FIRST Philosophy 101

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

My intention of quoting Dean Karmen's remarks from a few years back was to put things into perspective. Dean was speaking to mentors when he said "when you start to feel like you are involved in a robot building contest then you are in serious trouble!"

I know that I think and see things differently from most people. Maybe I have a weird view of life or engineering or FIRST?

Many of us engineering mentors are in "serious trouble". We're bad. We engineer things and help create robots that do incredible things. We take students along with us on a ride of invention, creation, frustration, caffine-intakation, fabrication, and inspiration.

This thing we are in is called the "FIRST Robotics Competition". We are here to compete. We participate by means of building a robot. This IS a robot building contest.

What happens within this robot competition is the magical stuff. Students open their eyes. Adults regain their engineering passion. Heroes are made. Friendships are born and fostered throughout many years.

People who go through a season of FIRST have a "bond". They each invented a robot within a crazy short time frame... and then they competed with it. They all participated in this "robot building contest", and a bunch of inspiration shot up as a result.

Is there really an argument here?

Andy B.

[KenWittlief]

When mentors get trophy-eyed there can be many pitfalls. Over the last several years I have personally seen:

- a student in tears at a regional because they made a mistake during a match, and they dont want to drive the robot anymore because they 'let the team down'

- a mentor YELLING at a driver, on the field, after a losing a match "I TOLD YOU TO DO ONE THING AND YOU DID SOMETHING ELSE...."

- mentors get angry and quit the team 1 week before the ship deadline because they didnt like the way the robot build was progressing

- students quit the team in the middle of the build season out of anger and emotions they cant deal with

- sponsors dropping a team because mentors would not let the students be actively involved in the design and build process

yes, there is definately a down side when mentors forget why we are really doing this. Serious trouble!

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

When mentors get trophy-eyed there can be many pitfalls. Over the last several years I have personally seen:

<snip> list of examples of people behaving badly<snip>

yes, there is definately a down side when mentors forget why we are really doing this. Serious trouble!

Yes, I think we can all agree that bad people suck.

We can also all agree that the goals of FIRST are not well served by people acting like jerks.

But, because you can cite examples of people going too far does not, in my mind, argue that we can't and shouldn't try to compete as hard as we can (of course within the limits of fairness and without adopting a Winning is All attitude).

Joe J.

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Yes, I think we can all agree that bad people suck.

We can also all agree that the goals of FIRST are not well served by people acting like jerks.

But, because you can cite examples of people going too far does not, in my mind, argue that we can't and shouldn't try to compete as hard as we can (of course within the limits of fairness and without adopting a Winning is All attitude).

Joe J.

I guess we are half way between an understanding here.

The game is there to be played, and to be played well. Nobody is stating otherwise.

Maybe this is more an issue of human nature. I dont think the problem is that some people are being jerks, and the rest of us are ok. You literally cant go to two places at the same time. The mentors who became jerks probably were great people who got their eyes fixed on the wrong goal. Its human nature to think "well that wont happen to me"" and then at some point you find yourself so angry at a Ref/Judge/teacher/mentor/student... that you cant see straight because they screwed up your teams chance to win.

Even more subtle than that, when you decide to do something, when you set a goal for yourself, all kinds of backburner things start simmering in your mind. Your personal energy and creativity are engaged towards that goal.

Thats the main point Ive been trying to make. I gave the little tongue in cheek quiz. I listed red flags in my last post, I jokingly proposed that maybe we need to recite a creed before each meeting (the mentors). Im not calling anyone out here to give an accounting for their actions and motives. Im only waving a red flag here: there are dangers and pitfalls and cliffs you can fall off - nobody is immune.

[Ken Leung]

Instead of directly participating in this thread, and join in a discussion I see as one of the most important discussions of all time, in both the forum and the FIRST community, I would like to make the following observations.

