The word “nerd” denotes: “an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit”.
Being single-minded and obsessed is not exactly healthy. Variety is the spice of life.
Acting like FIRST is, to use Akash’s words, a cult of nerds is counterproductive to FIRST becoming accepted in mainstream culture.
If we give this thread a chance, it could be a very thought-provoking thread and provide a lot of insight into what people are thinking as we move towards the end of a long season. I’d like to see a thoughtful discussion with some thoughtful posts contributed rather than watch the discussion devolve into blanket generalizations and accusations. Those are never interesting or fun.
Jane
agreed.
agreed. the coopertion i think is a shot to the foot. for gaining publicity. If you want FIRST to be come adopted as a sport, then there MUST be competion. thats what most people want to see. GP is great off the field, but on the field it should be a show of who has the best bot. you know you have a bad ranking system when boxes on wheels end up as a allaince captains
agreed.
i think you have it half right. robotics can be nerdy but is not always nerdy. we need to accept that we can be nerds but also accept that we not always nerds. FIRST needs to as well.
agreed. i think games should be:
easy to get the basic concept of
a good mix of offence AND defense
challenging
simple fielded and using easy to find game pieces (to ease up build season)
setup so there are no sudden death situation other than red cards (like heavy endgame bonuses)
Ok look,
I will have to totally agree with Akash. Nerd may be “Cool” for you and your group of kids. But Nerd gives off a negative connotation, your not gonna win over many people, especially not the people FIRST is currently aiming at. The General Public.
FIRST isn’t nerdy, its one of the coolest things I’ve ever been apart of. If we (the FIRST community) are not ready to change our own perception, how will we change others?
Personally I like what Amir (frc1717) told people at various events, we have to sell this program as the “New Cool”. Many of the kids on 1323 are athletes or cheerleaders, most will even ditch practice and come to robotics because its “Cool”. My kids never like to be called nerds and will promote the program as cool.
I’ve met a wide range of people and not one of them coming to a FIRST event for the FIRST time described it as Nerdy. Instead they called it “The Best Kept Secret”.
This isn’t promoting “The New Cool”, but I truly believe the book and FRC1717 are on the right path and we should hop on that bandwagon instead of complaining about FIRST.
-RC
I agree that FIRST isn’t always nerds, and that it can be and it can also not be. What I was getting at was the approach to promoting robotics. Robotics, for the most part, no matter what we say, is seen as a nerdy activity. Whether it is or not, the continuous emphasizing of it not being nerdy, to me, seems to make it appear nerdier than it actually is. Instead of worrying about whether it’s nerdy or not, accept when it is, accept when it’s not, and move on. There are so many other aspects of engineering and robotics that can captivate students and children, that to focus on making it appear cool or “not nerdy” actually has the opposite effect. When we have an open lab near the end of build season, we don’t worry about telling the middle schoolers it’s not nerdy, join, we show them sparks flying from the dremel, metal being cut, and our robot, as is, moving around.
Then let’s change the definition of “Nerd”! “Nerds” used to be frowned upon, but then one day they created the cell phone, the computer, and every useful machine currently known to man! If it weren’t for the “Nerd”, then we might as well be living in caves! There might as well be no medicine, cars, or technology at all!
Honestly, I always thought that the true meaning for nerd was an intellectual badass.
I completely agree with this statement! FRC IS cool! Can we please just leave it at that?
rcmolloy, I love you now! New definition of “Nerd”: Intellectual badass!!!
Wow. I don’t feel a need to debate it or to try to change anyone’s mind, but I have to say I disagree with practically everything in the original post.
Ignoring the debate about the term of nerd, would you please explain why? I’m actually interested to know if people agree/disagree and more importantly why.
*1. The “true” message of FIRST is great, but it does not need to be repeated 200000 times.
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I, too, feel that this message is thrown around a bit more than it needs to be. It also leads to an identity crisis for FIRST. Is it a robotics competition, as is stated in the title of FRC, or is it a coopertition, which the C could also stand for. Another issue is the true meaning of GP. Is finding a way around the rules un GP? Is tipping over another robot un GP? Is yelling “ROBOT” un GP. Noone knows. The term is getting thrown around too much, which is beginning to dilute it. Same with FIRST’s message. Yes you want to inspire teens. The best way to do that is make something fun, and has to do with robotics.
*2. Go back to more competition, you’re beginning to lack in the competitive part of coopertition.
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Adding to what I said above, the best way to make people interested in something is to make it fun. Competition is fun, if you do it in a GP (what it means to me) manner. No catcalls, and being a general douche, but you are allowed to be competitive on the field. It is not against any FIRST principle to win.
3. Enough of the shameless advertising. FIRST is not about the robots, great, but it’s not about the politics either, nor is it about FIRST, it’s about the future and inspiring our generation, and the next one.
If FIRST is the best way to inspire the next generation, then they are entitled to some advertising. As long as it is not replacing good old fashion FRC competition. And the way they chose to advertise this year rubbed me the wrong way. Triangle-Circle-Square logos are fun, and this game is actually quite well balanced. However, when both parts of the game are FIRST adverts, with the minibots being FTC only, that gets a bit obnoxious. And unsurprisingly, none of the best minibots use FTC parts. [sarcastic] Who could have guessed that? [/sarcastic] Simply the fact that they wanted to force you to use those parts is just a bit annoying, and though it is a legitimate engineering challenge, it seems against FIRST ideals.
