It's Not About the Robots!

Here's a wonderful quote from Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST, "It’s not about the robots. Robots are just a vehicle. What you are building is way bigger. It’s about self-confidence. It’s about relationships. It’s about making sure the future is better than the past."

After attending our first and only scrimmage of the season, sharing with hundreds of people about our project and robot and working through team issues, I'm so reminded of Dean Kamen's thoughts from above. It rings true that the FLL season is filled with opportunities for growth for both the kids and the coach. Take a bunch of boys who love, love, love LEGOs, put them in a room where they have to decide the best way of programming a robot or presenting a solution and you'll get a bunch of different ideas. We had to work through relational issues, technical issues, time issues, teamwork issues, who's in charge issues, who get's their way issues, who gets the robot to work with issues... the list goes on and on.

But in the end we showed up as a team last Saturday for our scrimmage and had a wonderful time. FLL has set up a problem/challenge that is great training in maturing these kids into real world problem solvers that can operate in both the technical and the relational realms.

Here's where I got the Kamen quote from above.