Limit team $

[George1902]

Isn't coopertiton about working to reach higher than our peers rather than dragging them down?

In that light, we should be efforting to bring each team's budget *up* to $50k, not limit our brightest stars to that level.

[Phyrxes]

Looking at our yearly robotics budget (not just FRC) the largest dollar value items were hotel stays, bus service, and airline tickets.

I want to be able to take as many students as possible to an event so I accept that this is not going to change.

[treffk]

Originally Posted by Macktack

They should split all of FRC into two divisions, professionally built robots (e.g. robots built by NASA and GM and Boeing) and a division for student build robots. Teams that just assemble their robot from a kit that a profesional company built for them should not be allowed to compete with the student built bots. Having an alliance of GM, NASA and Boeing beat an alliance of student built robots benefits non of the students.

I wish I knew where to find the quote to support this but FIRST doesn't really care who builds the robot. They care about inspiring students. Not all students are inspired the same way. For some it happens with hands on work others they have to take a step back and take a hands-off approach.

I pulled this mission statement directly off their website but the emphasis is mine:

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

The student built robot/professional or mentor build robot topic has been beaten to death. This does not happen as often as we think it does. Students can have some awesome mentors that help them and coach them while building a phenomenal robot. Not all students know how to operate some machines/tools or cannot operate manufacturing machines/tools due to restrictions. This makes mentors necessary when it comes to building specific parts or components.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Macktack

They should split all of FRC into two divisions, professionally built robots (e.g. robots built by NASA and GM and Boeing) and a division for student build robots. Teams that just assemble their robot from a kit that a profesional company built for them should not be allowed to compete with the student built bots. Having an alliance of GM, NASA and Boeing beat an alliance of student built robots benefits non of the students.

As a Boeing team (3929): lulz

I don't think this is how the rest of 1218 views FIRST, at least, from my experiences with them.

I find it funny someone from Chestnut Hill would post in this thread, especially Peter's son.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

As a Boeing team (3929): lulz

I don't think this is how the rest of 1218 views FIRST, at least, from my experiences with them.

I find it funny someone from Chestnut Hill would post in this thread, especially Peter's son.

For Macktack

This is not the NFL. There is no salary cap. There is no revenue sharing. The only limits in the end, are what you try to accomplish with what you have and how much you're willing to do to get more.

[Bob Steele]

Phrase of the day:

The Tall Poppy Syndrome...

look it up...

[Iaquinto.Joe]

Isn't there a quote out there that says that you don't progress by dragging the rich down, but by raising the poor up?

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

Phrase of the day:

The Tall Poppy Syndrome...

look it up...

Interesting phrase. It seems our large corporations of Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot, and the like seem to exasperate this method in terms of taxation in order to stamp down the upstart economies. An Internet tax will only benefit those companies with the resources to fund large accounting departments. The mom and pop shops that depend on Internet sales will go quietly into the dark if our legislatures are not well educated.

Soap Box, sorry.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

Interesting phrase. It seems our large corporations of Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot, and the like seem to exasperate this method in terms of taxation in order to stamp down the upstart economies. An Internet tax will only benefit those companies with the resources to fund large accounting departments. The mom and pop shops that depend on Internet sales will go quietly into the dark if our legislatures are not well educated.

Actually, we need to have more threads where this sort of thing is discussed in a way that is relevant to FIRST and society. But you're not being clear about the relevance of taxation (and in particular, Internet taxation¹) to the conversation.

¹ At the risk of diverting the main topic of the thread, there's another interpretation of the scenario you outlined: assuming the government's intent is to tax businesses at an equal proportion of their revenues, the lack of effective tax collection from the smaller businesses amounts to a subsidy directed toward them that was not envisioned by the legislators. If there is value in that subsidy, then shouldn't efforts be directed at recognizing that fact, and pushing for it to be made an explicit part of policy? Or is it justifiable to allow the distortion of the legislative intent to continue, because there is a net benefit to doing so (including possibly less risk that the subsidy will be eliminated)?

[TikiTech]

I agree whole heartily with Glenn.

Coming from outside the mainland creates the situation where most of our budget goes to travel, lodging and shipping. The rest we use to help subsidize the student’s ability to participate. Most of our students’ families are working multiple jobs just to survive here. We will normally charge half of the per student cost of the trip to each team member. We also have scholarships provided by local supporters to help bring down costs for deserving students in need. We come from a school that has over 80% on free / reduced lunch services. Add in the fact that everything we might need to order has to come from out of the state and across 2500 miles of ocean. Minimum delivery is 3-5 days with paying for expedited air freight shipping.

Basically everything we do costs two to three times as much. Coupled with coming from an island that has little to no industry to draw upon for support. We are known for only a few things on this island, cattle, fishing, and coffee. We fundraise and do outreach all year long, at least one fundraiser and two community outreach events per month.

