Gracious Professionalism and Team 60

FIRST General Forum
1

Recently, i was the head ref at the preseason competetion of the SCRRF.

I noticed that even at this early point in the season, there was a distinct lack of gracious professionalsim among certain teams there. For one thing, a certain team gave me grief as the ref over a decision i made and would not drop it and kept harassing me about it.

But the second MAJOR area that i noticed unprofessional attitudes was in the treatment of Kingman (Team 60). People gave team 60 grief during theri inspection and were downright rude to them. People claimed that Team 60 was out to “get other robots” and “kill them”. NOTHING could be further from the truth. Kingman is an awesome veteran team and the (mostly rookie) teams that harassed them were wrong.

  1. Kingman is a friendly team. My team (330) and Kingman have known each other for years and know first hand it is not in their character or personality to be mean. I hope no other teams do that to ANY other veteran teams this year.

  2. Kingman displays gracious professionalism: I was head ref the SCRRF and in the last match of the finals, Kingman’s partner (i will withold the number) broke the entanglement rule and caused their alliance to become disqualified. Unlike the other team, which was verbally abusive to me and my partner, Kingman made a great effort to show me that there were no hard feelings and never second guessed me once even though my call caused them to lose.

  3. I was ref for every match that day. Kingman never did anything mean or malicious to any robot. If they had i would have called them on that, but i never saw any negitive interaction between Kingman and other teams on the field.

  4. They were harassed by rookie teams doing the inspection and their explanitations of why they were within the rules were ignored by the rude inspectors.

So, based on that, ANY team that calls kingman mean, bad, unprofessional or ANYTHING like that is DEAD wrong. They are a good veteran team known for building good robots and the young teams would do well to listen to Kingman’s advice and not criticize them.

Sean Roberts
Head Ref, SCRRF
Senior Member, team 330

2

You said it man. Team 60 was a great example of Gracious Professionalism and i commend them for it.

We have a surprise present for you at socal for being so nice to us kingman. So be ready. And thanks again Glen!

Justin Rolnick
Captain of Culver Alliance

3

In my five years with Team 64 I have always found the members of Team 60 to be both very friendly and very professional. I am looking forward to seeing them in L.A.

4

team 60 was great at the scrrf. I was glad to see them and I hope that they had a fun time. Your team did great there and I wish you luck at competition!
Ashlee

5

I have no complaints…

3 years on team 115 and this year mentoring with team 968 i have yet to come across any time where i can say i felt as though team 60 was out to get anyone.

At the chatsworth sectional competition on sunday feb 17th, it was very competitive, in fact our robot (team 968) was one of the teams that got caught up in this mess. But i want to clarify that I, nor any of my team members, felt as though team 60 was out to get us.

It was unfortunate for us that our robot became disabled because team 60 hit us, but that was OUR FAULT that it became disabled. Our battery was not secured tightly on our bot and it disconnected itself when 60 was pushing us, thus killing power to our robot. Unfair? NO Intentional? NO were they out to get us? OF COURSE NOT

i was perfectly cool with that, they didn’t damage us, the battery simply fell off and our robot lost power.

ALSO, to the people who did feel team 60 was being malicous, you must remember that we are all in this to have fun and to learn through this expirience, and we MUST stop thinking that people could be so wrapped up in winning that they would purposely damage another robot.

Another thing to point out was the aftermath of a different incident…this is the response of team 60’s head coach/engineer after match in which team 60 was pushing another bot…one of the robots was slightly damaged, team 60’s coach volunteered to help fix anything that was wrong with it, including machining of new parts and purchasing a new pnuematic piston. In the spirit of FIRST he volunteered to do everything he could to ensure that their robot could be repaired and be fully functional before shipping. The robot broke not because team 60 was agressive and wanted to damage anyone, it was a simple mistake. No real harm done by anyone.

also…on a different note, i was part of the inspection team, and happened to be one of 3 teams to inspect team 60’s robot. I would like to point out that the “judges” that made up the inspection crew (12 or so) were very picky, the things they pointed out were sometimes obvious to the teams and should not have been mentioned, and some other things were said that were incorrect and very unneccesary, as a volunteer myself i would like to apaplogize for any teams that thought the inspectors were being picky, because honestly when they did the inspection on my teams robot, i was somewhat insulted by some of the inspectors and the “corrections” that needed to be made on our bot. Alot of it was in accurate and most was unneccesary and not needed and a PRE regional inspection.

