What do you feel about the growth of FIRST?
 

Not sure if this topic have been discussed already (and if so, please point out the link). But I've been reading about new request for new regionals, and more and more students graduating and starting teams of their own, and started thinking about the growth of FIRST, and the future.

A few things came into my mind when I thought about this... The economy getting worse and worse, more sponsors are pulling out from both teams and regionals, and number of FIRST staff is going to remain relatively the same.

Mean while, one of the biggest goal of FIRST is to have a team in every high school across the country, so many more students will be exposed to this competition.

So... Realistically, with the growth rate right now and the condition of the economy, is it even possible to reach that goal? Well, I am not sure, because even with a health economy, I can't see a team in every high school across the country within 2 to 4 years. So, a short term goal is to get a decent growth rate every year. But, is that even resonable under the current circumstances?

In the bay area, there are relatively a lot of teams around here, Almost one team in every city on average, and there will be more rookie teams starting up. There will be less sponsors per team at this rate, and the Silicon Valley Regional is at its maximum capacity. So, some how, all those teams are going to need $9000 for two events, plus 5000 to 10,000 dollars to build a robot. Then we will need Sacramento regional to be bigger, and eventually another regional near the Bay Area. Same thing is happening at LA with lots of veteran and coming rookie teams.

So, I don't know what to think right now. I have a weird feeling that sooner or later we will reach a limit where we just can't fit more teams around here anymore, without something being done. When I say something, I mean things like: 1. Economy go back to normal, 2. some sort of laws passed to help teams out finanically, 3. more regional FIRST staffs supporting teams out there and running the new regionals.

Well, without going into deeper thoughts, I just want to know what everyone else think about this. Is FIRST growing too big for its own good? Do you honestly see a much bigger future for FIRST? What are some of the things that could potentially stop FIRST in its growth?

Feel free to put your thoughts into this topic... But I do ask you to think a little bit before you post.

Ken,
While I agree that there are many challenges that face all of us in keeping up the quality and level of expectations from year to year. The growth factor is a major part of this but I disagree that money will dry up. In fact I strongly believe that WE as an organization of collective minds and able bodies have not even tapped 20% of the potential sponsors. Why is it that every time I start a meeting with telling people about FIRST (and yes I do this at every vendor meeting I can) I find myself educating, describing, and in general making people aware of what WE are doing for the students and ourselves. It never hurts to ask for help from companies. The Bay Area alone already produces a huge amount of money for FIRST teams but in comparison I think ( I don't have the facts on this) that most of the big dollars is from large east coast companies. XEROX, FORD, Delphi, and others are huge supporters. Let us not forget NASA and all of it's support but as I see it, there is still very limited west coast industry, science or technology money. Sure you might see a few dollars from HP supporting a local team and thanks to Hitachi and Intel our team continues to survive from year to year but the amount of companies that are involved is still only a very small percentage of the total.

I have been thinking of ways that we could get the word out and show the hundreds of high tech engineering based firms in Silicon Valley that a small donation and or a little support could go a long way. What I am looking for to get this started is a one or two page description of everything that FIRST is about and why it works. With this eye catching, can't say no, type of marketing letter I would be willing to go door to door, from tech company to tech company, asking for a commitment to help a team. I'm confident that we could turn this into a movement strong enough to become a household name where high school students are found. I'm always looking for help with the marketing materials. Getting the tech firms in our area to hear the pitch would be the next step. I think we can. I think we can.

I'll leave the number of teams and number of regionals problem for more time to think. My gut tells me that there must be a way to fine tune the system so a gathering could support 100 teams. I know we all couldn't believe that it would be possible but if the team base grows so should the volunteer base. More is more.

-Steve B

Well, I have to say that I agree with you about the economy and the problems that will be faced causing FIRST to steady out for a while but here is what I have always imagined.

The way I see it is there have been many many graduates of FIRST who have gone onto college and have been studying engineering. I myself am one of them and I know of many others. These alumni are the ones that will make FIRST grow extremly rapidly in the coming years. What I see is these addicted students that went to college 1 or 2 years ago and even the ones that went 4 years ago, graduating and going to work right away. Most of these kids will go work for big and small engineering companies. These kids will make sure to promote FIRST at their places of work and I can certainly see the companies listening and responding. And all the companies that will be started by FIRST alumni in a few years... good God.. I see no reason why they wouldnt help out.

