. Unfortunately, it's common to find that they mean different things to different people. I'm obviously not grasping the meaning you want to get across. If it's just me who's still confused, I'll graciously stop trying to wrench something I can understand out of you. But if others have the same difficulty figuring out who you do and do not want to include, that's a problem.

[EDesbiens]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

*sigh*


I'll accept without further discussion the fact that you think it's cool, even as I see no explanation of why you think "Captains" is a cool name. De gustibus non est disputandum, though.

The good word here is not why, it's why not!

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

So in that part you're including "sub division heads etc" as the equivalent of Captain, but...

You may be confused by the parsing of that sentence, which I clearly read as "anyone who is not X", wherein the set NotX includes subteam leads.

I would suggest Top (of your team) Student Leadership as a synonym. The students who do/did not report to or serve under other students. Sub-leads, as their name implies, fall into the category of "did serve under/report to" and thus do not meet the definition.

[John Retkowski]

Originally Posted by theCADman

Alright guys. Since my last reply, I'm happy to note that we've grown to around 60 members.

Now...if we are truly going to dwell on this, then here is my answer: This group was named FRC Captains Round Table, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT SOUNDS COOL LIKE THAT. You know....Knights of the Round Table sort of thing....

Also, say you are given the title Team President, Team Leader, Principal Lead Student, CEO, or anything else that is the equivalent of a Team Captain, then you are DEFINITELY ALLOWED TO JOIN. People who have held the title in the past are also allowed to join the group.

I will stress that this group will not let in: Coaches, Team parents, any student who isn't Captain or the equivalent (which includes sub division heads etc), or Mentors (unless they were captain or the equivalent in the past).



This will not be a group for general student leaders within the team, and if anyone wants to make that happen, by all means please start a group for that and I would love to join. This group, is for the afore mentioned list of Team Leaders.


I hope this helps in everyone's understanding!

Being a former captain I was on the fence hoping your answer to the "why captains" question would convince me. Unfortunately it's done the opposite. I was hoping you would say something like "I want to network with captains and equivalent leaders because they can more effectively initiate change from the top down." Unfortunately what I heard was "This group was named FRC Captains Round Table, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT SOUNDS COOL LIKE THAT. You know....Knights of the Round Table sort of thing.... "

Maybe there's just a misunderstanding here, but the communications skills in this thread are making it a mess.