Persistency's Promise: 1993 U.S. First Competition (part 3)

What did I learn from the whole experience? First, I learned that that nothing is impossible – it’s merely a matter of time, effort, and money. Those things we thought were “inconceivable” turned out to be the keys to success for the winning teams.

Second, I learned how constraints shrink the realm of the possible. Part of the reason we didn’t do well was because the Baxter engineers were limited in how much time they could dedicate to the project (they still had their regular jobs), and we didn't have a chance to “war game” our design before the competition. It's this idea of working with what you have under impossible time constraints that makes Apollo 13 one of my favorite movies ("We've gotta make *this* fit into *this* using nothing but *this*.")

Pictures of the other teams' robots

Finally, I learned that I didn’t want to be an engineer. While I am grateful to have had the opportunity, the engineers’ lifestyles and workplace culture didn’t appeal to me. For Brian Becker, though, it was completely different. At some point after college, he would go on to work for Baxter. So at least they got some return for their investment.

Today, the FIRST competition (they dropped the “U.S.” when it became more international) is a massive event. Instead of just 25 participating schools participating on a simple application basis, it how involves over 3000 high schools from 26 countries in several different events. And while I haven’t been particularly interested in the competitions snice then, I’m proud to have been a part of it, if for no other reason than I can go all Elrond-meme on my son, and declare “I was there … 30 years ago ….”