I know that wherever I work or whatever company I work for I will absolutly make sure that they sponser at least one team.. if not.. then thats not the job I'm looking for.

And to think, FIRST sent so many kids off to college over the years that I am just waiting for all those guys to start raking in the doh so FIRST can reap the benifits.

FIRST as a High School Team
 

I really like Dean's vision of every high school having a FIRST team. That would be great. However, it's never going to happen as long as corporations are footing the bill. Corporations are more concerned about turning a profit than helping the youth of America.

However, there just so happens to be one organization that already exists whose sole purpose is to help the youth of America: the school system.

The only chance that FIRST ever has of getting a team in each school is to get the schools to sponsor the teams. I played hockey growing up and I know that the budget for a high school hockey team is about $25,000 to $30,000 per year (it varies by a number of factors, but this is typical). If high schools foot such a large bill for a sports team, why not for a competitive team related to math and science? (Actually, they don't do it now since the demand isn't there yet, but that's where TV exposure and such comes in - but that's another topic.)

Anyway, this is not to say that the corporations shouldn't be involved. It would still be a great idea to have corporate partners, but relying on a corporation for the survival of your team is pretty risky business - especially when the economy goes south.

-Chris

The team in VA have been experiencing this for the past 3 years. We have had a growth of FIRST teams. Godwin, Tucker, Deep Run, and others are all within a short driving distance of each other. We are strapped for resources. It's EXTREMELY difficult to get new sponsors here since either a company already is sponsoring a team or they can't afford to do it. FIRST has out-stripped all of our resources here.

I think Dean needs to re-think the FIRST message. With more and more people agreeing that the students, not the sponsors, should be the focus, prices and possibly other things should be lowered. Everything FIRST has done promotes sponsors over schools. We need a Renaissance in FIRST, a switch from corporate focus to student focus.

Maybe what is needed is a shift from sponsorship of individual teams to sponsorship of first. I think JosephM is right... as FIRST expands, the focus needs to shift from the corporations to the students. You can't get a 5 or 6-figure sponsorship for every high school in the country. It just won't happen. FIRST needs to work on getting more sponsors for regionals, and for the program as a whole, to reduce the cost of entry for teams. If Dean really wants to have a team in every high school in America, FIRST will need to take steps to make the program accessible to all, not just the long-time veterans with big budgets and secure sponsorships.

I firmly believe there can be a FIRST team in every high school. I read in this thread that money is a great concern. Well let's put it in perspective. Most high schools in our country support at least one sports team. The cost of having a sports team is about the same as a FIRST Robotics team. Look at the cost of their equipment, playing fields, transportation, etc. It easily equals, if not exceeds, the cost of running a FIRST team. Also there are many schools that have Marching bands. These too have budgets that rival what it takes to run a robotics team.

What's the answer?


PUBLIC AWARENESS!!

We need to be using every means at our disposal to get our communities involved in FIRST. How about a home coming celebration when the team returns from Nationals, complete with a parade, floats, dances, etc? How many people from your community are you getting to come to your regional competitions? Take every chance you get to get the team in the paper and on the news. Post signs around the community supporting the team. Encourage your team members to wear their team colors in public and be willing to explain what FIRST is all about. Take every opportunity you get to show your robot to the community and give out nifty trinkets.

The money doesn't have to come from big corporations, it can come from many small contributions.

If everyone in the community sees what FIRST is all about money will not be a problem. Both for more teams and more regionals.

I dream of the day when highschools are known for their FIRST teams, and us FIRSTers get to wear cool shirts on competition days and get cheerleaders and are the hearthrobs of every other student. The day will come when FIRST events are held in stadiums before thousands of fans while football games are held in little two-bit feilds in nowheresville and noone bothers to care.

Well, it will never happen, but I am happy to see the growth of FIRST because it tells me that the sciences are still respected in the US.

*chuckle* Our robotics' team came up over and over again in the school district's upheaval with outgoing members taking credit for the program, then letters to the editor, from people I don't know, regarding major budget cuts that should not extend to robotics.

