GP? I think not.

[DanTod97]

im getting the feeling of a "if you cant beat em, join em" attitude here, I disagree completely.

That attitude is just denying that change is an acceptable answer. As ive stated before, even though people seem to be ignoring it, I only created this thread to remind people this is a high school competetion and to request everyone just be aware of that and to be extra careful to make sure there team is run as a highschool team. No attack on any teams at all, I have nothing but love for FIRST and all of its teams, but that doesnt mean I think they are all perfect, unless they beleive they are, and I hope no team does. Just the fact that so many other threads like this exist enforces my feeling that this is an existing problem people choose to ignore and just join them instead.

Im going to stop repeating myself and hopefully be done with this topic, I think ive made my opinions clear and can only hope they will do some good.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by DanTod97

That attitude is just denying that change is an acceptable answer. As ive stated before, even though people seem to be ignoring it, I only created this thread to remind people this is a high school competetion and to request everyone just be aware of that and to be extra careful to make sure there team is run as a highschool team.

This is where I point you to the comments of Dave Lavery, over here. There is no requirement for it to be a high school team. FRC is targeted at the high-school level, granted, but there is no requirement for it to be a high-school team. What of the Girl Scout teams, like the Space Cookies out in California? What of the 4-H teams, like Team THRUST and Exploding Bacon? What of the teams that happen to spend more of their time working with elementary and middle schoolers than actually building their own robot? What about teams like 1114, who've run corporate team-building activities for folks far older than the students of the team and done a great job of bringing that group together? If you're keeping it focused on high school students, zoom out a little bit and enjoy some of the scenery you're cropping out of the frame.

FIRST has aimed its goal at changing the culture. At no point has it said how teams are supposed to go about it.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by DanTod97

im getting the feeling of a "if you cant beat em, join em" attitude here, I disagree completely.

That attitude is just denying that change is an acceptable answer. As ive stated before, even though people seem to be ignoring it, I only created this thread to remind people this is a high school competetion and to request everyone just be aware of that and to be extra careful to make sure there team is run as a highschool team. No attack on any teams at all, I have nothing but love for FIRST and all of its teams, but that doesnt mean I think they are all perfect, unless they beleive they are, and I hope no team does. Just the fact that so many other threads like this exist enforces my feeling that this is an existing problem people choose to ignore and just join them instead.

Im going to stop repeating myself and hopefully be done with this topic, I think ive made my opinions clear and can only hope they will do some good.

You're forgetting one small detail. FIRST has never said that teams should be run as a high school team.

In fact, they celebrate teams that are run as a business through the Entrepreneurship award. They celebrate engineers through the Engineering Inspiration award, and they celebrate mentors and engineers through the Woodie Flowers Award.

To me it is insulting to hear someone say so convincingly and so self righteously that the way other teams (my own included) are doing things is wrong, against the principles of FIRST, hurting the kids, and just plain unfair.

When FIRST becomes about being a high school science fair, maybe you'll be right. But the reason FIRST is great is because of the way it is. If you didn't have all these amazing engineers that FIRST students (heck, and mentors) look up to like Andy Baker, Paul Copioli, Raul Olivera, Dave Lavery, Al Skiekerkiewicz, Ken Patton, Dan Green, and countless others, where would this program be?

Some could contend having an all student team is just as "wrong" as having a mentor dominated team, but who cares?

The real point here is you have a team. Everything else is gravy. Whatever you choose to do with it from that point on is awesome, as long as the kids are getting inspired; and there's no way you can tell me the kids on the powerhouse teams who everyone thinks are engineer built (and often are surprisingly different than they may appear from the outside looking in after you get to know them) aren't being inspired.

How is that not a good thing?

[DanTod97]

I understand FIRST encompasses many things, but I am speaking more specifically of the competition itself, which is why I say even though I see this problem with it, I still love FIRST as a whole. I have not heard one reason why teams cant do all these wonderful things for the students, while still being fair competitively.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by DanTod97

I understand FIRST encompasses many things, but I am speaking more specifically of the competition itself, which is why I say even though I see this problem with it, I still love FIRST as a whole. I have not heard one reason why teams cant do all these wonderful things for the students, while still being fair competitively.

