Well First off covering FIRST would be cool but you have to go First how would you like to cover it.

So far I've heard MTV, ESPN, Discovery, and TLC mentioned a bunch and heres what I see from them.

First you need a type of show you want to have, for instance, you want MTV, well somehow you have to make your series dramatic, not dramatic as drink mountain dew to you pass out and get rushed to the hospital, but it has to be generally fun to watch. But what would you watch, nationals, regionals, build season? I would kinda forsee something like " What happens when 5 single nerds males meet up with 5 single girls nerd meet up and try to build a robot.. but theres a twist!! 3 of them have to go before the end of build season," you would have a hard time to keep it interesting in the view of the general public and keep a fair view on FIRST. In this case you have bad press.. a distorted view of FIRST. ( mayb I'm more thinking of fox tho )

ESPN sounds like we've been there done that, and relations were not strong.

Discovery Channel, everyone keeps talking about there series but remember they run a lot of specials, ie ( all their dinosaur animations.. look what I can do on the computer now! shows )

If you could get an hour special on FIRST this would prob. be the ideal place to do it. But you really need to consider what kind of show they do. Do you do it AMERICAN chopper style. Do you Monster Garage it? Monster garage seems a it? Or would you do a documentory on FIRST in general and concentrate on a few teams.

In this Monster Garage style would seem to be the best offer.. but you'd also have to cover 42 days ( or whatever it is ) and competition ( nationals and regionals ) in an hour show. It could be done as a mini series, mayb. This is prob. our best bet at any type of show however 1 team would get all the press, and it would need to be stressed that FIRST is a real program and everyone can get involved.

I just like the idea because everytime the team gets something for free I wana hear " FREEBee " heh..

if you want TLC.. well you've gotta do like trading robots where you have 2 days to redesign the robot

but see this is the challenge I could go on forever about this.. You first have to spin an Idea ( unless you just want plain and simple documentory ) then you decide on which station it would best flow with.. and you present them to mayb the top 3 choices.

Obviously this could not really be done without going through the powers that be.

But instead of arguin about which stations we would look good on.. spin a tv show or an idea to flow with.

Dan

Ohh and Ps. nobodies mentioned Comedy Central yet.. in this case the whole passing out on mountain dew is a good idea

A lot of there shows are regular series. They usually show the specials on sunday.
Nah more like Junkyard Wars.

There's always public access.

What is the obsession with putting FIRST on TV?

To be honest, I see it as a waste of time, and as soon as FIRST starts pandering to the masses (as it already has) the quality of the program will decrease.

How has it been pandering to the masses. The only thing as far as I can tell was that the game was made simpler which is a god send for everyone.

Then FIRST would become an elitist orginization and that would be far far worse.

What's wrong with an organization that is composed of the "elite"?

I'd rather belong to a group that is composed of people of a certain higher caliber, than a group that allows anyone membership.

And making the game simpler dumbs down the program. It's not a god-send, it's a curse.

Personally, I think FIRST should be somewhat elitist, and it should be someone exclusive. That would mean only people who have a genuine interest in it would participate.

If FIRST were on TV, we would have to go down to the level of the general populace.

You know, the same people whose newspapers are on a 4th grade reading level?

This, in my opinion, is a bad thing.

Ackkk that was never the original intent of the program. It's intention was to get the people who would have never really had a chance to participate and get interested in science and technology.
Not really. Even the simplest souding of challenges can be quite complex to complete. Take robot sumo and trinity firefighting. They both have very very very easy to understand tasks. One is to push the opponents robot out of the ring and the other is to navigate a room and estinguish a candle. Both remaining quite simple for people to understand yet the robots usually become quite complex.
Junkyard Wars is an excellent example of a very educational show while remaining entertaining. Of course it sometimes goes astray but it usually includes something educational.

Actually, yes it was. Go back a read some of the materials that were produced for the early FIRST competitions, up through the second half of the last decade. Talk with team mentors that were around then. Listen to, and read transcripts of, the talks that Dean and Woodie gave at the time.

You will see phrases like:

- "The Olympics of Smarts"
- "FIRST is not your father's science fair; this is bigger, and better - and harder"
- "The educational community in this country is full of programs to help the underachievers and the poor performers - but what about those that do well? Why should we leave them out in the cold, with no dedicated programs to help and nurture THEM?"
- "Yes, we are elitist - we are SUPPOSED to be!"
- "How else can we support the best and the brightest students that we have?"
- "FIRST is the place where the nerds and geeks congregate - and prepare to change the world."
- "FIRST teams are the academic cream of the crop."