Just a comment about the marching band...our school has one, but it is completely self-sufficienct. All money spent is money we earned.

Also, regarding the volunteers. As the current wave of FIRST students graduates, you (hopefully) have a bigger pool of people to draw volunteers/mentors from. I know that I'll be spending alot of my spare time in college helping out with FIRST :D

I think FIRST is growing too much, too fast. They need to slow down a bit and work on saving teams that are currently involved. Each year teams drop out due to funding or other issues, and if FIRST took a few years to focus on saving what they have FIRST will truely grow. Right now FIRST has a positive growth rate with more teams coming in than dropping out. This could easily change and not for the better.....

Hats off to you and your Marching Band, great job! (My wife is the president of the High School Band Booster Club, I know the effort that takes).

But why can't we get that kind of commitment for a FIRST Robotics team?

The growth of FIRST may be a double-edged sword.

For those who haven't noticed, we have had a sharp economic downturn for the past two years, particularly in the areas of technology and industry that most FIRST sponsors work in.

A quick economy lesson: Businesses survive by generating profit. Profit means making more money than you spend. With production and revenue down, companies must cut back on expenses to increase profit. This results in layoffs, and a cut back in expenditures.

FIRST teams cost a lot of money, time and resources. They also have few tangible benefits that would result in direct monetary or economic gains for their sponsor. FIRST teams do not generate a profit, or even some revenue for their sponsors. At least, most do not. There are probably exceptions.

In a time of a negative economic outlook, corporations will be unwilling to sacrifice money for a program that does not have a return on their investment in the close future.

FIRST has picked the wrong time to expand: teams are going to have a hard time finding sponsors willing to spend so much money, and resources on them.

FIRST also need to generate more attention. To be bluntly honest, people don't watch sports games to see everyone have a "good time" or see players interacting with one another. They watch for the competition, for the stunning victories and brutal defeats.

FIRST doesn't have that. I mean, even I get bored watching FIRST events, and I am IN FIRST and understand the game. The game play is way to repetitive. There is always one strategy that emerges as dominant, and pretty soon, all robots follow it. This year, after the second week of regionals, most teams realized that stacking was a pathetic waste of time, and converted their robots to plows to pushing bins around.

Wow...2:10 of robots pushing plastic bins from one end to the other - thrilling. :rolleyes:

If FIRST wants to grow, they need to become much more friendly to spectators - particularly the media. This involves games that are exciting and clean to watch. This year’s game, to be honest, looked on TV like featureless robots smashing into one another in a sea of plastic bins. Not quite prime-time material.

But do we want FIRST to grow enough to have a team in every school?


Putting aside the fact this in impossible due to the number of regionals requires to support thousands of teams, what would be the purpose of having FIRST become so big?

I understand the whole "change the culture" attitude but within FIRST itself, I see attitudes changing, and not for the better.

In my opinion, FIRST does not need to grow larger, it needs to grow better.

1. Teams need to continue to uphold (or, if they do not, start to uphold) the spirit of gracious professionalism (both parts) that FIRST was founded upon.

2.Teams need to build robot as tough and as competitive as they can. This makes the game more interesting.

3. Teams need to understand that Gracious Professionalism should not mean: from each according to ability, to each according to need. Not only should teams help one another, within reason, but they should work themselves to try not to need help. If a team does not have a working robot the day of the competition, they should be pulled from the roster.

4. FIRST needs more quality volunteers, preferably ex-FIRSTers that know how things work

5. FIRST needs to standardize rules at all regionals: the amount of swing the rules have according to each regional is absurd, and unprofessional. I don't care if they are volunteers: they need to be at least consistent with other regionals, and know the rules.

6. FIRST needs to figure out whether or not it wants to "go mainstream." If it wants to be known to the average citizen, FIRST needs media coverage other than NASA TV, an exciting game, and different and cool looking robots to show it off. The silver and black boxes smashing into each other won't work if FIRST wants to grow up.

Of course, if FIRST leaders decide that they should concentrate on improving and maintaining teams that are already in FIRST, rather than recruit new ones. (Quality over Quantity) then steps should be taken to do that, including a revised nationals system based on merit or some sort of qualifier - not just a number being odd or even. I like to call this qualifier "incentive" for teams to go the extra mile to make interesting and competitive machines.

