2001 Not a Great Spectator Sport?

[archiver]

Posted by Steve Goldberg at 03/12/2001 11:04 AM EST


Engineer on team #157, Aztechs, from Assabet Valley RTHS and EMC/Simplex/Intel MA/Others.


In Reply to: 2001 Not a Great Spectator Sport?
Posted by Lora Knepper on 03/11/2001 2:59 PM EST:



I agree with most of the people that posted in this thread that this year's competition isn't as interesting to be involved in or watch as past years. I believe that the people at FIRST, although I know they worked really hard on this year's competition as they always do, made a mistake in the design of the game for the following reasons.

1) Having a game that is intersting to watch is important.
As people have already mentioned in this thread, it is important for the retention and recruiting of new teams that the competition be interesting to watch. After all, who is going to want to be a part of something that doesn't even hold their attention?

2) Removing the idea of competition is, although noble, a mistake.
Over the past few years the FIRST competitions have been slowly shifting the focus from head to head competition to group work. I must admit that at first I was opposed to the idea of coopertition (1999 and 2000) but I grew to see how this was important. In 2001 however they changed this to total cooperation by removed all vestiges of competition. The benefit of the coopertition years was that it showed students how in the real world you need to compete against some and cooperate with others to achieve your goals. This is a good idea. However, the idea that you must work with everyone and against no one is a sweet but impractical idea in the real world.

Not to disagree with our esteemed competition founder but I have to repond to something that Dean said at the UTC regional in Hartford. He said,
"Here, there is an important difference from sports; in the world of engineering, it is pointless to defeat somebody"

This statement is both naive and incorrect. In the world of engineering everyone is trying to defeat the competition. It is the nature of business and of capitalism. I will give you an example of how this statement is incorrect even with regard to Dean himself.

At this moment Dean and DEKA research are creating an unknown device named IT/Ginger that everyone here has, I'm sure, heard about. But why don't we already know what the device is? Why is Dean hiding it? In his own words he is hiding it because there are (and I'm paraphrasing here) "large established companies that would not like the introduction of this product" In other words there are companies that would like to never see this product released. Dean is, in effect, hiding the production of this product to foil the attempts of other companies to stop it.
He is also hiding the design and even the nature of the product to keep other companies with larger engineering staffs and more money from coming in, reverse engineering his product, and selling it themsevles.
What does all of this add up to? Competition plain and simple. Dean is working with his company to be the first producer of this product. If he truly believed that "it is pointless to defeat somebody" then he would release the designs, plans and ideas for every product he has ever designed or even conceived of. Obviously this is a ridiculous idea and no one would expect him to do this.

So, the whole idea of removing competition runs counter to how the real world works and how real engineering works. Dean and the rest of the offical FIRST folks should realize this and reinstate the competition that was present in previous years.

Comments?

(Sorry this was so long but I felt it had to be said)