FIRST $CASH$ prize...

[Cory]

Originally Posted by TheNotoriousKid

FIRST has the money....they make over a million each season...Their budget is listed on page 22

It's not an issue of having the money. Why waste up to $20,000 (alternate on the winning alliance) on something that would be bad for the program? This would encourage cheating. Gracious professionalism would be a sham. Nobody would help each other at the events, since that would lower their chances of winning.

If FIRST wanted to blow $20,000 on something, they could find tons of better ways to do so, that would actually have a benefit.

[Bill Gold]

Originally Posted by TheNotoriousKid

Okay no refund...what about a refund for the national registration fee?

No. Any kind of monetary reward for getting any kind of placement or award is a bad idea. We don't need to give people any reason to either perform hollow acts or sabatoge other robots / "go for the throat" on the field in an attempt to get any kind of monetary gain. This program is about learning, competing with honor, and having fun.

[robbekid]

yea i dont think money is a part of FIRST or should be a part of FIRST, the way it stands now... money would be really against the top award FIRST offers.. Chairmans its all about helping others without any expectations and making the world better arounnd you, if theres money involved wats differentiating first from battlebots or some of the other competitions out there.

[Jevin H]

i say no cash but maybe a deduction from next years registration to keep teams in it

[robbekid]

Originally Posted by huff_dragon

i say no cash but maybe a deduction from next years registration

I guess this would fall under giving a team an unfair advantage for winning..

[Joe Matt]

To simply put, no.

To complexly put, when you add money, you add corruption and greed. FIRST was never, and will never be, all about getting trophies or money. As stressed earlier, FIRST has always been about the learning experience involved, never about some piece of plastic or metal.

The money that gets payed into the kit and into signing up for other events isn't done to get into a competition, it's done to get the tools and assets to teach kids to be critical thinkers, have mentors work and spread their knowledge, and foster an environment of genuine success and feelings of accomplishment

[Tim Delles]

FIRST is and always will be about inspiring students to be the best that they can be. Yes i will agree that possibly putting money into the equation will make kids want to be that much better. However you must weigh the positive and negaitve effects that having a monetary reward would have. Once you have thought about your opinion is sure to change.

[Ericgehrken]

FIRST is about inspiring students in science and technology. They just make it a competition to make it even more inspiring because science and technology are exciting and competitive. Sports seems to see what America is about and that's why Dean founded FIRST as a competition, to be more inspiring to students. If you want cash prizes for building robots then you should just go do battle bots or something like that not FIRST. If we were competing for cash prizes could you imagine how little support we'd have because that would just make FIRST a go for broke competition like any other sport and not a learning and inspiring experience.

[Lil' Lavery]

No cash/refund/etc. should ever be given to a Champion of an official FIRST event. Period.
As for Scholarships, there are already a multitude available, including one that essentially is a prize. The winners of the Championship Chairman's Award select one student for the Allaire Medal:

5.21.5 The Allaire Medal - Leadership Exemplified
The Chairman’s Award is presented at the Championship to the FIRST team judged to have the
best partnership effort. The Allaire Medal recognizes leadership exemplified and is awarded to
an individual student on the winning Chairman’s Award team.
Named in honor of Paul A. Allaire, a long-serving FIRST Chairman of the Board, the Allaire
Medal is given to the student who has demonstrated outstanding leadership on his/her FIRST
team, within his/her school and community, and whose personal character best embodies the
spirit of FIRST.
The team receiving The Chairman’s Award at the Championship will select the Allaire Medal
recipient. The adult and student team members determine the winner. The recipient must be a
high school junior or senior who has been accepted into a four-year degree program at a college
or university. The Allaire Medalist receives the Allaire medallion and up to $10,000 in total
scholarship support for undergraduate tuition, room and board, fees, and books at his or her
intended university or college.

If $10,000 isn't enough motivation for the students to strive to fulfill and spread the meaning of FIRST and the Chairman's Award, I don't know what is.

[Eric Finn]

In the laboratory, rats get Rice Krispies. In the classroom the top students get A's, and in the factory or office the best workers get raises. It's an article of faith for most of us that rewards promote better performance.

But a growing body of research suggests that this law is not nearly as ironclad as was once thought. Psychologists have been finding that rewards can lower performance levels, especially when the performance involves creativity.
...
There is general agreement, however, that not all rewards have the same effect. Offering a flat fee for participating in an experiment - similar to an hourly wage in the workplace - usually does not reduce intrinsic motivation. It is only when the rewards are based on performing a given task or doing a good job at it - analogous to piece-rate payment and bonuses, respectively - that the problem develops.
...
Creative work, the research suggests, cannot be forced, but only allowed to happen.

A few excerpts from this article.

How about for getting people interested in FIRST, give a little money to new teams to help them get started. Of course, you could run into the problem of people pretending to be teams just to get the money.
I guess we should just keep it the way it is. Your funding comes from sponsors and fund raising, and your reward for winning is the knowledge that you won.

