[moderated] pic: The 2006 NiagaraFIRST Triplets!

[d.courtney]

I just can't wait till the day you go to a regional and 40+% robots look identical [not that we are far off considering exactly 10% of Waterloo's robots were the exact same]. Better yet I can't wait till the day FIRST itself gives you the design; you can't beat the engineers now can you. And even better, everything a team fundraises goes into a pot and is divided among all the teams, because we all know to this point FIRST is not so much about learning as it is inspiring, and what better way then to give every team a strong robot (thank you Derek for pointing out “Competitive robots are inspirational robots.”, and I do have more on that topic but maybe that can be in another paragraph) and enough funds to be able to go to one (or maybe two) regionals and Atlanta. Then one day it could turn into the fact that FIRST is just an assembly line, from which you can get your robot and program, and train your best drivers, so that you can have that edge over the other 2000 teams. Because after all isn’t that where FIRST wants to be one day?

Ok I know that was a little over the top and I meant for that, but really is that what FIRST wants, 10% (or even more) of robots at a regional identical, let alone one or two? I am not against all collaboration, and I am not going to beat around the bush and say I am ok with this collaboration. To be brutally honest I find it unFIRST, anti-inspirational, and anti-innovative. The anti-innovative I am sure is a give away, and everyone I am sure would agree with that statement (if you don’t I’d like to hear how it is innovative), what NiagaraFIRST.org has done is create an assembly line, and as impressive as it is that is not the goal of FIRST. Now back to Derek’s comment “Competitive robots are inspirational robots” (see page 5), yes I would agree to a very small point that this is true, but explain how (outside of being in a NiagaraFIRST.org team) this is inspirational; you and your team walk into the pits excited about the regional at hand, you see early on that there are three identical robots [which means theoretically each team did 1/3 of the work] and that they in fact do very well. Seeing this brings a dampen on your own work and what you have accomplished, because although yes you did well enough to accomplish the task you didn’t do it near as well as they did, as after all they did theoretically have three times the manpower, and each team could individually debug a different part of the robot. You leave the competition ok with the fact they won, after all they were smart enough to do this right? Besides there’s always next year (or in our case next regional), so far I really don’t have a big problem with it, but this is when I have a problem with it, next regional you do a lot better, you have debugged your own robot, and know are scoring 25-35 points a round and play a good defence (sorry again 1114 for breaking your belt), although one problem, the same teams just sweep everyone and win the competition, again not very inspiring to those out of those teams, only because we know they’ve collaborated and created three super-robots (which might I add are supposedly inspiring) and won three regionals. Maybe I am out of here, but I didn’t find it inspiring playing against them, or even with them, you know who is going to win. Too bad luck did wasn’t on our side at either competition, for instance, at Waterloo we had one qualifying match with 1114, two against, zero with 1503 and three against, and zero with 1680 and two against… funny how our standings were 3-7-0, this was because of a simple thing, they have a robot which in my mind can’t be reckoned with, which also is not inspiration in my mind.

I do need to say that this has not been an attack on NiagaraFIRST.org, it is against collaboration, I am ok with helping but not collaborating I find them two very different things. Also I think people let this get to far out of hand, sorry if I seem hypocritical, but people would not make a big deal had it been a failure and the teams placed bottom half of the pack, this I find very wrong, as it has the same effect no matter where you’re placed, it is remaking FIRST into a assembly line. I have meant all this to have constructive criticism to help NiagaraFIRST.org. Last I will leave with this, we have three other teams in the area, and would it be over the top to create quadruplets? What about winning each regional we go to? Would FIRST care if we brought that 10% up to 23%? Would NiagaraFIRST.org or any other team care? I myself would never want to do it (but I can say there some who would).

-David

ps ...sorry about the length, also if you have a problem with anything I said again I meant it as constructive critisism for NiagaraFIRST.org, feel free to PM me if you have a problem, I do not mean to start any arguements.