The point here is it is NOT unfair competitively

Teams are allowed and encouraged to utilize engineers! If they weren't, there would be an open class of competition.

If students are building the robots all by themselves, then as Dave Lavery once said, they are not "getting it". It's their fault for putting themselves at a disadvantage competitively, and more importantly, not giving themselves the strongest opportunities to learn.

The little guy can compete with the big guy in FIRST. If you have enough know how, desire, and time, you can do anything. Blaming it on the powerhouse teams not letting their kids do anything is totally inaccurate, imo.

[Billfred]

Emphasis mine:

Originally Posted by DanTod97

I understand FIRST encompasses many things, but I am speaking more specifically of the competition itself, which is why I say even though I see this problem with it, I still love FIRST as a whole. I have not heard one reason why teams cant do all these wonderful things for the students, while still being fair competitively.

I'll issue an open challenge: I dare anyone to find a message from FIRST headquarters saying that FRC is meant to be fair. You're going to have teams that bring the knife to the gunfight no matter what happens, and despite the best efforts of a lot of great people. You will see those same people protest on these forums and elsewhere about any attempts by FIRST to limit their effectiveness by holding down the top teams (see any of the threads from 2005-2007 about fix-it windows), while any effort to bring the lowest teams up (such as the kitbot) is met by cheers all around.

It all goes back to trying to get everyone to bring their A-game.

[Koko Ed]

The one thing that has always got me is everybody seems to have this idea of how a FIRST team is supposed to be. No where on the FIRST website or in any of their manuals is there such a thing. So why would people readily assume there is some pre determined model for a FIRST team to follow?
Let's look at the pinnacle of FIRST the Hall of Fame teams: Many of them are the un GP teams that you freely accuse of ruining FIRST (they win alot of award often. Even after they won the Chairman's award) which is ironic since they had earned the top honor in FIRST doing good works to improve FIRST as a whole. They seem similar in structure when you give them a quick glance but when you look more closely each team is very different from the other and no one team has the science of running a team down than the other Hall of Fame teams. In fact there are plenty of teams who are not in the Hall of Fame who are just as capable of running a top notch program and they can do it completely different from everyone else. There is no set formula to this. how else can you explain 1500 teams can come up with thousands of different solutions to the same problem? You don't think FIRST didn't intend this to happen?
Diverse thinking I think is also a goal FIRST aims for so everyone can see solutions form many angles and inspire others with that as well.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Cory

You're forgetting one small detail. FIRST has never said that teams should be run as a high school team.

In fact, they celebrate teams that are run as a business through the Entrepreneurship award. They celebrate engineers through the Engineering Inspiration award, and they celebrate mentors and engineers through the Woodie Flowers Award.

To me it is insulting to hear someone say so convincingly and so self righteously that the way other teams (my own included) are doing things is wrong, against the principles of FIRST, hurting the kids, and just plain unfair.

When FIRST becomes about being a high school science fair, maybe you'll be right. But the reason FIRST is great is because of the way it is. If you didn't have all these amazing engineers that FIRST students (heck, and mentors) look up to like Andy Baker, Paul Copioli, Raul Olivera, Dave Lavery, Al Skiekerkiewicz, Ken Patton, Dan Green, and countless others, where would this program be?

Some could contend having an all student team is just as "wrong" as having a mentor dominated team, but who cares?

The real point here is you have a team. Everything else is gravy. Whatever you choose to do with it from that point on is awesome, as long as the kids are getting inspired; and there's no way you can tell me the kids on the powerhouse teams who everyone thinks are engineer built (and often are surprisingly different than they may appear from the outside looking in after you get to know them) aren't being inspired.

How is that not a good thing?

While I agree with most of your points, I think you do need to consider what a "superpower" team looks like from the outside looking in.

Essentially, all teams start the season with the same basic resources - a kit of parts, a game description, and six weeks.