[lopz056]

i think that while money would be cool to have as a motivator, but really FIRST is for young students to gain experience, and skills so that they could be able to make money as they grow up, but still, the money would be good to use for future robots, or the travel expenses, maybe they could have the grand prize as credit for certain companies?

[Synergy1848]

basically what would happen is the top team wins the money and uses it to make a more powerful robot next year and the year after, and this team keeps winning becasue they have extra money. and then the barley registered teams dont stand a chance against their robot.

[Cody Carey]

WARNING: I'm going to post a differing opinion than almost EVERYONE in this thread.


A refund would not cause people to cheat any more than they already do. The fact that you shelled out $10,000+ dollars just to play the game means that you wouldn't have anybody in it "just for the money". The $2,000 refund/break in costs next year would only serve to help the winning team "stay alive" and compete next year.

Professional Fighters get payed to win their respective competitions, and I haven't seen a more Graciously professional group of people. They spend 15 minutes hurting each other, trying to win... and get up, shake hands, hug each other, and all is forgiven, because that is what they do.

How about that DARPA robot race from L.A. to Las Vegas? They get a $1million prize, and that doesn't even begin to cover the costs. It didn't spur cheating, It didn't turn the competition into bloody Maul, and it most certainly didn't decrease their degree of Gracious Professionalism.

Now, I think that the Ideal prize would not be raw cash, but a refund of the cost of the regional/championships event that has been won. (I say "won" not to reference any particular award)

I know that a cash prize of some sort wouldn't motivate me personally, as it would go to the team... It would just be a Pleasant bonus at the end of a regional to know " Wow, the team coffers are a little less in the red".I would go as far as to say that it wouldn't motivate "good", "graciously professional" people to cheat at all, as they already know the right path.

And I leave with you a wonderful quote that I stumbled over somewhere near the 4th page of research for this post:

"Any time you do something, you're out there in front of God and the world. It's pointless to get too wrapped up in winning."


-Cody

[Libby K]

*stands on soap box*

Giving a cash prize would not be in the spirit of FIRST. Yes, the purpose of FIRST is to change what we celebrate, but it's also to change HOW we celebrate it. I think Dean puts it best in his kickoff speech:

Originally Posted by Dean Kamen

FIRST is not about building robots. That's gonna be hard for you to believe, when for the next six weeks you don't eat and you don't sleep because of robots, but PLEASE, (every speaker so far as made some alusion to it), but I want to remind all of you that FIRST got started for a simple reason. We have a culture that gets what it celebrates, a free culture, and even kids are free to do what they want, and we celebrate extraordinarily well the world of sports and entertainment. And I think we do it so well we sometimes forget that those things aren't the SOURCE of our wealth, they're a result of it.

(...he goes on a while, which I've omitted because it's unrelated...)

...I'm begging all the mentors, no matter how exciting and intense the competition gets, like other sports, sometday we will be THE sport, the 21st century sport, the sport that is a part of the culture everywhere, I'm begging all of you to remember, we have a much bigger set of goals to keep at the front of our mind all the time than whether your robot wins or loses. Some of the robots will lose, some of them won't even run, but all of the participants shuold be winners, they WILL be winners if we keep track of what's important. So, my first message is just, for all of you veterans this is a booster shot, FIRST is an extraordinary group of people doing an extraordinary thing, let's not ever lower our standards or forget why we do this. And to the students, I'll remind all of you, we don't want any of the trappings of sports that , frankly, are an embarassment or inappropriate for things as important as what we're doing here. Helping create the next generation of people that will determine the fate of the world.

So, as usual, i have my homework... (and, it goes on from there.)

If you didn't read all of that, which is completely understandable, it's long, I hope you read the boldfaced section.

Personally, I consider one of those 'trappings' to be whatever prize you get for winning. FIRST is most certainly NOT about winning. It's about the connections you make with the people you work with, something that is very important in the long run. Please understand that I am in no way trying to undermine the achievements of those teams who have won, that's not what I'm trying to get at here.

Essentially, we are not the Superbowl. We are not the US Open. The aim of FIRST (as I've been taught it) is not to win. Why should the teams that DO win get money out of it, when the team that's been working all season just to get enough money to pull a robot together, and comes through in the end not get anything?

Money for winning just DOES NOT make any sense to me.

$ 0.02 deposited. Now I'm done.

*steps down from soapbox*

[JaneYoung]

Thank you for your post, Libby.

I think what I'd like to say is that if we start giving cash 'prizes' - it is almost like we are turning around and walking back into the same culture we already have - away from the culture we are developing.

I also think FIRST is 15 years old and should have a lot more time to work on its program development and educational expansion moving in the direction that it is moving now - tweaking and improving as it goes in keeping with the vision of Dean Kamen and
Dr. Woodie Flowers.

Jane