Guys (and Julia),
Let me first tell you how extremely proud I am of you. At the beginning of the summer, I really wasn't very confident in your performance, and I was worried that you wouldn't be ready in time for the competition. However, after this weekend, it was clear that I had been so wrong; you are the greatest group I have ever worked with, which includes groups outside of Spaceset.
Despite the way the Romanian team acted during the competition, you did the best job you could. Even without the leadership positions, you persevered, and at 4 in the morning, with 3.5 hours until deadline, it became apparent that it was your experience and training that was going to bail this company out and allow us to meet the 7:30 deadline.
Once again, I cannot begin to say how proud I am of all of you. Despite not winning, I know that you have learned a valuable lesson from working with the other two teams. You may not have the technical expertise that foreign teams can flaunt, but 14 years of Whitney's battle-tested experience in the Finals has prepared you for another role: to lead. When I held the training session earlier this summer, I wasn't doing it to prepare you for technical debates. What I was doing was preparing you to lead the company, preparing you to put together effective slides under pressure, and that is what I saw you do at 4 in the morning. For that reason, I know that I have trained you well, and there is nothing more that I can do for you. I am sorry that we were paired with such an arrogant team, a team that couldn't recognize and appreciate your qualities until it was much too late.
Obviously, there are some things you can work on. Despite having almost all of the qualities that I could ask for, you are still missing one that my training didn't prepare you for: assertiveness. The Romanian team took control early on, and by not voicing your own opinions, they saw that they could walk all over you, and continued to do so. Hopefully, you have learned from that, and when you next go to the Finals, don't let any technical expertise intimidate you; technical expertise is simply what's going to get information on the slides. You have something more than that: the foundation to ORGANIZE this information and SELL it to the judges. You have the foundation to LEAD the company, not serve as another team's slaves.
Recruitment is another important thing to keep in mind. Structure and Auto each have only 1 returning member, and without sufficient recruitment, Spaceset is dead next year. You guys need to try to get a permanent advisor, someone who will help you initiate more aggressive recruitment.
That's pretty much all I have to say. I wish you the best of luck next year and beyond, and I'll definitely see you around for a playday/banquet!
-Kevin Nguyen
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8 comments:
thanks kevin
Disclaimer: I am a WHSSS alumni. You might have heard of me. If not, then I'm a former Auto Head. I took over from Aric Wong in 2002 and revolutionized Automations, and shared the progress with all of the competing teams. The Auto you see today is largely the result of Justine and my efforts.
1. You absolutely should be intimidated by technical expertise. It's your job to have more of it. Technical expertise trumps salesmanship (though I do recommend having both).
2. If you know the material, making slides at the last minute isn't too hard; making the decision of what tech to use is. Letting a team walk all over your decision-making is a travesty. You need to crush their flawed reasoning with better reasoning.
3. It's important that there is communication inside the department, communication between heads, and a President that can see the big picture and make the right corrections. Beyond that, it's arguable that it gets in the way of work. You also shouldn't use words like 'slaves'. It's a friendly competition and we're all in it together.
3.5. Anita Gale's always made note of communication paths as an important factor in making the proposal. In particular, you do *not* want a bunch of people believing they are leaders and communicating to everyone. You want to have a hierarchical structure where department members report to department heads report to the President, and people within their respective departments communicate with each other and department heads communicate with each other. It streamlines communication greatly.
4. Whitney's battle-tested experience? This isn't a war. We've never treated it like a battle. If you're going into the competition with that kind of mindset it's apparent that a lot of our experience did not get passed down to you.
5. You do realize that you're arrogantly calling the other team arrogant, right? Doesn't matter that they couldn't recognize your qualities if you couldn't demonstrate them well enough. That's part of presentation, not only of the slides, but of yourself. You are what you show.
6. If you recognize Spaceset is dead next year then you should take drastic measures to remedy it. Go out on a limb and risk Spaceset's future, because if you stay the course you're taking now, you'll just sink.