FIRST was not originally designed to be a wide-open, anyone can join, all-inclusive, no qualifications required, free-for-all. It was not supposed to be for just anybody, it was supposed to be hard get in. Members of FIRST teams were supposed to be selected from the "best and brightest."

We can argue for a long time about how and why it happened, but FIRST has moved away from this philosophy. We can then argue for a lot longer about whether this is good or bad. But before everyone gets all huffy and indignant about how FIRST has changed - or, alternately, about why it took them so long - think about this. What is wrong with this approach? Why shouldn't FIRST be for the intelligent/academic elite? Why shouldn't it be intended for just the very best students?

Practically every football, basketball, baseball, and other high school varsity sport team in the country has a well-established program to ensure that only the best players of all the applying candidates make it on to the team. You have to practice, you have to try out, you have to pass a series of qualifier workouts, you have to demonstrate an acceptable set of skills, and you have to survive a series of "cuts" to make it on the team. People understand this process, and accept it. Why should FIRST be any different? Isn't having something where you have to earn your way on to a team by being smart a good thing?

Why is it OK to be "elitist" when we select people to be on a team to hit rocks with sticks, but not OK when we try to reach the special group of students that embody the intellectual capital that will define the future of this country?

-dave

I've always viewed FIRST as an organization that hopes to show people how amazing and necessary and ameliorative engineers and technological professionals were. I'll freely admit that I'm certain my ideas and hopes for what FIRST can accomplish are not based in esteemed tradition, founded upon speeches I didn't hear when I wasn't around in 1992 or 1998, even, or that those ideas are still unsanctioned and disliked. So, that said, I'm not sure that my perspective holds relevance when discussing this.

But, how do you inspire an elite few to go on to do something they intended to do anyway? How do you inspire and help people who are already experiencing the benefits of privilege afforded to them by their existing abilities and talents?

Or, put another way, what criteria might one use to determine if someone with no interest in science, engineering or technology contains the potential to perform with some elite team in some elite robotics competition?

Elitism is based on privilege and ability. Inspiration is for those who might have neither. How do you reconcile that difference?

I'm not suggesting that the you're lying about the original intent or anything, Dave, but I just can't get my head around how that method could possibly work. I'd appreciate it if someone could take a moment to explain how elitism and inspiration go hand in hand, or, if its more appropriate, that they don't go together at all and that inspiration is a manufactured sort of faux-goal for FIRST.

All I have to say is the robot Shows don't do well....Period. Keep it on Nasa and maybe make more advertising videos for schools in the off season. Remember most places it's still not "cool" to learn anything, or be a geek. Nothing is wrong with being a geek!!!!!
I know I'm harsh but it's the truth.

Battlebots made it through like 3 or 4 seasons on comedy central who most of the time likes to can shows after like 3 years

What bothers me is FIRST says it wants to "change the culture" and then it only appeals to the intellectually elite and leaves the common man in the dust and basically challanges them to either get it or get left behind.
You can't change the culture unless you appeal to the masses. So what is it FIRST intends to do? Inspire the masses or give the acredemically elite another activity that feeds their minds?
I joined FIRST because it was a means to inspire kids who did not see any other eason to go to school but to "hang out" and wait to graduate and see what happens afterwards. The X-Cats have students from the acedemic spetrum from top line IB students to common students who are borderline cases. We may not build the best robots but we're building better students in the long run and means much much more.

In this day and age, you don't have to get something onto organized media like television or newspaper to get it out, all you need is the internet.

After reading about some team (sorry, don't remember who said it or their team number) applying for a reality TV show about the build season, I got interested in doing something similar myself. There is at class at my school where students go around filming interviews with students about relevant (and sometimes irrelevant) subjects and compile these into a monthly newscast. If these students were recruited to take footage of the build and compile these into weekly 'reality TV' type shows which could then be webcast. Along with a constant webcam running in the robotics room, our site could help recruit people to the team or at least just introduce them to what we took part in. If everyone on our team told one of their non-robotics friends about it and then they told their friends about it and so on and so forth, we could essentialy have a web show about the FIRST Robotics Competition.

This show would only reach a few people outside of our team, but if other teams did this as well, we could have several shows on the internet about the FRC and not have to bother with television at all.

These are just my wierd concepts, if you have any way to make them work, please tell me.

Exactly. Thank you Mr. Lavery.