The inspections were meant to help teams that might not know what official inspections were like, and were to ensure that all robots were legal so they wouldn’t have problems at regionals. It was not meant to insult any team or to make any team feel like they had messed up anywhere.

Alot of teams needed the help while others, team 60, 330, 207, 22 etc etc etc probably did not need any advice nor help and should not have been picked on by the inspectors for the lil stupid stuff that even first doesn’t care about.

so i aplogize to any teams who were insulted by the inspections and I ensure all of you that team 60 wasnt harming anyone, we were all trying to have fun. And i am sure most of us did.

Great event, great people, hope to see all those same teams out at regionals!!

thanks

6

*Originally posted by Sean_330 *
**Recently, i was the head ref at the preseason competetion of the SCRRF.

I noticed that even at this early point in the season, there was a distinct lack of gracious professionalsim among certain teams there. For one thing, a certain team gave me grief as the ref over a decision i made and would not drop it and kept harassing me about it.**

We are the team that you are referring to here, and I want to assure you that until today I was not aware that after we initially approached you with the Team Update, that several rather excitable members of our team (and one excitable parent) had also come up to you on several occasions about the same matter. I was also not aware that after your final ruling, these same team members approached you yet again. These people have since received a firm talking to, and rules have been set regarding who is and is not allowed to talk to officials, and under what circumstances. We should’ve had these rules in place going into the scrimmage, but as a rookie team, it didn’t occur to us.

It is my fault for not making sure that everyone on the team understood the spirit of the competition – many of them still see it like BattleBots – and we will take whatever measures are necessary to make sure that those who are not willing to accept the philosophy of gracious professionalism are kept where they cannot cause any trouble. I appologise on our team’s behalf, and assure you that this inexcusable breach in professionalism has been fixed.

7

thank you zan! Look forward to hopefully seeing your team at the regional

8

I have to agree with the other comments. Team 60 has an incredible machine and I never saw any malicious behavior on their part. I have had to explain that to some members of my team who think otherwise. I am the mentor of Team 974, and it was our alliance that faced Team 60 in the semi-finals of the SCRRF Scrimmage. When West Covina got hit, both robots were jockeying for position near the goals. Though Hart was pinned against the barrier for more than 10 seconds in the second semi-final match, I don’t think Kingman was doing this maliciously and the damage done was incidental. I look forward to meeting them again at regionals.

Chris Vivo
Mentor
Team 974

9

You are right on Chris, Although the pinning was for more than 10 seconds, it was not enough to warrent anything more than a warning because it was accidental and non-malicious.

Sean Roberts
Head Ref, SCRRF

10

*Originally posted by ahecht *
**I appologise on our team’s behalf, and assure you that this inexcusable breach in professionalism has been fixed. **

Well spoken Zan :slight_smile:

11

In your response to the opinion that Team 60 is the pinnacle of gracious professionalism, I have a very different picture to paint of Team 60 and their so called gracious professionalism.

The FIRST organization is about learning by doing, its about gaining knowledge through experience. Its not sitting back and watching, its standing up and participating. When approaching Team 60’s bench at the Chatsworth Regional they spoke of how great their robot was (it is great, no doubt) and how the students designed it and built it from scratch, and how their only problem was getting the coefficent of frequency to work to their advantage in respects to their wheels…

Did you catch that?

Coefficent of frequency? Now, I’m not a physics expert(I failed the physics AP test), but frequency doesn’t have coefficenets…They meant friction…I gave them a moment to see if they caught their error…they didnt. This got me to think…then a young girl on the team looked at me smiling and said…“I buffered it…and i made it all shiny” To my knowledge we don’t gain inspiration of science and technology by wiping down pieces of metal.