I'd also like to see FIRST as it grows, to develop better games that do not punish teams for not making smashing machines, and a revised set rules with clear definitions of terms and even a gracious professionalism guide for teams that are new. Instead of "rookie all star awards" I'd like to see awards rewarding teams for being professional and competitive, and trying something different.
////

Personally, I think FIRST is on a downhill streak, and that focusing on recruiting more and more rookie teams is not a wise decision on their part. FIRST needs to expand slowly, building up what it has. Instead of 30 regionals, I'd rather see 10 with the lowest average score being a couple points lower than the highest. I'd rather see more competitive competitions, than just more robots.





I am somewhat against FIRST expanding so rapidly - I think FIRST needs to improve and strengthen what it has rather than seek out more. Retaining long-time veterans would do more good in the long run. It’s quality that is more important.

I agree. To continue to grow, FIRST needs to become TV and video friendly. Teams and sponsors need to be able to show compelling videos of robotics teams with exciting action footage. Also as more and more teams seek sponsors, it would really help if the sponsors knew that they would get media exposure to help them with their bottom line.

Watching FIRST videos of our team's matches in Houston, at times I even found myself getting a bit frustrated because the camera was pointed to one side and I wanted to see what was happening on the other. Let's face it. This game is hard to video effectively, because there can be 4 areas of action.

The first and last 15 seconds work pretty well for video because the focus is on the ramp. But if a team is building a stack near the end of the game, probably no one would see it because the camera will be on the ramp.

On the other hand, I appreciate FIRST's efforts in making this year's game. It is a very tough job! Let's face it. We have very smart people working on it.

I have had a couple of thoughts on making the game better and therefore more audience friendly. One thought is to have two game design teams. Group A would be working on the 2004 game, while group B is working on the game for 2005. With that much lead time, the 2005 group could actually get 4 robots build and try out the game. Why?
My idea is to have the game designers "try out" the game before it is presented to the teams, so there is time to go through the "do..think..learn loop" and fine tune the game. A tall order, but hopefully as we make the game more media friendly, we will have the resources to do that.

(Hm...sounds like a catch 22. We need the resources so we can make the game more media friendly so we can get the resources... Reminds me of this guy who was alone and couldn't get to the hospital because he had a broken leg. What was the answer to that problem? Well, somehow he just had to get there anyway, even if it was one inch at a time.)

When I think about teams like 340 Grr robotics or 144 Who and Team 64 the Gila Monsters possibly falling out of the FIRST scene that is a great loss to the FIRST community. I'm hoping that if another company in the Rochester area steps in to start a FIRST team and if Nortel has truly dropped Grr Robotics that they'll take a good look at an already established team first with a solid base in FIRST before starting another team fresh. I hope the same can be done in the Cincinatti area for Who and in Arizona for the Gila Monsters. These are the teams that help make FIRST great and they should be maintained.
Progress should never made at the expense of the past

When I first joined Team 519, in September of '02 I didn't have the slightest idea of what was going on. Thank goodness for off-season competitions. This is not my point though.

When I saw the competition, I noticed that there were team uniforms, and sponsors galore. I didn't think much of it though. As I walked around the competition, I noticed how nice teams were to others, and I was amazed. Then, when they were announcing the team names... is when I was trying to listen to the team names, but I was overwhelmed with SPONSORS. I could barely hear the team number at all either.

What am I trying to say?

I think FIRST is about corporate exploitation. Why should our sponsors be put first? I understand that they give us thousands of dollars to fund us, but this is just too much. The major engineering companies know what this is about, and they like the publicity of their name being around a FIRST Robotics Competition.

FIRST needs to change their image, FAST and it needs to be a complete transformation. If they want to grow at all, they need to focus more about the benefits, and NOT about the traveling and the pizza (Although Yummy;))

Now, at the remote kickoff, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I didn't see these hideous banners hanging everywhere.

