So what do you think?
I’ll wage my vote later.
i personally feel that what FIRST has done goes against what FIRST is all about i mean winning was never really main goal of team 93 and now we have to win to go on. it seems to contradict everything i was told FIRST was about. i also think that no where in the name For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology does it say that you have to win. Just becuase you built a better or faster or stonger robot then a different team does not measure how much u took away from this. i think FIRST needs to seriously look at the message they r giving out to all the teams by changing this rule and go back to its old ways.
FIRST needs to be a competition. That was one of the reasons why I started. So what will be the purpose of the whole thing if you don’t “win”?!?! “Hey, here is my robot. It can pick-up balls.” Then they test it and they all fail! Thats why we need compatition, in order to create new ideas. Dean said that FIRST was “life with traning wheels”? So, do you go to work and share your secrets with your competitior? Do you? Or if you work at GM and you then tell everything to Ford because it is “gracious professionalism”?!?! FIRST has evolved from a science fair in a high school gym to a full fleged explosion of fun, entertainment, and learning. There is no way with the size of it to do a small exhibiton like yesteryear. We have over 600 teams, not 30. FIRST’s goal is to spread science and math, and would you like to spread it to a scicence fair level or “on a major network” level? I have learned more in FIRST than anything else, but this would have never happened without the competiton! We can’t live in the past when things were different and then compare them today.
I will get hit major her. My defense is this; whould you like to see FIRST become a rejected science fair, or a fullfleged competition that would make kids thing and ejoy the angony of defeat and happenes of winning?
Now I’m going to step down from my soap box and hand the floor over.
hmmm
i dont really play to win myself… i play to have fun and to be proud of my efforts regardless of the outcome…
for instance, this winning mentality has really sealed off alot of good ideas from making it onto our robot. i honestly dont exspect us to win, but i say that if we have a well built, off the wall system that does somthing that no one exspects but it works, we could win one of the engineering awards… but nooooo… everyone is so concerned about winning that it just takes the fun out. this puts people into this thought process like this: is it good enough to win? should i bother to make it better? and bam, with a mentality like that, we get a robot with zip ties as a major sturctural componant… :mad:
“I will get hit major her. My defense is this; whould you like to see FIRST become a rejected science fair, or a fullfleged competition that would make kids thing and ejoy the angony of defeat and happenes of winning”
But should there be the agony of defeat? If FIRST is about mentoring and inspiration and (even though Dean doesn’t think so) education then is it possible to lose? Just a thought, my father once commented to me that just fielding a robot is a victory (then we went on to win Long Island as a bonus).
Sure winning is great, but it’s all about the experience.
If the competition enhances the experience… (and IMHO I think it does) then GREAT!
JVN
The agony of defeat is in the fact that you know what idea’s are far fetched (and ones like that latter on). My thing is this (and it’s very simple) FIRST will be doomed if it becomes a science fair, thats when everybody will think it’s “geekie” (as though they don’t already) and will hurt any chances to be enjoyed by the public. If FIRST was on ABC and they kept the old style, people would be board. People want an understandable ending and winner. They don’t care who has a good design, or who was innovative. They care about who WON. This is not an attempt to reverse my other threads about individulaism for your robot. It’s that there should be two levels in FIRST, the engeneering level (good designs, ideas, and other accomplisments) and then the spectator level, where the average Joe will like (winning, cool plays, agony of defeat.) My final word is this. If FIRST goes back to how it was, it will loose whatever it has gained in entertainment value for the general public.
I think it goes against of the idea and shows that robotics is dangerous… like the battlebots idea
Like Short Circuit showed the benifits of robotics to society, and to me this doesnt… but it shows academic awareness and such to high school students as myself
May I remind you all, that all even teams can go to nationals this year and odd teams next year. This means that almost all FIRST participants will get a chance to experience nationals, which is a good thing. They just added the winning a regional = trip to nationals, to give the exceptional robots more opportunites regardless of what team number they are. FIRST is not about winning, its about having fun and gaining experience in science and technology.
May I also point out that recognition, the R in FIRST, can be achieved by victory. (They are not mutually exclusive) FIRST had this in mind therefore winning has always been a part of FIRST. The spirit of FiRST has not changed, FIRST is just too big this year.
It must, otherwise, it’ll get boring.
But the soul of FIRST and the virtues it lives by should and must remain the same, as it was 10 years ago.
Though FIRST needs to spice itself up to keep up with the competition. After all, they’re not the only robotics related competition anymore.
-anton
I have to agree with Anton here. I agree that first needs to keep changing every year, and things can’t stay the same.
On the other hand, in a lot of ways I wish it would stay the same. I guess the truth is that nothing can stay protected from our short attention-span society. Oh well
The soul of FIRST and the virtues it lives should stay the same but they simply cannot. There are too many teams this year so FIRST had to make a decision on how to admit teams to nationals. I think what they did was perfectly reasonable. FIRST could have done something like, only the top four alliances at regionals get to go to Nationals and the award winning teams as well. This would allow a maximum of 255 teams to go. This would be ruining the spirit of FIRST, but by granting even teams admission, the soul of FISRT remains intact.