There are several debates that kept coming back every year: amount of mentor participation, engineer build vs. student build, too many or too little competitiveness, the goal of FIRST, and more recently, collaboration between teams, and sharing design and parts.

These recurring debates had and always will be the instruments in which everyone reevaluate and rediscover the precise meaning of FIRST in their hearts. The meaning of FIRST itself will continue to evolve and diversify as FIRST participants (returning and incoming) move forward in directions they think are most suitable for their team. The program itself will continue to grow and change as the world around and the people within continue to grow and change.

You think you got the right answer? Think again. You think you got the right way to run a FIRST team? Try showing up to a competition and talk to all the teams in the pit area. In my 6 years of participation since 1999, growing from a FIRST student to a FIRST event organizer, to this day I continue to discover new meanings of being a part of FIRST. And to this day, I am still amazed at how different and creative everyone is in their way of life in FIRST.

So, while you debate and argue heatedly all these important issues, bare in mind that the diversity is a strength of this program, not weakness. And most importantly, don’t ever doubt, not even for a second, that the intentions of those you argue with of being in this program is anything less than good. Because I can assure you, everyone in FIRST is in it for the right reason.

Understand that, and you will understand a lot more.


P.S. At the risk of going off topic, I came across a section in a books I am reading that I found somewhat relevant to the passion and arguments in this discussion. How much you will get from it,though, that's entirely up to you.

(The stage is set in the 1850’s, when the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854 was just passed and anti-slavery sentiments has grown to a new high. Lincoln was just a traveling circuit lawyer at the time, after serving his only term in Congress.)

Rather than upbraid slaveowners, Lincoln sought to comprehend their position through empathy. More than a decade earlier, he had employed a similar approach when he advised temperance advocates to refrain from denouncing drinkers in “thundering tones of anathema and denunciation,” for denunciation would inevitable be met with denunciation, “crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema.” In a passage directed at abolitionists as well as temperance reformers, he had observed that it was the nature of man, when told that he should be “shunned and despised,” and condemned as the author “of all the vice and misery and crime in the land,” to “retreat within himself, close all avenues to his head and his heart.”

Though the cause be “naked truth itself, transformed to be the heaviest lance, harder than steel,” the sanctimonious reform could no more pierce the heart of the drinker or the slaveowner than “penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him.” In order to “win a man to your cause,” Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, “the great high road to his reason.” This, he concluded, was the only road to victory – to that glorious day “when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth.”

[GaryVoshol]

I've been reading this thread with great interest. I don't think the positions are as far apart as some people think they are.

As someone pointed out, it is the "FIRST Robotics Competition". Which means it is a competition sponsored by FIRST - "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology". The competition serves as a tool or medium to do the inspiring.

I'd like to look at this in a little different way. I'm a relative newby to FRC, although I have a long association through FLL. Another part of my life is being on the board of our local youth soccer association. In soccer, the point of being on the team is to play soccer - similar to the point that being on a FRC team is to play robotics. It's often pointed out that sports are also about gaining/keeping physically fit, learning about teamwork, learning about commitment, learning about yourself. FRC does that as well (except that the exercise is more mental than physical).

How much does the game itself, and the competition, mean? In youth soccer, there are two levels - commonly called recreational and competitive. In the rec divisions, the focus is on learning the skills and rules needed to play the game. Does that mean there is no competition - not at all! Ask any youth soccer referee, and she'll tell you that the World Cup is fought multiple times every weekend - the team, coaches and spectators have the same intensity. But that doesn't mean the learning aspect is removed. Also, Boards do things behind the scenes to make sure the competitiveness doesn't overwhelm the learning. Teams are balanced in abilities, and matchups between teams are arranged to have equal ability teams playing each other. Why? Because it keeps the kids interest in the game. If a team regularly loses 10-2 every weekend, the kids lose heart and quit. If a team regularly wins 7-0, the kids get complacent and don't advance in their skills.