Now imagine you're a kid on a small team with a limited budget and mentor resources. You work for 8 hours after school each day, plus weekends, and finally show up at competition with something made of your own blood, sweat, and tears. It probably is a little homemade looking, maybe it works okay most of the time, but it is your own small victory after six weeks of hell.

Then you look in the pit next to you and see a robot that looks like it was ordered out of a catalog.

As an adult, how would that make you feel? I sure would be jealous!

Now, as a high school aged-student, how would that make you feel? Are you telling me that a 16-18 year old has the emotional maturity to not feel bad - even a little - about his own showing when kids the same age are sitting next to a future FIRST championship winner?

Life isn't fair, and FIRST isn't either. That's a hard lesson for a kid to learn.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Abwehr

While I agree with most of your points, I think you do need to consider what a "superpower" team looks like from the outside looking in.

Essentially, all teams start the season with the same basic resources - a kit of parts, a game description, and six weeks.

Now imagine you're a kid on a small team with a limited budget and mentor resources. You work for 8 hours after school each day, plus weekends, and finally show up at competition with something made of your own blood, sweat, and tears. It probably is a little homemade looking, maybe it works okay most of the time, but it is your own small victory after six weeks of hell.

Then you look in the pit next to you and see a robot that looks like it was ordered out of a catalog.

As an adult, how would that make you feel? I sure would be jealous!

Now, as a high school aged-student, how would that make you feel? Are you telling me that a 16-18 year old has the emotional maturity to not feel bad - even a little - about his own showing when kids the same age are sitting next to a future FIRST championship winner?

Life isn't fair, and FIRST isn't either. That's a hard lesson for a kid to learn.

It'd make me want to do whatever I could possibly do to make my team better, so that I could be at the same level.

When I was a freshman in high school, I was jealous of the so called mentor built teams. I didn't really like my current team. I thought that NASA built their robot, etc etc. I'm not real proud of myself for thinking that way, but I didn't know any better, and of course it's easier to attack others for the things they've earned than better your own situation.

I came to realize that those teams had the things they had because of hard work, dedication, and a desire to always be improving. I also came to realize that every person I looked up to in FIRST was an engineer or mentor for teams that appeared to be "mentor built".

Instead of limiting everyone who has worked hard for the things they have, the people who have less should ask them how they did it, so they can aspire to the same heights.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Abwehr

While I agree with most of your points, I think you do need to consider what a "superpower" team looks like from the outside looking in.

Essentially, all teams start the season with the same basic resources - a kit of parts, a game description, and six weeks.

Now imagine you're a kid on a small team with a limited budget and mentor resources. You work for 8 hours after school each day, plus weekends, and finally show up at competition with something made of your own blood, sweat, and tears. It probably is a little homemade looking, maybe it works okay most of the time, but it is your own small victory after six weeks of hell.

Then you look in the pit next to you and see a robot that looks like it was ordered out of a catalog.

As an adult, how would that make you feel? I sure would be jealous!

Now, as a high school aged-student, how would that make you feel? Are you telling me that a 16-18 year old has the emotional maturity to not feel bad - even a little - about his own showing when kids the same age are sitting next to a future FIRST championship winner?

Life isn't fair, and FIRST isn't either. That's a hard lesson for a kid to learn.

This post has some merit. I would be lying if I said during our first several years, as lucky as we have been, that I wasn't jealous of those awesome robots from 100, 115, 254, 192, 368, etc. from the SVR regional. Our students and a few of the mentors were very very intimidated.
Everyone in the last several posts have offered positive solutions. It seems Dan that you feel that the solution of "joining" the group is not the solution.

Then I ask, what do you suggest teams do?
1. Dumb down everything so that we have a level playing field, no engineers whatsover?
2 Or embrace the challenge, hustle to find support, and step it up in order to "join the group"

We chose "step it up" and join the group attitude. We are far from it, but its our inspiring attitude. Just several years ago, we got a judges sheet showing the areas we needed to improve on the Chairman's Award. I was disheartened. More areas were "needed improvement" than the good areas. I had a few thoughts about just forgetting about enteriing already and let it be. Instead, we worked hard to build up our program the last several years. The feeling of winning the CA is priceless and will stay with us for years, knowing what we had to do earn it.
Now looking back at when we had the choice to step it up or dumb down everything, the proof is asking the students what has been more inspiring to them, as I have many students/former students still on the team the last several years.

