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Unread 17-02-2004, 19:21
Dennis Jenks Dennis Jenks is offline
It's good to be home.
FRC #0254
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Rookie Year: 1999
Location: San Jose, CA
Posts: 50
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Re: Robot Collaboration

I just wanted to chime in on this subject one last time.

I suppose the thing that upsets me most about this thread is not the fact that people disagree or even disapprove of what our two teams have accomplished this season, but more so having to once again witness the obvious double standards that exist not only in the world of FIRST, but in the world in general.

It seems we are allowed to help teams that we know we can beat or that pose no threat to the other “powerhouse teams”. I have seen this time and again, teams are willing to help out the rookies or even other veteran teams that seem to be struggling. But very few are willing to extend help to another team of equal “powerhouse” caliber. I’m not saying that none will (in fact both 25 and 79 have helped us with quite a bit with our drive train research), but it certainly isn’t given as freely as it is to those that struggle. Mind you, I’m not saying that we should stop helping rookies and start building monsters, what I mean to say is that there are plenty of opportunities to help everyone.

I have seen numerous posts chastising our two teams because we could have used our resources to help out some rookie teams rather than each other. I would like to again point out the fact that both of our teams do mentor rookie teams. In fact our team has helped to start FIRST programs in several states in which FIRST did not even exist.

Additionally, between the two of us we provided 100% of the machine shop support at 3-4 regionals last year (not sure if Kingman did one or two) and provided additional support at Nationals (Texas is a long way to drag a trailer from California!). When you consider this, bare in mind that at that time we were in no way obligated to share our resources. FIRST has recently changed the rules (perhaps because we lead the way in that respect as well) so that now if a team wants to bring their own mobile machine shop they have to support other teams. I think this is a wonderful rule, and I’m sure you will see many teams doing just that this year. However we did it because we wanted to, not because we had to. In fact this year we will be providing machine shop support not only at the two regionals we will be attending, but also for at least one regional at which we are not even registered.

I would also like to point out that we are not teams of unlimited resources! Our team came from very humble beginnings (please feel free to research it it’s a great story!), and presently we have only one actual engineer and two engineering students (I list my team role as engineer because it best describes what I do for our team, although I won’t receive my degree until this May). Kingman has zero engineers and a couple of machinists (albeit darn good ones). As such our combined resources are much less than those of many of the teams we compete with, but we still find a way to help literally hundreds of teams.

During this past year our two teams tried something new. Our initial intent was not to build identical robots, that just kind of happened. Our intent was simply to build the best robots we could, to give our kids the best experience we could along the way, and hopefully to blaze a trail into a new and undiscovered world of FIRST where everyone helps everyone. If you find some flaws in our first attempt please don’t hold that against us, our intensions were as noble as could be.

I still feel that collaboration is a good thing; the sharing of ideas and resources is always a good thing. I am also sure that our teams will continue to work together in the future and I hope others do the same. We’ve already been down the road where the veteran teams help the new teams all the while guarding their best secrets to maintain an edge. Let’s turn the corner and see what lies down this new road where there are no secrets. Where everyone shares everything willingly and gives aid to others without bias. We are trying to turn that corner and yes there may be a few bumps, but never the less we still want to find out where the road goes.

And to those of you who find fault with this, you have every right to question our actions, but please don’t question our motives.

I have to go now we have a robot to build.

Good luck to all,


Dennis Jenks
 


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