Upon further investigation…the Team 60 tangle only gets worse. If you visited their website pre-chatsworth, you would have read that students were only allowed to watch Glenn and George from Laron Engineering work on the robot in 2 hour shifts on the weekdays and 3 hour shifts on the weekends…

Weren’t they supposed to build their own robot? Huh?? Am I the only person to realize that team 60’s robot is nothing but a corporate creation rather than a student one?

I have nothing against Team 60…the team members are all quite nice…but please…if this is to continue other teams will join the mess and this will be the battle of the conglomerates rather than the battle of minds, hearts, technology.

Some dude who looks at things.

12

Let me translate F.I.R.S.T. for you:
For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology

Now that we got that straight: Some teams out there make thier own robot like our team and probably your team and i can see where the anger is coming from. But you shouldn’t look at the bad side look at the good side look at the robot you built (well maybe just the pictures) and say to yourself “I did a great job” feel good about what YOU made not bad about what other teams made.
Different teams have different way of Inspiring thier members you shouldn’t be mad at them. That is the way they get inspired to go to colledge and become an engineer!

The competition is like a BONUS the path is what matters.

Mind What You Have Learned, Save You It Can

13

For a pretty comprehensive discussion of Student built, part student built, engineer built, machine shop built, etc …check out
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2648

It’s great to see all the brains in motion.:cool:

14

First of all, I have to agree with Sean in some aspects in saying that no team should treat any other team with a lack of respect or rudely.

However, I also do have to defend “dude who looks at things” because he is entitled to his own opinions. Many teams (including mine) have hardly any help from big companies and our robot is all student built. Our team can say that we’re proud of the robot we bulit and it is frustrating when professionaly built robots sweep competitions. Competitions may be icing on the cake for some but for other teams it is a very big investment, seeing as how registration is thousands of dollars and traveling is expensive too. I feel his frustration and I believe that as long as he or others who share similar views act “graciously” to team 60 and the like, then they are allowed to have their own point of view.

As someone commented earlier, each individual team is allowed to inspire their teams different ways and along those lines, I believe that FIRST members should be able to think different ways too (as long as their actions show the same maturity).

15

*Originally posted by gottaluvtheweez *
**In your response to the opinion that Team 60 is the pinnacle of gracious professionalism, I have a very different picture to paint of Team 60 and their so called gracious professionalism.

The FIRST organization is about learning by doing, its about gaining knowledge through experience. Its not sitting back and watching, its standing up and participating. When approaching Team 60’s bench at the Chatsworth Regional they spoke of how great their robot was (it is great, no doubt) and how the students designed it and built it from scratch, and how their only problem was getting the coefficent of frequency to work to their advantage in respects to their wheels…

Did you catch that?

Coefficent of frequency? Now, I’m not a physics expert(I failed the physics AP test), but frequency doesn’t have coefficenets…They meant friction…I gave them a moment to see if they caught their error…they didnt. This got me to think…then a young girl on the team looked at me smiling and said…“I buffered it…and i made it all shiny” To my knowledge we don’t gain inspiration of science and technology by wiping down pieces of metal.

Upon further investigation…the Team 60 tangle only gets worse. If you visited their website pre-chatsworth, you would have read that students were only allowed to watch Glenn and George from Laron Engineering work on the robot in 2 hour shifts on the weekdays and 3 hour shifts on the weekends…

Weren’t they supposed to build their own robot? Huh?? Am I the only person to realize that team 60’s robot is nothing but a corporate creation rather than a student one?

I have nothing against Team 60…the team members are all quite nice…but please…if this is to continue other teams will join the mess and this will be the battle of the conglomerates rather than the battle of minds, hearts, technology.

Some dude who looks at things. **

Most of the coments that are made about Team 60 (positive or negitive) for the most part don’t effect me. However this one was different. You obviously know our team well, as you mentioned George, myself and Laron Engineering by name.

Laron Engineering builds and repairs machines for a living. George and I have been doing this all of our adult lives. We also feel extremely fortunate to have made the right carreer choice for ourselves. Building machines is our life. So many young people today make the wrong choices and choose career paths they hate. We try to inspire them to make the right choices. The way we acheive this is by bringing two students to Laron daily. We work one on one in desigining, machining, fabricating, wiring, programing and assembling the robot. Some student dig right in and some are afraid of the machines and prefer to watch. Others prefer to get involved with the eletrical or the programing aspects. Through this process, it allows them to see for themselves were there talents lay.

