Another Culture Change

[Zach O]

Excellent post, JVN. It's absolutely disgusting that things like this would happen in an organization such as FIRST, which preaches "Professionalism in everything we do." It's a shame that teams cannot be happy for one another - enjoy seeing your teammates winning (there's a chance 1114 was on an alliance with at least some of these teams at some point in time during the Pittsburgh regional), and hoping they would do the same for you.

I'm not in FIRST because it's easy. No one said that one day we will arrive at St. Louis and they'll have a banner waiting for us at the stadium. That we could simply build a robot, go through the season, and win Worlds. You win Worlds by innovation. You win Worlds by determination. You win Worlds by engineering a robot so solid, that it successfully completes the game. This is for the "haters" JVN refers to in his other blog post. I'm still confused why some teams don't come to this conclusion. Did FIRST market themselves wrong? I certainly got the memo.

Why is it an issue that some teams have the determination to build a solid robot? A regional winning robot? A World winning robot? I can't say I'm familiar about how 1114 goes about building their robots, but they build them well. So well, they're inspiring. The teams that win Worlds not only build robots that dominate the game, but they build teams that display FIRST's values. It's good to see that teams that take such abuse as this don't stoop to these teams levels. It's those teams that give FIRST it's image.

It's things like this that really lower the standards of this organization. If you don't like the way your team is run, change it. If you're not winning, you're doing something wrong. Determine WHY you're not winning, and reach the level of these great teams that are. They didn't get where they are now by booing their partners, or sleazy tactics such as attempting to injure another teams robot. They got where they are by years of work, innovation, and displaying FIRST's values.

Again, great post JVN. Good to see issues like this don't go unnoticed.