They will ALL tell you, they like the program as it is now, and still want to strive it to be better.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by Abwehr

While I agree with most of your points, I think you do need to consider what a "superpower" team looks like from the outside looking in.

Essentially, all teams start the season with the same basic resources - a kit of parts, a game description, and six weeks.

Now imagine you're a kid on a small team with a limited budget and mentor resources. You work for 8 hours after school each day, plus weekends, and finally show up at competition with something made of your own blood, sweat, and tears. It probably is a little homemade looking, maybe it works okay most of the time, but it is your own small victory after six weeks of hell.

Then you look in the pit next to you and see a robot that looks like it was ordered out of a catalog.

As an adult, how would that make you feel? I sure would be jealous!

Now, as a high school aged-student, how would that make you feel? Are you telling me that a 16-18 year old has the emotional maturity to not feel bad - even a little - about his own showing when kids the same age are sitting next to a future FIRST championship winner?

Life isn't fair, and FIRST isn't either. That's a hard lesson for a kid to learn.

Here's a little story for you about my first FIRST experience. I first got hooked on FIRST through FLL. I joined in 6th grade during the Volcanic Panic challenge. Most of my team had played with Lego Mindstorms before and owned kits, but none had ever built a robot for a competition of any sort. We spent months building and programming our robot to complete the various missions. In our first competition run the robot shattered into pieces as I went to retrieve it after it drove astray. We put it back together and competed the rest of the day and ended up near the bottom of the pack, 40th out of 42 teams. Makes you wonder why I'm still here right?

We'll I'm still here because I saw an amazing robot built by the Rosemount Roboraiders that earned a perfect score in multiple runs. I was immensely impressed by their robot, their cool white jumpsuits, and their calm demeanor at the table. I was inspired to do better. I spent all summer researching Lego design and programming. I built and programmed countless robots of various designs. Each year after that I learned more and my team's performance improved. I never did manage to earn a perfect score in competition, but I sure learned a heck of a lot trying.

[Adam Y.]

Originally Posted by Abwehr

While I agree with most of your points, I think you do need to consider what a "superpower" team looks like from the outside looking in.

Essentially, all teams start the season with the same basic resources - a kit of parts, a game description, and six weeks.

Now imagine you're a kid on a small team with a limited budget and mentor resources. You work for 8 hours after school each day, plus weekends, and finally show up at competition with something made of your own blood, sweat, and tears. It probably is a little homemade looking, maybe it works okay most of the time, but it is your own small victory after six weeks of hell.

Then you look in the pit next to you and see a robot that looks like it was ordered out of a catalog.

As an adult, how would that make you feel? I sure would be jealous!

Now, as a high school aged-student, how would that make you feel? Are you telling me that a 16-18 year old has the emotional maturity to not feel bad - even a little - about his own showing when kids the same age are sitting next to a future FIRST championship winner?

Life isn't fair, and FIRST isn't either. That's a hard lesson for a kid to learn.

I was never actually jealous of any of the fancy engineering teams. The only time I was jealous was the year I left college and saw the new kit. The gearboxes were made out of metal.

I thought the exact same thing when I heard that at kickoff (I think it was Woody btw). I think student run teams are getting the point! FIRST is here in order to train our youth on how to run and advance the engineering world, when we run the world there will be no elders doing things for us. So I say make tools off limits for adults, and make the design phase student only. Please understand the difference between engineering and designing. Where Designing is deciding to use Akerman steering, and a launching robot. Engineering is what materials and methods to do these things.

Unfortunately, that's not how real life works. In real life you are forced to work with the elders because it's the law. You legally can not call yourself an engineer unless you A) Pass a test and B) Work underneath someone who is an engineer which would be your elder by a number of years.

