Championship 2008 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Overyourhead

As a member of an FTC team I would say that Competing in the Georgia Dome is a great part of competing in Atlanta. I can take from your post that you have never been part of an FTC team. FTC is already looked down upon by FRC and some may say FIRST doesn't really care about FTC.

You've already been corrected about my past in FVC/FTC. I left an established FRC team to start a Explorer Post to do robotics for students who come from schools without teams. I picked Vex because it was less expensive than FRC, and we could build robots in a conference room at my employer. Finding out that FTC provides the same engineering experience as FRC was a surprising bonus. I would even go farther and say that in some ways FTC is a better introduction to engineering than FRC is -- there is more "hands-on" for every team member on an FTC team, and a lot more engineering exposure for the buck. (FRC is clearly superior when it comes to exposing students to fabrication and parts selection. The robots are also more obviously exciting than FTC robots. Although, any FRC'er would have been blown away by 74's ring sorter, where opposition rings went into a bin and their own went on to score on a goal. When one of our students and I spotted this in a match our mouths practically hung open. Nothing I've seen in FRC was more creative than this. Anyway...) It's pretty clear that rather than be an FTC skeptic, I consider myself a leading evangelist for the program. And, for the record, I adore FRC and think it's the right program for a lot of teams. I also don't care if anyone in FIRST or FRC thinks of FTC as the "junior" or "trainee" program. Unless the new kit really stinks -- I don't think it will -- FTC will have more than 2,000 teams by 2011, and will continue to grow faster than FRC for the foreseeable future. Write that prediction down, I'm looking forward to seeing it come true.

As for the Georgia Dome, it's FRC land. I would rather be next door in a larger FTC facility, with more intimate seating and a shorter hike to the pits. I see a day when the FTC and FRC qualifying are both done on Friday, and Saturday is dedicated to the Eliminations for both programs in the Georgia Dome -- with equal billing given to FTC. I think the smart people in FIRST recognize the need for a $1,500 alternative to FRC, and that the high school students in FTC are going through the same kind of process and getting the same benefits as FRC. Giving us our own venue with four divisions or more, and having eliminations in front of the big crowd in the Dome on the same day as FRC is the best of all worlds -- and would allow FRC to continue growing too. I would rather have 400 FTC teams in Atlanta than be in the Georgia Dome.

But that's just me...

Hey FTC teams, join us May 10 for the FIRSTWA Spring FTC RoboFest!