4. Robotics is nerdy. The sooner that is accepted, and embraced, the sooner FIRST can confidently attract others to the program. Nothing says “nerds, beware” like a sign saying “hehehe, it’s not nerdy”
Could not agree more. The whole debacle with Will.I.Am was ridiculous. If you’re going to get a high profile speaker, get someone who is genuinely interested in FIRST, not some singer guy. It is also important that FIRST embraces who are on teams: Mainly self described nerds. Our team has managed to reach out more to the middle social groups, but even when those people are at build sessions, they turn to their more nerdy sides. FIRST doesnt have to be a mainstream sport to inspire people.
<3 nerds
Just because you want to appeal to non-nerds doesnt mean that you have to alienate your fanbase of nerds.
*5. You were on a good track with the “spectator friendly” game breakaway, continue on that track.
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Not much more to be said. As long as the games offer a fun engineering challenge, as well as being simple, then that is the key. Just like the best robots, the games should follow the KISS principle.
If you are ashamed of being in FIRST and participating in the coolest thing since sliced bread, then FIRST is ashamed of allowing you to participate in the first place.
GP is being used now as if people are expecting to receive gold points.
I’m not. To be honest, FIRST was probably the greatest experience of high school. It was a moment, which luckily passed when they took down the splash page. If you didn’t see the video, then consider yourself lucky.
You, my good friend, are a hero. I’ve been contemplating writing a thread very similar to this one myself, but you nailed it. Absolutely nailed it.
I’ll just add some of my thoughts.
Number one. Competitions should be viewed as a celebration. I agree with FIRST here. However, teams need to learn how to celebrate for one another. That means congratulating the best and most competitive teams - who by-the-way worked their butts off for their outstanding robot. I’m pretty sure JVN had a great thread about this “culture change” within FIRST, and I’d love to see FIRST really put a lot of effort next year into jump starting it. However, they’ll also need to change their attitude towards competition and teach people how to win/celebrate.
With regards to your second point, I couldn’t agree more. Robotics is nerdy and we need to embrace that. Our society needs to become more nerdy, but intelligent people don’t need to become like society. Ex: will.i.am should become more like your average FRC student, not the other way around.
I also think that this desire to make science and technology fun is a symptom of a much bigger problem. First, problem solving IS fun. At least for people who are going to become the future problem solvers. We do this because we love to innovate and create. It’s a blast already, and we don’t need FIRST to do anything (other than make it more challenging) to make it more fun. So we have to ask, who are they pandering to?
And why is there such a big concern with getting [insert minority here] human beings to become engineers? We don’t need [insert minority here] engineers - we need good engineers whether they be [insert minority here] or not. It shouldn’t matter as long as they can effectively solve problems with others.
I’ve come to the conclusion that FIRST is confusing making problems solving experiences accessible with making it fun. There’s a big difference between the two. I would love to see a FRC team in every community, but not because I want every high schooler in those communities to participate. Rather, I want every higher schooler to have the opportunity to participate. Because the reality is that there are some people who just aren’t cut out for the FRC. They either lack initiative, creativity, or people skills and are unwilling to obtain them.
On to your third point. I too thought it was odd to see this kind of promotion from FIRST. Using the logo as a game piece was fine especially because of the inherent challenge of designing a manipulator that could pick up all three types of pieces, but where I thought they went overboard was with the FTC kits. (Yes, I’m still complaining about them. Don’t like it? Stop reading this. Now.) There were too many silly constraints that hampered innovation and stifled creativity. Also, I thought it was FIRST shamelessly squeezing a few extra dollars out of already cash strapped teams who needed, or couldn’t get, the parts need required.
I encourage anyone who thinks coopertition is a relatively recent thing to research the FRC game from 2000 (hint: look at the name).
Truth is, it’s been around for a while, and it’s here to stay. And it’s not a bad thing. This year I see robots filling up both racks with all sorts of manipulators, from sophisticated roller claws, to tennis balls stuck on the end of two pieces of 80/20. I see multiple sub 2 second minibots with all sorts of deployment mechanisms. I see excitement in high scoring matches. Forgive me if I find that more competitive than drivetrains shoving each other around.
Maybe I get that from living through Stack Attack. Maybe I’m just getting old.
Disagree. If they don’t continue mentioning this (and the rest, year after year) how can we expect the newbies to get that message?
OK, you first. :rolleyes:
Or maybe YOU come up with that game? Just sayin’
I’m fine with them mentioning the message of FIRST, and as I said, is a great message to mention during kickoff (presumably newbies are watching kickoff). In fact, they could mention it a couple times at competition.
My problem is they mention it too much, to the point of almost trivializing the meaning. It becomes about FIRST and the fact FIRST has this message rather than the principles they’re trying to teach with “the message of FIRST”.
This years minibot sharing made the Coopertition award a good thing. Last year’s Coopertition required you to score points for the other team in many cases, I know that is what we did to win it last year. So making it so that you can’t score points for the other team and the other team has to score with your minibot was a great idea. It also lets you really prove it when you loan it to a high caliber team knowing full well it is highly likely you may face your own machine in the finals. Pretty much defines the concept of Coopertition and GP.