Let me amend that. I took over from Justine in 2003; she was Auto head for a year, though I had already been functioning independently with respect to the computers/networks parts, whereas she was concerned with robots and the overall proposal. We cooperated on contingency plans.
"You do realize that you're arrogantly calling the other team arrogant, right?"
"Disclaimer: I am a WHSSS alumni. You might have heard of me. If not, then I'm a former Auto Head. I took over from Aric Wong in 2002 and revolutionized Automations"
HAHHAHAHHAHHA
You are my hero Andy Toulouse. I aspire to be like you in the future. A hero of mankind,a success story so amazing that we puny humans will bow in sight of your greatness.
You might be wondering who I am, but that shouldn't be of a concern to your busy tinkering mind, tinkering on about computer/network parts, and sometimes tinkering about contingency plans. However I know you are dying to know who I am because you are just so interested in little high school student's lives and just loves us little kids to death that you wish you can just go on commenting on their blogs your entire life (awwwww), then I will satisfy your insatiable hunger of that massive brain (maybe body, i kind of think you eat little kids).
Disclaimer: I am WHSSS member. You might have heard of me, seen me, talked to me, but if you don't remember, I have a Head. I took over from my Head in 2004 and through hard work and toil and by implementing a hierarchy system in SS, I have achieved greatness. I am Big Brother (you might be a bigger brother though)
And by the way, you invented cars!? Wow, easy on LSD man, drugs aren't good for you.
P.S. I was kidding in the first paragraph if you are so arrogant to not realize.
Andy may have "revolutionized Automations", but I, too, have revolutionized Automations. You may not have heard about Andy, but you definitely have heard about me. It's difficult to pinpoint when exactly I first sat on my throne as a deity, but I don't think that really matters much. No one else's opinion really matters much to me anyways.
But- you may ask- how exactly did I bring such glory and critical acclaim to Automations? How did I slay the competition? How did I liquidate all other existing Automations departments? The answer: violence. Yes, violence. To quote a great man- me- "Other than achieving world peace, there is nothing that cannot be solved with violence." According to Mr. Toulouse, one "absolutely should be intimidated by technical expertise" more than salesmanship. That may be true, but of course, we all know that no amount of technical expertise can save a man from plain ol' violence. Matrix Revolutions- "revolutions", mind you- had the machines, the very representation of "technical expertise", beaten- quite literally in some cases- by Neo, who didn't use salesmanship to get his point across, but violence.
That being said, I'm more than positive I revolutionized Automations more than the next man in that I ushered in a completely new method of winning. Other teams are sure to follow.
ANDY TOULOUSE
I AM CALLING YOU OUT WITH THIS YOUTUBE LINK THAT EXPLICITLY SHOWS MY GREATNESS IN THE HIERARCHAL SYSTEM WHILE ALSO ESTABLISHING MY MODESTY.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNgWQfOd-1M
THE FACT THAT I CAN ADD THIS LINK IN THIS COMMENT UNEQUIVOCALLY SHOWS MY TECHNICAL EXPERTISE. THOUGH YOUR OPINION ON MY CHALLENGE MAY DIFFER FROM MINE, IT'S ALRIGHT BECAUSE YOUR SALESMANSHIP CANNOT DEFEAT MY TECHNICAL EXPERTISE. AND EVEN IF YOU THINK IT DOES. MY USE OF THE CAPS LOCK SHOWS MY WILLINGNESS TO USE VIOLENCE WHICH MY COMRADE GRANT HAS STATED PREVIOUS TO MYSELF.
WE BOTH HAVE A FOND LIKING OF THE HIERARCHAL SYSTEM AND WE ALL KNOW THAT VIOLENCE BEATS TECHNICAL EXPERTISE WHICH BEATS SALESMANSHIP.
*The roles of technical expertise and salesmanship often switch in communist societies such as Romania.
**But after all is said and done, violence is definitely on top.
oh my gosh. these comments may be some of the most hilarious things i've ever read HAHA
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