Most High School student cannot build this type of robot by themselves. However, we expect in a few years to see some of these students (From FIRST Teams) out doing us not only in FIRST but in real life as well.

Come see us at San Jose, L.A. or Nationals. We would like to inspire you as well.

      Glenn
16

gottaluvtheweez

To clarify things, this was NOT a post about student involvement. Student participation has NOTHING to do with gracious professionalism. What i was talking about in my thread was a SPECIFIC seres of incidents in which team 60 showed a lot of restraint on how they dealt with seeral teams mistreating their members. At the SCRRF, there was a lack of gracious professionalism towards this good veteran team, and as head ref i felt it was my job to point that out and commend them for their actions and being professional despite what they were going through.

GOOD JOB TEAM 60!!!

Sean Roberts
Head Ref, SCRRF
Senior Member, Team 330

17

I consider myself privileged to be a part of FIRST and a member of terrific team, one that I am and always will be proud of. We are very fortunate to have the generosity of Laron Engineering and two of their top engineers. I think we can all agree that the experiences we gain through FIRST are life changing. Everyone knows that FIRST involves kids and robots, however I think some people have a difficult time figuring out just why FIRST was founded.

“The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, nationwide competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The program is a life-changing, career-molding experience-and a lot of fun.”

That is a direct quote taken from the FIRST web site. I believe some people are confusing FIRST with high school science projects. It is impossible for a group of high school students to design, engineer and build a working robot it six weeks on their own without outside help. FIRST pairs engineers from all around the country with students and challenges them to work together and learn about science and technology. FIRST is not a project that is limited to students, and to the contrary of some people’s beliefs does not forbid the involvement of engineers. Teams like us that have the gracious help of engineers are not a minority, but a majority in FIRST. It is adult involvement with students that has made FIRST so successful.

Team 60 is one of the many teams that is privileged to have the involvement of two very dedicated engineers. Two people that I have the utmost respect and gratitude for. I can assure you the purpose of our team is not to win. Our team’s mission is out to educate and inspire kids in our community in science and technology. Our engineers lend their knowledge, help and support not just to our team, but to numerous teams across the west. I know that there are others out there in the FIRST community that have known us throughout the years and know that we are always willing to help any team that desires our assistance.

I can assure everyone that every student on our team has had an integral part in our robot. Not everyone is capable of knowing the Coefficient of Friction on the tread of the wheel, or that traction is directly proportional to weight and the COF. I am very fortunate to have had an excellent background in Physics and am very happy to know these things. Polishing the arm of the robot may not be as important or as glamorous as calculating the gear ratio, or programming the robot; however these are all necessary things that students on our team have done.

I welcome all types of comments about our robot and our team, whether it be positive or negative feedback. I look forward to sharing our ideas with others that are unfamiliar with our team. I also would like to invite anyone that has questions about our team or robot to feel free to ask them. You can post them on Chief Delphi’s web site, email our team through our web site, email me directly, or come visit us at any of our competitions. I look forward to the opportunity of sharing my knowledge with the rest of the FIRST community and learning about other teams as well.

18

*Originally posted by Doanie8 *
**Many teams (including mine) have hardly any help from big companies and our robot is all student built. Our team can say that we’re proud of the robot we bulit and it is frustrating when professionaly built robots sweep competitions. Competitions may be icing on the cake for some but for other teams it is a very big investment, seeing as how registration is thousands of dollars and traveling is expensive too. I feel his frustration and I believe that as long as he or others who share similar views act “graciously” to team 60 and the like, then they are allowed to have their own point of view.

As someone commented earlier, each individual team is allowed to inspire their teams different ways and along those lines, I believe that FIRST members should be able to think different ways too (as long as their actions show the same maturity). **

A great thing about this forum is that we get to read different ideas and opinions from people all over the place. If all we do is agreeing on the same ideas, this forum wouldn’t be as good as it is… So, we should all share our different ideas and view points, explain to other people why we think that, and decide for ourselves what we want to think after reading everyone’s posts. So, let us make it easy for others to share their view points without putting any pressure on them.