Also, something that hasn't been mentioned yet... Dean Kamen is a nice guy. He desperately wants FIRST to grow, but I don't think he knows that he IS the inspiration for many people on FIRST teams. All FIRST staff, including Dean himself, should be there for students when they need it. I am aware that FIRST has grown to amazing proportions, so they say that they cannot do this anymore, but I think they could. If FIRST wants to grow, they need to reach out to MORE of an area, than New England. I understand that's where FIRST was born, but what about the rest of the country, and the world for that matter?

I argue against any form of droppoing teams that don't work or being picky about who goes to a regional based on an entertainment value. FIRST isn't about entertainment. It never was and never should be. The focus should be on the students and teaching them. Getting FIRST on TV and creating a Battlebots type battle system would ruin FIRST. FIRST dosn't sway on the flows of what 'Joe Blow' wants to watch on TV on Saturday afternoon, but teaching kids.

I'd rather have a smaller FIRST that keeps it values than have more teams and water down the message.

Survival of the fittest, yes. Survival of the best, not necessarily.
 

If FIRST wants to find a way to improve as they expand, they need to find a way to keep & help the better teams. Last year there was a “FIRST STAR” rating that ranked teams based on past average performance over the previous 4 years. To improve the quality of Nationals FIRST could use a system similar to this ranking. From what I have seen good teams continue to be good. This is not to say that below average teams cannot make vast improvements. If FIRST used the ranking for qualifications & then allowed current year Regional winners, the quality of robots at Nats would be awesome.


As for teams finding money to continue, we will find a way to continue & hopefully so will the others in our position. When we finally realized the situation our team is in we set out with a better plan. Granted we still have not found a new sponsor yet but we have found a way to become a more organized and a more determined group of people. Rather than look to the obvious, our former sponsor, we looked within(we have not received any funds from Nortel since December 2001). We have a core group of mentors from, J&J, Kodak, Nortel, Pactive, Delphi, Valeo, Pfaudler, and, Manning, Hennig & Squires, not mention other mentors from other companies. If we can find a way to get people from all of these companies to find the value in the FIRST program we can find a way to get sponsorship. There is money out there we just have to be more active about finding it.

Re: Survival of the fittest, yes. Survival of the best, not necessarily.
 

Amazingly Delphi has not started a team in Rochester yet and they have a plant here.

Re: Re: Survival of the fittest, yes. Survival of the best, not necessarily.
 

I have never thought about that, and yes, that is strange.

However, what else I always thought was strange, is the amount of money given to the Delphi teams...

Whoa is about all that can be said about it.

I do not believe in keeping the best teams around, because then you have to wonder... what will happen to the smaller teams, that are not ranked as well? Will they just all die? If that was to happen, FIRST would probably have just those well known teams. Yes, there would be much competition, but it would be unfair. Life is unfair, I know, but you have to have those instances where everyone can be treated fairly.

Now, I'm all for the "FIRST STAR". It should be used to send teams to the Championship Event. The little qualification process seems a bit antiquated, if you ask me. FIRST will continue to grow, nothing will stop it, unless governments stop printing money.

Re: Re: Re: Survival of the fittest, yes. Survival of the best, not necessarily.
 

But I'm not looking at those teams from the aspect of how many awards have they won. That's not what FIRST is all about. I'm looking at them as citizens of FIRST. All rookie teams could learn alot from the three teams I have mentioned and if those teams fade away then that is lost. Tradition has it's place.

I was never trying to say that the lower ranked teams should be eliminated. My thoughts on FIRST STAR were just for the Championship. If the teams that do not qualify use the money spent to go to another regional, that may improve their ranking.

As for allowing the better teams to fade away, that would be counter productive for FIRST. It is the better teams that raise the bar for everyone.

Another thing that may improve the quality of the robots and the competition is to add another week to the build season. Of course it may just end up being another week to put off finishing the robot.

Sorry about the misunderstanding, but yeah, I DO AGREE with using the "FIRST STAR" program for qualification for the Championship. This "points system" isn't unfair, but it just doesn't seem right to have something going like that.

Another week to add to the build period would be perfect. 6 Weeks is JUST ENOUGH, but not enough time to make something spectacular.

