QotW 09-21-03: Obsolescence.

[Madison]

FIRST is growing by leaps and bounds, and while far from achieving Dean Kamen's goal of a FIRST team in every high school, the program is markedly larger than it was even three years ago.

As FIRST has continued to become larger, it's experienced its fair share of growing pains. It seems that, with time, what FIRST is (rather than what it tries to do) is going to change drastically. Some may argue that what we have now seems not to work -- or, at the least, it does not work nearly as well as it used to.

Question of the Week 09-21-03: Do you think that the FIRST Robotics Competition is obsolete? Do you think it'll ever become obsolete? How can obsolenscence be prevented and relevance remain?

I wonder what upper threshold there is before FIRST reenvisions what the FIRST Robotics Competition is. We only have participants from a small fraction of the high schools in this country, and already, they're turning away ~67%
of teams from the premier event.

I realize that a lot of you will answer "No," when asked if the program is currently obsolete and I'd agree. I'm really hoping, though, that we can take the time to make a real examination of what works and what doesn't work and try to extrapolate what a program three or four or five times as big as the one we're in now could do to retain some of the best characteristics of what we have now.

[Kevin A]

I will be the first person to say no. Yesterday my team went to Cal Games, and it was great. In the off-season, you start wondering whats going to inspire you and thousands of other people to start up new teams and to even keep their teams running. Then you go to the kickoff, and your ready to devote your life to FIRST.

I think that this competition will grow with virtually no problems because of gracious professionalism. That inspires me, and probably everyone in this compitition. It inspires us to start new teams, help eachother, provide eachother with higher challenges, and to have fun.

I will end my rambling with no, I don't think that FIRST will outgrow itself.

[JJG13]

If FIRST Robotics gets so big that it becomes 'obsolete' then it means that the program has worked because science and technolodgy has become popular. By this time we will all be holding local competitions where there are a dozen robots per school. That would not be so bad!

[UlTiMaTeP]

Nope, never

[generalbrando]

Absolutely yes. However, I'm not in total opposition to you guys who say no. I think that the program is great and it will obviously expand. And if it expands to becoming obselete, then yes it would have achieved its purpose.

What keeps me up at night is the fact that the infastructure to the competition system cannot handle its current load let alone what's coming this season. Like MK pointed out, we're already turning away two thirds of the competitors from the main event which was envisioned to be open to everyone. Of course those who realized that dream knew it wouldn't last forever if FIRST got too big. We'll never be able to have all the teams that want to go to the big event under one roof again. That happened at the 10th aniversary for the last time I believe. So my first point is that there will be major changes in the way the program is run until it's evolved into something that can literally take care of a team from each and every high school in the US and abroad.

Because of that; because the system must expand and add new regionals, and eventually possibly larger regionals like that one thread rumored (involving multiple fields); because most teams will inevitably lose contact with the central FIRST community: I see the spirit of the program taking on either a different one or else a localized one. At rookie regionals we already see that the spirit of FIRST can be somewhat diminished or changed out of lack of experience and such. And by losing contact with the central FIRST community, I mean to make a rather crude hypothetical/analogy (and this goes against everything FIRST is, but this is a possibility that worries me). That analogy is to every sports team in every high school. How often do you hear of them talking to other teams on the other side of the country. Of course they aren't like a FIRST team. It wouldn't help them to get advice from another team. But do you see what I mean? The idea that the whole thing becomes so big that you interact with your local comeptition and don't really worry much about the big community except what comes down from FIRST hq.

Now this isn't what I see as the only way things will happen. I do believe that in some way there is inevitably a lot of change coming in our future. FIRST is unique, so applying any other system to it is really just stupid and I realize that completely. But I still worry about what it will become over the years because it certainly can't remain just as it is. I'll leave the prevention part of the problem to further discussion and add any ideas I can think of later.