Just an idea ...

[archiver]

Posted by Kyle Huang.

Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Gunn High School and Sun Microsystems, Nasa/Ames and Xerox PARC.

Posted on 8/1/99 3:10 PM MST


In Reply to: COMMUNICATION posted by Justin on 8/1/99 1:49 PM MST:



I've only been in the FIRST competition for one year, and I've also had an incredibly positive experience with it
(for the most part). I know the feeling of getting stressed out and totally burnt out by this competition... And
things like travel expenses may be obstacles, but i don't see them as problems. The way we run our team is
virtually a mirror of a startup company. Travel expenses (which are in the same pool as all our other expenses)
are paid for mainly by members' families. The way we get money, is just like a startup would. We get
appointments to give presentations to companies, in hopes that they will contribute some money to us -- small
startup companies do that same thing, except on a much larger scale. After we've collected all the money we
can for one school year (which is usually at the end of the school year), we refund parents as much as we can
with the money we have available.

As far as getting burnt out goes... It happens. Not just in this competition. It happens in companies, big and
small. Except that the smaller the company the more likely it is to get burnt out. Probably the only reason
burn outs ever occur are deadlines. And dealines exist in the real world.

I think that the FIRST competition is doing a great job of getting students tuned into engineering. All these
things are only part of the industry. Most engineers probably will not have to give a presentation to a venture
capitalist, but it has to happen sometimes. Most engineers working for big companies like GM or Bosch
probably aren't going to get burnt out quite as often or as easily, but it does happen.
So what I'm saying is that very many parts of FIRST reflect the real world. That's part of what makes FIRST so
great.

The number of teams will probably be a problem when the number grows too huge... But we'll have to wait to
see what they do about that.

As far as listening to what teams have to say about the competition, they do listen. This message board is
one of the ways they can listen. FIRST can't take all the suggestions of all teams, because for one thing, it
would take too long, and because the suggestions of each team could be only reflecting and/or benefitting
thier team. They have to do things they think would be for the good of all the teams. I'm sure if enough
people from a lot of different teams started complaining about one thing, they would change it.

And don't worry justin, you don't sound like you're bashing FIRST at all =)