Poll:What do you think the effect of G14 will be?

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

I understand the point of FIRST being inspiring innovation and science, and I'm not going against that. However, with any attempted change, you need to penetrate the population before change can happen.

This is very astute, indeed and I agree. However, as FIRST grows we capture fewer and fewer of the "early adopters" and more folks who are from "popular culture." I explained the difference in this thread. With more and more people who are used to the "popular culture" way of doing things we all need to be more diligent about ensuring the real mission remains at heart. I've seen a growing number of people in FIRST whining about referee calls on the field and in these forums and it needs to stop. You heard Dean say, out loud about the elements of luck involved in the "game." You heared Woodie talk about the big effect of the program and you heard Dave talk about mentoring. What more evidence do we all need here until we stop focusing so much of the "game" and whether or not it's good? If we keep doing that, as early adopters, what are we teaching the mainstreamers who have joined us?

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

If you just start doing something different, you'll be that odd group instead of a changing force. If you instead start with a competition, make it known, and then begin the shift, I'm willing to bet that change will happen MUCH faster.

It's been nearly 20 years, how long should we wait?

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

Already done all this. Is it too much to be allowed to compete like crazy too?

Nope, I see no reason why you can't compete like crazy, but perhaps it's now more of an "us vs. the problem" thing (like many real life robotic applications) as opposed to "me vs. you."

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

New chassis design: Check.
We can drive QUITE well on slick surfaces. Check.
If there were any rookie teams near us, we'd be helping them. Check.
Traction control: Check.
Outreach demos: Check.

Awesome! You don't need rookies near you to help them. Contact the RD(s) for your event(s) and find out who the rookies/other teams in need are!

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by jgannon

It's no fun to get blown out, but if a team is going to slow themselves up because they're crushing you, it borders on demeaning.

Or worse, they score in your own goals. You aren't doing the individual teams of the struggling alliance any favors by highlighting just how much they are struggling to the general viewing public.

Instead of penalizing teams for outpacing those who struggle on the field, how about focusing on providing on-field REWARDS for any teams who find ways to elevate struggling teams behind the curtain? Take the Chairman's Award ideals and find a way to break that concept down to where it has an impact on the playing field.

Here's a wild suggestion....

You know how safety judges and individual teams are given "safety tokens" to distribute to those teams who are demonstrating strong safety practices in the pits? Well, perhaps teams and judges are given "Gracious Professionalism" tokens to hand out in the same manner whenever they witness acts of one team helping another in the pits with ROBOT-related activities. These can then be exchanged for whatever units of strategic/scoring edge the GDC defines for use ON THE FIELD, during the match.

• The helped team benefits by receiving better programming, machining assistance, better robot performance - a better opportunity to compete on the field.
• The helping team can exchange their GP tokens for a strategic edge in any match - they would hand it to a designated official (ref, queueing personnel, whatever) just prior to a match, and this would give that team/alliance an additional empty cell/supercell to use. (make it a part of strategy - we see that we have a tough match coming up, so we want to employ the token then to give us the best opportunity to succeed)
• Granting the ability to exchange these tokens in any match a team chooses will minimize their use against the "weaker" alliances they face. They will be used when facing the better teams. More available points in the best matchups seems to be an exciting prospect.
• Each team on an alliance can only use one per match, and the one they use cannot be from a team on their alliance. [Thanks, Bongle!]
• Your team would have a cap (3-ish) on how many GP tokens you could exchange for empty/supercells at any one event. This limits "collusion", "nepotism", and all other dark side of humanity issues many of you are thinking of as you analyze this concept.
• Once you use up your 3 tokens, you must politely refuse any further tokens or "regift" any excess - no hoarding of tokens such that other teams cannot benefit from them.
• The GP tokens would have the team number of the granting team on them to prevent any miscreants from exchanging their own GP tokens.
• Even the most inexperienced team would be eligible to receive tokens for finding their own way to be technically helpful to other teams at an event.
• Emcees and announcers would undoubtedly have to explain this concept to the crowd, which gives them a great excuse to talk about all the positive stuff that goes on "behind the curtain", which at least in my memory banks, is not something that is frequently brought up to the public while the matches are going on, relative to all the other discussion.

