pic: Palmetto-Spirit Award

[Ian W.]

Originally Posted by piotrm

Anyone else think this is not very nice, rude even, and not exactly "graciously professional"? I mean who is that sign directed to? The other teams? The ones that didn't win whatever it is that this team won? It is a good thing that most people probably didn't understand what the sign means.

That being just my opinion.

From other posts in this thread, it sounds as if that was part of a team slogan, due to programmers finally taking their rightful place in charge of everything (I'm not a programmer, no, definitely not, I do, um, the, uh, that, err, what's it called when you play with the physical parts of the robot...?). Besides, assuming the team follows all the general FIRST ideas, they're just using a sign like that for fun, no harm intended. They won an award, let them have their moment of glory, I know my team would be happy to win any awards at all.

Secondly, I think there's a limit between Gracious Professionalism and outright stupidity. Gracious Professionalism is nice, but there's some points where it shouldn't be. For instance, when my alliance was beaten at SBPLI in the final match, the other alliance didn't run over and say "Congratulations, Great Match!", they went and jumped around and hugged and were completely ecstatic, and then a bit later, once things had calmed down, they came over and made sure to congratulate and thank us. Please, don't try to push GP into every, little, tiny thing that FIRST is. Being gracious and professional also implies being smart, and that means knowing when and where something is appropriate. Just one thing that irks me, when someone sees something that may not be 100% gracious and professional, and make certain to point it out, cause that's not very gracious or professional at all.