Who do you emulate?

[Barry Bonzack]

The Woodie Flowers Award Winners and Unsung FIRST Heroes highlight the people in our community who are shining examples of the spirit of FIRST. What traits do people have that inspire you? Who do you want to be more similar to? You don’t always have to agree with them, heck you don’t even have to like them, but you have to admit, everyone has at least one trait which you find admirable.

Here are the rules

• Pick someone that inspires you, and pick 1 and only 1 trait that person has that you admire. The point is not to write long essays on everything that person has done, if you feel so inclined write those essays and nominate them for an Unsung FIRST Hero award. Perhaps this thread will motivate someone to volunteer to judge those essays again.
• You must actually know the person. I don’t want celebrities, and I don’t want an overabundance of “Dean Kamen’s” “Woodie Flowers” “Dave Laverie’s” and “Bill Miller’s”. However, it doesn’t have to be someone you work closely with all of the time. I am going to draw the line at this: If you both were in a large crowd of people, the person would recognize you as someone he/she has had an in person conversation with before, and would know your name.
• If you see someone mention something about you, you are obligated to post a trait you admire in someone else. It can be, but is not required to be, the person who posted about you.
• If a trait is posted about someone who is not a member of the Chiefdelphi community, we want to meet him/her! Send them an e-mail with a link to these rules and their admirable trait, and may the powers of gracious professionalism compell them to join our community so they can honor the above rule. Exemptions for this rule are allowed for traits in loving memory of the deceased, or any other instances that would require an act of voodoo that would enable someone to join the Chiefdelphi community

Since I’m involved with all three levels of FIRST, I’d like to highlight someone for each. They are names you may not know, but I encourage that if you don’t, you should. Here are the people (and yes I like all of them) who have traits I would like to embody.

Brian Walters (FRC)- Cool-headed diplomatic management- Brian was the 2012 FRC lead of Exploding Bacon. Whenever you work with a large group of people, there will be differing opinions, arguments, politics, and undesired behaviors. Whoever is in the lead role has to deal with it, and often times catch the fire. I've heard it said that you don’t know someone’s true colors until you’ve seen them under the gun, stressed with time, and sleep deprived. Brian took an entire week vacation to help during Week 6 of build season, and I can say this, I have never heard anyone utter one negative word about Brian Walters. There are some things no one receives a medal for, but I doubt he knows how large of an accomplishment that is.

Michael Coleman (FTC)- Full-life dedication- He packs up his minivan with the FTC field, and drives it to a different location to hold a qualifying event every weekend for about 2 months. He donates his personal funds to support the Florida FTC program, and its volunteers. I could go on for a long time here, but I’d break my own rule about long essays, I’ll leave it at this… if you’ve ever dreamed of retiring from your job to live a life dedicated to inspiring the world through FIRST, you may still only come close to being Michael Coleman.

Jason Lovelace (FLL) –Nonstop positive energy– I have had the pleasure of working with many emcee’s and game announcers, but Jason is hands down the best in the entire world at FLL, which is why he was the emcee in St. Louis in 2012. I have been at a dozen events that Jason has emceed, often I am coaching an FLL team, or serving as a judge, but I watch and learn as his playful, entertaining, and fun attitude insures a good time for all ages. This past May Jason and I were able to co-emcee together for the first time at the FLL World Invitational Open, which turned out to be the hottest most physically draining event I have ever volunteered for, and it occurred not even a full week after St. Louis. He had the same amount of energy at 8 AM, as he did at 10PM when we were finishing up the dance party on the 2nd day. At the closing ceremony on the 3rd day, I told him “I use your routines all the time when emceeing other events” and he responded “Dude, I’m totally using your roller coaster at every event I do from now on.” How cool.


The Austin Family/The Grajales Family (team 1902)–Warm and Welcoming- This goes to any family willing to host official team meetings or build robots inside their home during build season. This is an entire family commitment which there is no escape; none of them can say “I’m tired, I think I’ll skip tonight’s meeting.” To invite everyone over every day, even though things may get broken or messy, and to do it with a warm welcoming smile is a true act of grace.

Jenny “Robomom” Beatty, Kathie Kentfield, Cynette, Jane Young, Libby, Cassie Beck – Big Picture point of view – To me These are the people who “get it” and are able to communicate it to others best. They are also the people I consider myself blessed if our paths cross twice in a single year. When I come across one of their posts, I slow down, and read every word. Heck I even skim though tons of other posts until I find one of theirs. There are specific threads where one of their nuggets of wisdom made me completely stop, and revaluate my own thinking. Because of their well thought out positions, I can say there are topics where I have changed some of my own opinions, and that is not easy to get people to do.

These are the people I want to emulate. The Pro’s in FIRST are role-models, real role-models. Who are yours?


Disclaimer: It is not possible for me to emulate Andy Baker, because I was not born on the planet Krypton. Just isn’t a fair standard to try to live up to.