FIRST Promo in Theaters

[falconmaster]

Team 842 Falcon Robotics raised $5300.00 to have a 1 min FIRST Promo shown in 16 theaters screens at a movie complex, the Tempe Market Theaters in Tempe, AZ. It started tonight and will run until the AZ regional on March 7-8. It will be shown over 2000 times and could reach potentially 160,000 people. Team 842 is trying to change the culture by using a paradigm from South Park,"people learn everything from the movies". There is a website referenced at the end to help measure the impact of the video, if possible.
You can view the 1 min version and the 6 min version at the website
http://firstaz.org/FIRSTVideo.aspx
FIRST makes these great videos and almost everyone who sees them are FIRST people. People who nothing about FIRST should see these great videos. So there you go, we are giving it a go!

ps. the video only plays in Windows Explorer, sorry......

[114Klutz]

From the many of us who have not done so yet - thank you for taking this step to bring engineering to the forefront of culture.

Thank you for raising the money to do so. Thank you for resisting the temptation to use this money to expand a machine shop, or to build a second robot, and use it to effect societal change.

We might not all make that choice, but we all applaud you for it.

[Bongle]

That's fantastic. It'll be interesting to see if non-FIRST (people other than teams, their sponsors, and their families) attendance goes up at the AZ regional.

If you have access, you should keep us updated on the website hit stats, I'd be really interested in those.

[KTorak]

That's a really interesting idea. I know we all always see those "your business here" commercials in theaters, but who would have guessed you anyone would put a FIRST related thing there. Though, $5300 is steep, it's a start at something much bigger.

[hipsterjr]

342 did something similar with this video, but didn't take it as far as you guys. Great job.
We showed ours on the school news in the largest high school in the state and it really interested some people. Unfortunately the show's editors cut part of Dean Kamen's speech.

Our video

[N7UJJ]

Originally Posted by Bongle

That's fantastic. It'll be interesting to see if non-FIRST (people other than teams, their sponsors, and their families) attendance goes up at the AZ regional.

Well, we hope that will happen, but we are also doing it so students, parents, teachers will become aware of the FIRST program and start asking, "Is there a robotics program at our school? Why not?" The Marketplace theaters are located at the Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale area and we have a lot of high schools in those areas that do not have teams.

Also we are hoping the public exposure will create recognition and interest in the TV, radio and print media.

Arizona is a large state. Most of the AZ teams are from the Phoenix area and a few from the Tucson area. This year there is a new team from the Flagstaff area. It is very difficult to recruit teams in the rural areas. We are hoping that we will receive strong interest at the Marketplace theater so we can propose a campaign in the rural and small town areas of Arizona.

[Eye-gor]

Good job! i find myself unable to reach the site, but such an effort deserves much praise. Huzzah for you!

[GUI]

Wow! You guys always amaze me in how much you do to spread the FIRST message, and this follows that trend. You are truly raising the bar for promoting community awareness.

[falconmaster]

If the website doesn't work, check back later, I think the site has exceeded bandwidth. I will have to see if I can fix that. Better yet...go see the movie! If you are in AZ of course.

[Wayne Doenges]

Just saw the 6 min. video. It was amazing
Keep up the good work.

[N7UJJ]

Wayne,

The 6 minute video was produced and distributed by FIRST. We edited it down to 1 minute and added the AZ info overlay on the list few seconds.

On the FIRST website http://www.usfirst.org/community/res...er.aspx?id=652 there are several videos (also check out the FLL videos).

We always have those with us so when we do demos, we have some professional video with us. The FLL ZOOM video is great for teachers and FLL kids.

We also carry DVDs with some of the FIRST videos and some of our own to leave with teachers, potential mentor groups or prospective teams.

Every kid it every school should know about FIRST. Then we will have a demand for a team (or two) in every school.