I'm actually quite angry at the way our robot was built. We barely got any time to build it. We had one engineer, and he built the robot. As a matter of fact, HE RAN THE ENTIRE TEAM. If anything, FIRST needs to set mandates for teams, telling them what the mentors/engineers/adult leaders are in charge of doing, and if teams do not meet requirements... they get penalized for their actions. That could be a part of the FIRST STAR system.

There should be growth of new teams, but the established teams NEED to stay around and also help the new people.

There is no possible way that could happen.

A. How would this be enforced?

&

B. You would be limiting on what your mentors could do. How are they supposed to Inspire you if a rule is made saying that all they can do is babysit and clean up blood?

I'll quickly close pandora's box, here, and point out that this debate is tired, old, repetitive and yields no appreciable results. Do a search and you'll see how others have fared.

With that said, I'll weigh in a bit about FIRST's growth some. I've meant to reply to this for a little while now.

I want, sincerely, for the goals and successes of FIRST to reach every corner of the globe. I want that growth to happen so that everyone, everywhere can grow a bit more themselves - by engaging in new experiences, by meeting new people, and by learning new things from both those experiences and those people.

But, since the interpersonal relationships have become so important to me, I have come to fear FIRST's rapid, relentless expansion.

Already, in the 5 years I've been involved in FIRST, I've seen the level of contact between teams and the FIRST staff decrease immensely. There was a time when I knew each and every team, their school, their number, their sponsors...everything. I can't hope to keep track of that anymore. There are so many new teams out there now that I know nothing about.

Let's face it, it's much, much harder to care about a stranger than it is to care about someone we know. It's harder for me to care for these teams and cheer them on and urge them success and help them when I don't really know them. FIRST has become very impersonal, and right at time when I'd matured enough to really want and need it to be personable and amiable and social.

I guess, really, I'm frustrated that the increasing size of FIRST translates to more opportunities to miss out on great people. That's probably a bit backwards, but, I'm usually a bit backwards, so. Of course, it goes without saying that this growth does bring our experience to many, many more people, and that's absolutely a positive, good thing. It's been a long time since my needs have been central to this program. But, still, FIRST needs to hire some more people and the rest of us need to make an extra effort at welcoming the thousands of new participants to FIRST, otherwise, the things we treasure so much about all of this may disappear.

Beyond that, my other biggest fear regarding the new FIRST is that it will lose focus of its main objectives. The pervasive desire to make FIRST media friendly terrifies me. I hope that in our drive to attract new participants, we don't make too many concessions. I fear that the power of money will corrupt FIRST, I guess.

I guess, in some ways, that's odd. FIRST's biggest fear, I'd suspect, is whether or not they'll have enough money to sustain the program. My biggest fear is that if they find that money, it'll come with strings attached.

FIRST is unique. It's pure, almost, in a sense, since maintains some amazingly noble, forward-thinking ideas about providing people with the opportunity to realize their potential, helping them to get up when they fall, and showing everyone the value of being a good person.

There are no rewards for participating in FIRST except for the personal satisfaction we each feel when we help to make a better person of ourselves and of someone else. That is the most personal thing that FIRST can do for any of us, and so long as that's not lost; for as long as trophies aren't valued, for as long as a win isn't required to secure sponsorship, and for as long as we can still form friendships and alliances with talented, interested, amazing people, FIRST is going to be okay.

At least, where I'm concerned. ...and, um, sorry for this making little to no sense. That's what happens when I write from a stream of consciousness.

I guess at this point in this thread we have to ask ourselves what does FIRST really mean to me. Then we have to question what FIRST means to our schools, our mentors, our teachers, and our communities. Finally we have to ask what does FIRST mean to our sponsors.
FIRST is going to grow, there is nothing we can do about that. At this point, it is entirely up to us to help mold it into what we want it to be. If we start now and work with the people running FIRST, we can get it there.

I will let you think about all of those before I continue my thought.

Continuing and focusing the discussion
 

Thanks for everyone's reply. There's a lot of great thoughts about this program, and problems it face, and potential solutions to to making it easier for this program to survive.

Let's focus on the topic a little bit. I know there are other topics like frustration about how teams are run and qualification for Championship event, but those can be left for another thread.