Could this not accomplish the same objective, and more, than the current rendition of G14?

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Here's a wild suggestion....

I like your idea, but it is a bit too susceptible to teams only appearing to help. What if the teams themselves rather than the judges were given a few tokens (labelled with their team number) that they then distributed to helping teams. If you wanted a team's tokens, you help them in a useful fashion. I could show up and appear to be helping another team on their laptop, but maybe I can't understand their code and can't actually help. It wouldn't be terrible if a judge gave me a token for appearing to help (after all, trying to help is a good thing to do too), but it could be gamed.

Rules for deployment of GP tokens could say: "each team on an alliance can only use one per match, and the one they use cannot be from a team on their alliance". This would prevent teams from spending their own tokens, and would prevent an alliance from swapping tokens beforehand.

On the dark side, however:
-What if someone helps, but a team deems it 'not enough' to hand out a token? Bad feelings would come up pretty quick in that situation
-A problem with both of our ideas: Teams seem to be pretty good at helping each other right now out of altruism. Putting a "they're only doing this because they want the in-game bonus" slant on it might actually depress GP.

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by jgannon

I know better than to throw rocks at a guy with better aim than me, so I'll lob 'em real easy.

I'm not 100% sure this is true, Joey, but I appreciate you being kind to an older guy

Originally Posted by jgannon

Why does that have to be the case? It seems like I see an article like this every week. The winning coach always says something like this one: "We show the most respect for our opponents by continuing to play hard." I invariably find myself in agreement. It's no fun to get blown out, but if a team is going to slow themselves up because they're crushing you, it borders on demeaning.

In the context of winning a sporting event, under the rules that govern their games, you are correct. The coaches and players who make these statements on a regular basis are doing so as part of a culture that values working one's butt off to win a championship for that one team. The example article you point to should be troublesome. Clearly, there are many ways to play hard and work on your game without running up the score. I was a coach for nearly a decade and one of these athletes from age 8 through high school. I remain a big sports fan. This, though, is NOT our culture. Dean talks about borrowing from the excitement of sports, NOT from the "we are here to kick your butt" part. It's unfortunate, but there are very few professional, major college, or even high school/youth sports programs out there anymore that exist for the overall development of a healthy citizen in a global society that has really pressing problems we need to solve.

Originally Posted by jgannon

I appreciate this sentiment, but I don't think you'll find what you're looking for in <G14>. I'm not going to feel better about losing 29-10 when I know the only reason it wasn't 90-0 is because my opponents found it beneficial to ease up. The culture change has to come from things with no selfish subtext, or no one's going to buy into it. This is the kind of behavior we should be encouraging.

Joey, I love this ESPN article and yes, that is the world I believe we need to see a LOT more of. Beyond sports on this planet, what value does the "blowout" model have at all? I'd also point you to this example that brought major attention from media outlets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODqjUqW3c0U .

I sit my boys down in front of these examples and try to teach them that these are examples of what it REALLY means to be a champion. Also know that if ALL of your examples come from the world of sports, then you're really missing the big picture. Go find the real world engineering examples of collaborative efforts and you'll be closer to what we're supposed to be getting done.

This year our team learned about and began to support local chapters of Engineers Without Borders. All of the college participants that we met talked about the need for them to use a lot less of their technical expertise and a greater need to help in third world situations by utilizing the available materials smartly while building systems others, with far less education, could maintain. Communication becomes even more important than the engineering. Funny, all of these students and professors "feel" great about what they are doing - in fact I'd use the word "fulfilled." If you're worried about how you might "feel" during or after a match, maybe you and your team is focused on the wrong stuff. "Compete like crazy" but, always, always have a sense of why you are really there - especially in the heat of battle.

namaste

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Bongle

Rules for deployment of GP tokens could say: "each team on an alliance can only use one per match, and the one they use cannot be from a team on their alliance". This would prevent teams from spending their own tokens, and would prevent an alliance from swapping tokens beforehand.

I've edited my post to include this.

Inevitably, regardless of how many bullet points are applied, any such program would require some trust by the community, IN the community, to not abuse the system.