The Growing Gap in FIRST & on CD, and Our Responsibility to Fix It

[Rich Kressly]

Jay,

You are certainly not alone in your thoughts and feelings. The more the community grows, they more we bring in folks from "mainstream" society who, quite frankly, carry with them the very pathologies and mentalities that we are supposed to be addressing and changing in our culture through FIRST.

As exhausting as this sounds, I think it's a matter of educating. In some cases over and over and over and over again ... being pleasantly persistent.

I've been concerned about these growing trends for a few years now and have posted similar ideas elsewhere. Some of it may be pertinent reading, so here's two for starters (I know I've spouted more about this stuff elsewhere, but can't find it all right now):
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=60430
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=79517

We need LOTS of folks to step up and educate. I believe FIRST is well past finding many more of those "early adopters" who intuitively "get it" - most of the Andy Baker's on the planet have already been beaten out of the bushes. The new folks coming in now to run teams frequently need much more education (let's face it. TRULY trusting in GP and Coopertition is no easy thing given what we're led to believe most of our lives in American culture).

there's work to be done ... namaste