Couple of things I want to touch upon, and get people to think about: public awareness of this program, the existing School system and how it can support teams, and the nature of FIRST as an organization. I believe it will benefit the discussion if everyone focuses their thoughts in these topics first.


Public awareness:

Like M said, the reward of doing FIRST is the personal satisfaction the participants get every time they build a robot and complete the season. Every time the program made a positive difference in the participants' lives, it's done its job right. The problem is, only those participants got the full reward from the program. The public aren't aware of how much benefit this program is until they have been to a competition, or work with a team.

Really, how do you convince the average person that FIRST is really cool until you expose them to the competition? How do you educate the public about this program and its impact? How do you make lots and lots of people see this so the demand for this program is greater (and thus increasing the support to the teams)?

Surely the media is a really important tool to spread the message, which is about the #1 mechanism out there to pass messages to a large group of people. The school system is another resource too, because a lot of parents have confidence in the schools to educate their kids.

The reason public awareness is so important is kind of like politics. When you show some government representatives that the people want something really badly, and are willing to vote them out if their demand aren't met, then those representatives will be forced to think twice before ignoring those demands. In a similar sense, if the school understands that there is a public demand for that school to have a robotics team, they will think twice about setting the school budget. Just think, if the PTA board is filled with energetic parents who really understand the impact of FIRST, they are more likely to ask the school to do something about it.

That's just the local level of public awareness. In a state wide scale, if the school districts are showing a demand for robotics teams in their high school, it is more likely that the state will do something about it. Again, people = power, when you have lots and lots of people behind the cause.


The question about existing school system supporting FIRST teams:

I totally agree that schools should support teams themselves, and rely less on corporations out there hanging dry by the economy. There are funding in school right now, you can see them at the sport teams and music department. The problem is how to get the school to support the cause. This is where public awareness comes in. With the community is behind the team, it is more likely that the school will help out. When more and more schools are showing their support in the program, and the teams are showing positive results in the students to the school and the district, then it is more likely that more schools will help the teams out.

Once you got the school backing you up, it is much easier for teams to survive. The sheer number of school means a potential of 1 team in every city in the future. We just got to some how get the system to incorporate this new program into themselves.


And finally, before I let everyone go and have some time to think, I want to talk about the FIRST organization itself.

At the current status, they are a non-profit organization, and therefore are extremely limited in money and resources. Everything is tight on budget for them. As more and more teams join the program, the staff to teams ratio will drop lower and lower. They don't have the resource to hire more staff, and as a result they won't be able to support all the teams out there. Right now, they have about 15 staff member. How do you expect them to interact with all 800 teams? In the future, I suspect FIRST can only focus in creating the game, putting together a simple kit of parts with a good additional hardware list, hammer out the game rule, and host the competition at regionals and the championship event. Anything beyond that will be really hard for a non-profit organization to do. If teams want support, they will have to work hard themselves, and form organizations like WRRF.


So, think about those three topics before you go any further thinking about the growth of FIRST. I believe these three topics are essential to the possibility of FIRST's growth. Mean while, other aspect of this discussion are still open, such as "the success and down fall of a bigger FIRST", "returning FIRST participants taking a bigger role after they are done with school", and "more things that can be done to help FIRST expand".

Just one more thing to keep in mind. In my opinion, the point of FIRST is to expose more and more students out there and inspire them to be more interested in science and technology related areas. If the goal of FIRST is to have a positive impact in the culture and future generation of students, they will have to expand the program to every school across the country. It's not a matter of should they do it or not... It's a matter of how.

Heheh I know I am going on a physics feild trip tomorrow and only physics students are allowed to go. My mother asked how many buses are there and I said three coach buses. She was amazed.:D
Our team's actually in our school budget. Unfortunatly our team is in New York so we are not going to be there for very long.

I want to focus the post a little on the growth of FIRST, such as the success and downfall of a bigger FIRST, what we can do to make FIRST bigger and healthier, and more importantly, what are some of the barrier FIRST will have to go through to expand itself in a healthy way.

There are numerous post about "what FIRST means to you". The truth of the matter is, FIRST means a lot of different things to a lot of people. Some of those meanings won't agree with each other, and they don't have to. As long as FIRST is making a positive difference to its participants, that's good enough.