Back to topic, I totally understand those of you who feel frustrated watching those cool looking robots win the competition… I once was on a team who mostly used bandsaw and drill press to build a robot out of students’ hands. And I felt really jealous when other teams have gear boxes while we could barely host clamp the drill motors on a piece of ply wood.

But I grew out of those feelings as years past because, as years pasted, my team (as well as others) did great at competition even without great engineering support, or fancy machining… As a team, we were able to build better robots just by more and more experience, harder effort in fund raising, and getting help from different people.

I grew out of those feelings as I see other teams won competitions without great engineering. Team 254 cheesy poofs is a classic example, as well as my old team 192, and many other teams. Great gear boxes and complicated machines were only few of the many factors that decide how your robot will do in a competition. There are also scouting, strategizing, and communication between driver and coaches, or between you and your alliance partner.

What is the unfairness between teams anyway? Well, we were all given the same kit of parts, the same battery, and the same rules. Everyone have the same weight and material limit, as well as how much motors/pneumatics we can use. The differences between the teams are their experiences and resources…

With more experience, a team can build a much better robot… Can you really call that unfair? With more resources teams found, they can build a better robot… But who’s stopping you from going out to find more resources? Can we really say it’s unfair because our area happens to have less resource for us to use?

Team 60 is a really cool team if you get to know them. They’ve always done great at regionals, and their robots were always really effective and simple. Their team is high spirited, and was great help to teams around them. So, I really do believe they are a great team who I can learn a lot from. Take your time and get to know their whole team. That’s what competition is for.

Mean while, I challenge you all to build your team to as good as team 60 is. Go out and get engineers interested in this program. Go out and get more sponsors to help out.

Also, I’ve seen a lot of their robots, and most of you could build robots just like theirs without great machining (although yours won’t look as good). They have a lot of simple original ideas what work quite well at the competition, and it’s not hard to build.

Don’t feel so frustrated… You have plenty of chances to improve yourself, and make your robot better. You can be competitive in a competition if you keep building a robot that you are proud of.

Mean while, keep sharing your ideas and take advantage of this forum. A lot of other people and I are willing to share what we learned, so don’t be afraid to ask.

19

Well said Ken!

Superior machines are within the reach of every team regardless of resources. I’ll explain in a minute, but FIRST…

Attitude adjustment time. A well-designed, well-executed robot deserves our attention. We all can learn from the those who designed and built it. Those with the right attitude will commend a team for a job well done, and query them about how how they did it. Hopefully we are inspired to do as well, and go learn whatever we need to in order to do the same or better.

With simple tools, an experienced engineer or technician can build anything. The man who built an engine for the Wright brothers used nothing but a chisel and file. Modern tools simply reduce the time to produce accurate parts while reducing waste.

Now, rather than rationalizing about team resources, why not take your newly acquired inspiration to the school board. Ask them why machine shops and electronics labs have been eliminated. Tell them that you need these things. Tell them that there should be a connection between the physics class, electronics lab, and machine shop. In short, let your experience with FIRST make a positive change in our society. Education is an industry, and we all are the customers.

If the technical programs are returned to the high schools, then FIRST will have accomplished a part of its collective goal. Students, and society in general will benefit. Students can be inspired as much by watching as doing. However, if the schools have good technical programs, students are more likely to be involved in design and fabrication, thus improving the overall experience.

Its OK to be envious of teams with greater resources, but turn the envy into positive action. Every team can have similar resources, perhaps on a smaller scale. Talk to school administrators. Make it happen. You can do it.

End of rant,
Mike Gray

20

The FIRST organization is about learning by doing, its about gaining knowledge through experience. Its not sitting back and watching, its standing up and participating. -gottaluvtheweez

I don’t claim to be an expert on anything (except dancing with a volcano hat) but the last time i checked F.I.R.S.T means - For Insperation and recognition for\of (i’ve heard it both ways) sciene and technology. This means that a team could have had there robot built by magical pixies from a far of planet, but as long as we (the students) come away with a new found interest in engineering than F.I.R.S.T has done its job

And Thats All I’ve Got To Say About That