Robots by committee

[Gabriel]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

there is no such thing as democracy on a real engineering project - why try to introduce it on a FIRST design cycle?!

in the real world you always have a program manager or project leader, who has more experience than the rest of the team, and that person has the final say on everything.

Yeah, but FIRST isn't supposed to be just an engineering project, its supposed to be life in a microcosm. Certainly there are many valuable reasons to have an oligarchical system - its very efficient for one, and the right people usually are the decision makers. However, the goal of FIRST isn't necessarily to build the best robot, its to inspire kids and the best way to do that is what Dave Lavery said at the kickoff - don't say "go sit in the corner and watch us and you'll learn something" but give them as much of a role as possible. Each team has to decide how to strike a balance between efficiency and quality and giving kids the best experience, but every team leader and mentor should keep in mind that its easy to praise an oligarchy when you're the oligarch.