[Woody1458]

Originally Posted by Adam Y.

In real life you are forced to work with the elders because it's the law. You legally can not call yourself an engineer unless you A) Pass a test and B) Work underneath someone who is an engineer which would be your elder by a number of years.

What I was saying there is that what FIRST is preparing us for is BEING the elders.

[Michael Corsetto]

After reading a few responses to my post, I can sum up what I understand in three simple statements:
Completely mentor built robots are ok.
A mix of mentor and student built robots are ok.
Completely student built robots are not ok.

Is there something I'm missing? If so, what is it? I used to think all three methods were acceptable, but it seems to not be the case anymore.

Mike C.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Rex114

After reading a few responses to my post, I can sum up what I understand in three simple statements:
Completely mentor built robots are ok.
A mix of mentor and student built robots are ok.
Completely student built robots are not ok.

Is there something I'm missing? If so, what is it? I used to think all three methods were acceptable, but it seems to not be the case anymore.

Mike C.

It's not that completely student built robots are not ok, it's just that they've blocked off an entire avenue towards inspiration and learning. Teams are free to operate however they wish and see fit. We're just pointing out an amazing opportunity that is being turned down.

Originally Posted by Abwehr

I do understand the point Dave was making. But teams without a lot of engineering mentorship usually aren't that way by choice. Engineers who are willing to devote 6+ weeks of their year to helping kids are, sadly, in the minority.

Telling an inner-city team that they don't "get it" because they don't have engineers does no one good.

Again, I don't remember the exact words of the speech, but if I recall correctly, I think Dave said something along the lines of "Teams who choose to go about this without mentors..." I'll dig up the transcript.

Edit:// Found the transcript. (Parts bolded for emphasis)

Originally Posted by Dave Lavery, 2008 Kickoff Transcript

DEAN MENTIONED ALREADY IF YOU THINK THE PROGRAM IS ABOUT ROBOTS YOU'RE MISSING PART OF THE MESSAGE.
THERE ARE A LOT OF TEAMS OUT THERE, AND I KNOW I'LL HEAR BACK FROM THEM ABOUT THIS, THERE ARE A LOT OF TEAMS OUT THERE WHO ARE BUILT SOLELY OF STUDENTS AS A STUDENT-BUILT, STUDENT-RUN, STUDENT-ORGANIZED TEAM FROM END TO END TO THE PROCESS.
I CONGRATULATE THEM WHAT THEY'RE ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH AND DO.
THEY'RE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE WITH NO PROBLEM AT ALL.
DO THE TASK WE'RE SETTING OUT FOR THEM.
IF YOU THINK THE TASK IS ABOUT BUILDING A ROBOT.
MY CHALLENGE TO THE TEAMS IS, PART OF WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO IS GET YOU EXPOSED TO REAL WORLD TECHNOLOGIES PRACTICES, PEOPLE WHO ARE PROFESSIONALS.
IF YOU'RE DOING THIS WITH YOUR TEAM YOU'RE ABLE TO BUILD THE ROBOT AND ABLE TO COMPETE AND BE ABLE TO BE A PARTICIPANT IN THE PROGRAM BUT I THINK YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT IF YOU DON'T HAVE AN ENGINEERING ON YOUR TEAM OR TWO OR THREE OR FOUR BECAUSE YOU AREN'T TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPOSE YOUR TEAM AND YOUR STUDENTS TO REAL WORLD ENGINEERING PRACTICES TO LEARN TO BE INSPIRED BY THE PROFESSIONALS TO WHICH YOU HAVE ACCESS.
SO IS THIS A HARD PROBLEM?
YES.
IT'S SUPPOSED HARD.
WE'RE MAKING IT HARD BECAUSE WE WANT YOU TO BE ENCOURAGED TO GO OUT AND GET PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING HELP FOR YOUR TEAMS TO HELP SOLVE THIS STUFF.
THAT'S HOW YOU'RE GOING TO GET THE MOST BENEFIT OUT OF THE ENTIRE PROGRAM.