A parallel can be drawn regarding the FRC. The game has to remain accessible to rookies, while being challenging enough for the veterans. There has to be interest in doing well - results on the field - to keep the kids inspired toward science and technology. Game results, trophies and awards, are recognition given for jobs well done. (We have to remember to continue to recognize all positive efforts though, not just the winning efforts.)

The competition is not the important thing, but it is the vehicle to get to the important thing. We are changing student's lives, sometimes in ways we don't ever comprehend.

[KenWittlief]

Gary makes a good point, feedback is important. It would be good for students to have a better way to gauge their accomplishments during the build season - a way for their robots to be rated or judged, for their efforts to be acknowledged.

Driving in to work this morning it occurred to be, maybe the way to answer these recurring questions and issues is to add feedback to FIRST. Is there presently a method by which all students are polled or asked to supply their opinions of the program, how things went this year? (It would be simple to ask: what aspects inspired you the most?)

I think the kind of feedback you would get from a 100% coverage 'student exit interview' would be very useful to fine tune the FIRST program to meet it primary goal.

We can speculate from our personal experiences one by one as mentors and students on CD for months and get nowhere. A ten minute end of season report from each student (and mentor) would be much more usefull and productive.

After all, we are engineers: we know the power of feedback!

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

After all, we are engineers: we know the power of feedback!

Oh, that's just great. Now this is turning into a PID thread.

[Martinez]

I only have two words about V-Neun and inspiring High School students through competition: Shaved Heads
Looking at Jay's and Tim's posts.... clearly it worked well.

[David Brinza]

FIRST Robotics Competition

The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.

So tell me, is FIRST about competition? The above quote is cut-and-paste directly from the FIRST website. Competition is so central to what we do, that "competition" or "competitive" appears in the first sentence 3 times.

The spirit of the competition is what inspires many of us to be involved with FIRST. We all enjoy seeing a well-designed and built robot being effectively operated by skilled drivers. Not all of the teams will have the resources to compete at the level of the top teams in FIRST and they shouldn't (and usually don't) measure their success in terms of beating those teams on the field. Yet, many of these "have not" teams improve their capabilities by learning from and emulating the successful designs and strategies of top teams. That is an example of competition inspiring teams to do better - a worthy goal indeed.

I think FIRST will lose out if the playing field were leveled by continuing to place severe and somewhat arbitrary restrictions on when the teams can improve robot capabilities. If the "leveled playing field" results in kit robots with little sophistication as the norm, the FRC will become less attractive. Engineering professionals, spectators and ultimately the students will be less inspired to participate and the FIRST program will decline.

I'm not advocating "open season" on robot development, but the "powers that be" need to be sensitive to the fact that some additional time needs to be allotted for things like software development to utilize the exciting technologies that FIRST offers (the camera, the sensors, etc.). The current 6-week build season just doesn't provide the software team enough time to exercise their code on a functional robot. So, software is usually "done" during competitions and (if the team has the resources) with practice robots during FIX-IT WINDOWS.

In future seasons, FIRST should make allowances for the complexity of the technologies available to teams and expand the time available for development and test. FIRST should also make allowances for the availability of the professional engineering mentors - we often set high standards and are driven to succeed. But we have our day jobs - six plus weeks of intense, dedicated effort followed by restricted windows of opportunity probably doesn't work well for most of us. Some flexibility in the scheduling and use of post-ship time can make a big difference to many of us. The resulting improved "product" on the field will serve to further inspire the whole of FIRST to be at its best.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

The current 6-week build season just doesn't provide the software team enough time to exercise their code on a functional robot. So, software is usually "done" during competitions and (if the team has the resources) with practice robots during FIX-IT WINDOWS.

You are right. However, THAT is exactly the challenge that faces EVERY team.

I work in a company that does a lot of R&D. It seems we never have enough time or money and there is always too many hands in the pot (adding feature creep). Its the nature of the beast, and a real world lesson for these kids.

To the entrepreneur (or FIRST team), its just another challenge.