You can do a simple search for these posts. You can tell how much impact FIRST made to all these people by telling how many posts there are.

I understand your purpose of this thread Ken. I too just wanted to help people think about what FIRST means before we try to fix it.

Now, my thought continued…

I will start with an example of the positive growth of FIRST. Sparx. 1126, Webster, NY. Sponsored by Xerox. Mentored by X-Cats 191, also sponsored by Xerox. Here is an example of how an experienced team can help develop a new team. They have structure, they have experience, they have the meaning of FIRST. They didn’t just jump out & start a new team. They GREW a new team. I have a feeling Sparx could be fully self-suficient next year, but they don’t need to be.

How many people involved with FIRST can remember their rookie year? Not their first year on the team, but their team’s first year? How could that year have been made better? I know our rookie year couldn’t have been more fun but, (no offense Chris this was mostly my responsibility) we could have used a bit more guidance & a better idea of what we were getting ourselves into. We were founded by a former FIRSTer turned engineer. Not a group of mentors or another team.

Once our team has secured it’s future I would love to help start another team, but I can’t do it alone. I would need the help and support of my entire team or the entire Rochester community. We all need to work together to help create new teams.

Re: What do you feel about the growth of FIRST?
 

*After thinking for a week and just reading everyone's thoughts on this posting shows that a lot of other FIRST-o-holics understand and feels the growth pains FIRST is experiencing.

The same questions have been on the tables of many regional committee meetings and it is constantly in discussion. Every time I get together with any FIRST volunteer, all we talk about is how to make FIRST better. It is a very serious matter and most FIRST students do not see the situation (just like when your Mom and Dad are discussing family finances in front the kids). Moreover, because the “kids” are not acknowledgeable, they sometimes criticize FIRST’s good intensions. Most of FIRST is run by an army volunteers and a lot of them are business professionals whose time is valuable. FIRST could never afford the price tag of these professional salaries. In addition, these volunteers are never seen by teams because they are not at the competition but are helping with the business side of FIRST.

FIRST is going through a serious growth period. Already, I’ve hear rumors of regionals shutting down due to lack of corp sponsorship and more teams will drop out because of the high price tag of FRC or lack of interest by the schools. I have seen teams beg for funding- this is a negative situation to put students into but will occur more often in the future.
Fortunately, some of the veteran teams are generous enough to help needy teams. Even the National competition may change because of the huge growth and downed economy. The cost to send a team to the Nat Comp is huge. Most teams can’t afford it. The cost to run a Nat Comp is huge. Team that have sponsors with deep pockets this year may discover that funds are now cutted for next year.
So, expect more change and it will be painful.

FIRST Organization from a business point of view- just like any fast growing and successful small company their growth and expansion is feeling the pain of the economy depressed because of the dependency to this country’s economy and corp profits. FIRST business strategy must be revamp to meet these new challenges of event funding, team funding, and corporate interest.

The first ten years has been great, most teams from #1 thru #1000 were resourceful and were able to get the funding necessary to participate in FIRST. As increasingly new teams sign up the limited resources can’t subtend the larger quantity of teams. It is even more difficult for team is urban public schools (like NYC) to raise team funding. So teams are dropping out and some teams have to merge in order to remain in FIRST.

How does FIRST control the growth and maintain their goals and commitments to the students during this period of downed economy?
New competition maybe created like Edurobotic Competition, and Lego (FLL) Senior Competition for the High School student will help spread FIRST mission faster than FRC. The Nat may get scale down even more or split ? (East and West).
What else can students do- get after the FIRST Alumni for mentoring, volunteering, and fundraising and be more tolerable with changes that FIRST must take in the future to survive.

I too am confused and concerned.
:confused:

I wonder how many people involved with FIRST back in 1992 are still involved (I'm talking individuals, not teams) in FIRST?

I know of 2 off the top of my head...

Tim Railey - Technokats (45)
Paul Kane - Dynamos (250)

Both are HS teachers who have been involved since day one.

You can think of the growth of FIRST like ripples in a pond. Some teams start with a bigger splash than others but all can contribute to the wave of change. Of course the bigger question is "where's the shoreline?".



WC

:cool: