We have to organize to win

[archiver]

Posted by Lora Knepper at 2/3/2001 9:04 AM EST


Other on team FIRST-a-holics Anonymous from . sponsored by ..


In Reply to: Organization is lovely, but how about reality?
Posted by Jessica Boucher on 2/1/2001 9:34 PM EST:



Before people start taking each other's heads off, lets put this all into perspective, shall we?

I have to agree with Jess on her point that at least right now, the FIRST community has been literally flooded with new scouting databases. Now, no matter why a particular team or individual decides to make one is beside the point really. There are just numerically too many for us to use - in their current form.

Now as for the GMCIA question, I was talking to Nate way back when he was first coding it last year - and I think it's a great system and the one I know most about, but lets face it, GMCIA, SOAP, or the group of others I've seen posted on here won't work unless you have people using them, right?

What we are doing in this issue, and in this thread, are letting emotions get in the way. This is becoming a game of hurt feelings, where someone says "there are too many!" and 5 others feel the need to justify why they or their team has created one. I'm not advocating for just one system necessarily, but more of a way to get them to all talk to each other. I know there have been posts before talking about a "Uniform Standard" and I for one, think that's an excellent idea.

For example, if we had a standard, the regional scouting systems could join up at Nationals, because lets face it, SOAP or GMCIA is not going to be at the NE Regional, or the Lone Star, or the NASA Ames. If the systems can share their knowledge based upon a standard, then when everyone meets up in Florida, imagine the massive amount of data that can be shared? No more having to re-scout teams hundreds of times!

Computer companies do it all the time. There are industry standards for hardware and software - why don't we make a FIRST scouting standard and stop hurting each other over such a trivial issue? We are all in this game for the same reason, it's not right to rip each other apart...

~ Lora Knepper