Even our local regional event is a flight away. The airfare alone can easily be from $150-250 per person depending on how far in advance you can book them. And of course if you book them as a group or use the DOE travel service its more..

Imagine that to take less than half your team, 20 students, and the 3 mentors to the world championship costs over $50,000. Let alone having to raise that in the 2-4 weeks after qualifying for the event.

Our program started with 4 students and 3 mentors. We have grown to over 75 students in our three years as a program. We plan on continuous growth. We have 100% of our graduating students going on to great colleges.

First has helped these students with gaining scholarships to schools such as Rice, Columbia, NYU, Cornell, Sarah Lawrence, Rochester, University of New Mexico, UH Manoa and many others.

This is at a school where less then 35% actually graduate and of that less than 20% go on to college. This program is making a huge difference in our community and cannot be held back by limiting funding.

Creating a cap on our budget would kill the programs potential to grow and enhance the community by creating future leaders.

If anyone has questions please feel free to message or email me. I would be more than glad to share.

[timytamy]

The costs involved with long-distance travel to events are not insignificant, our team would struggle to stay within the budget to attend just one regional, and it would be impossible to attend more than one event (regional + championships).

Travel being the obvious one, there are still numerous complications that need to be addressed:

How about exchange rates? Is this in USD? If so which exchange rate do you use? Time of transaction? Time of exchange? Kick-of? Bag'n'Tag?

Operating costs for us are also much larger. Postage and generally higher prices in Australia can't be discounted, and mean that for us to build an equivalent robot to a mainland team we need a significantly larger budget.

What about other expenses? Our team attends and runs a number of out-reach events, including an off-season that teams who can not afford to travel to a regional attend. Limiting our budget would force us to chose between running this event, and running our team. In this case limiting our budget would not only hamper our robot and team, but also our efforts to spread STEM and FIRST in Australia.

It's clear that in many ways, a team budget would not help even the playing field. FIRST teams are about so much more than the robot, to limit the TEAM because of robots is unfair, and would do far more harm than good.

Finally, in a discussion about budgets it's important not to forget the sponsors, sponsors put resources into this program because they see the value of it, and for that my tea and myself are extremely grateful. But how do you explain to a sponsor that sees something they want to support and grow, that they can't?

[saikiranra]

This would hardly level the playing field.

Nearly all the big budget teams have a well established engineering program going. If FIRST decides to cap the funds that they could raise, those teams would just divert their funds to their "engineering programs" or to other created entities. When they need more money for travel or such expense, the entity would just "donate" what they need, easily bypassing any such rule. All this would do is make the teams who could not create such entity reduce their standards.

Also, not all the money in many team's robotics programs goes to FIRST. My team does a lot of cool off-season projects and needs that money to continue. Other teams do this too, notably Shockwave by 254.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Macktack

Having an alliance of GM, NASA and Boeing beat an alliance of student built robots benefits non of the students.

I'm not sure how this came into a thread about money. This belongs in one of the dozens of mentor versus student built threads that have been beat to death over the last several years.

Moving back on topic though, I think even trying to limit team cash is a horrid idea. Do you understand how much it costs for teams from California to attend worlds, when they have to fly their entire group? Or even worse, attendeding from Hawaii? Israel? Australia? England?

Before you suggest that we allow different budgets for different teams, I'll head it off with a quick "No way". This event is about inspiring, not leveling the playing field for all involved.

That all said, our team builds fairly competitive robots and we're no where near a $50,000 budget. In fact, I'd say we're just a tad over 1/2 of that $50,000 number.

I think Ike nailed it. The object here should be to make the competitive costs lower, not tear down the teams that are more fortunate. The District system has done a spectacular job of that.

Switching over to a country wide district system would be much better. Teams who geographically are limited to only 1 event should be able to submit a hardship letter to FIRST and have the points in their first competition count double. This would serve to correct the issue with too many teams in Worlds as well.

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by SciBorg Dave

To balance the playing field for all team what do you think of a limit of say $50,000 to run a team. This would keep all teams working hard to keep within the limit ( what ever it set at). I find that there is a big difference rural teams who struggle to raise $10,000 for the season and urban teams that have better sources to raise funds ( I know some who raise $100,000) for the season.

Do you think by capping larger "urban" teams that you will somehow create more money for smaller rural teams?

You certainly are acquainted with our team... Our budget is right around $50,000 as are many other teams...Quite a bit of the reason we have a large budget is because we have a very large team (over 60 members) and it costs a great deal to travel. We raise a very large portion of it by doing smaller things like yard clean ups and rummage sales, spaghetti dinners and letter campaigns..

These are all things a rural team could do...please let me know how we can help you raise money... We are actively trying to train teams in how they can do this... it does require a commitment from students and parents and mentors to do it... it is a 12 month a year effort.

[Nemo]

I think the thing that separates the really great teams is organization. Getting organized is tough.