[Ken Leung]

Very well said, John and Colleen, and others.

Exposure, education, and inspiration… Those are the essential elements when you describe the success of FIRST. You cannot fully understand the whole FIRST experience and its success without knowing what each of what those mean. You can’t inspire people without teaching them a few things in the process, and you can’t educate people about science and technology and other things without exposing them to the application of them. It is hard to tell the whole story really quickly… After all, how do you describe your lesson in Life with just a few sentence?

You know, the amazing thing about FIRST, is that it’s actually fun for people, and it motivate them to do things just because they will have a good time, unlike going to school or doing homework or taking tests. Students actually want to do things because they want to win, or build a cool robot, or make a really good animation… And teachers want to do it because its fun to teach different things, AND you can see the result in a relatively short time.


Depending on each person’s experience and personality, they can be inspired by different things and learn whatever they can in the process. And that’s the key right there. Because EVERYONE is different in their own way, they are able to get different things out of it and do whatever they want to see happening base on their experience. That’s why there are so many different lines drawn out there regarding the success in FIRST, and what FIRST mean to each person… Everyone wants different things.

It is very difficult to draw a general picture of FIRST when every part of the scene is so complicated. Definitely specific parts of the big picture only show a small part of it.


Remember when Dean said, “Everyone here is a winner” every time he made a speech at award ceremony? This is what he is talking about. There are just not enough awards out there to recognize every success and accomplishment.


The success of the FIRST organization, I think, is it’s able to spreading its words and get to so many different people at different part of the country and inspire each of them to start their own program related to Science and Technology, and the world out there.

The Team’s success is they are able to take advantage of this opportunity to expand themselves into programs that continue to spread the full benefit, and inspire, educate, and expose their members about Science and Technology, and the world out there.

The participant’s success is they are able to spend time in their team and the program, and get the most out of them.

Over all, the success of both FIRST and its teams is they are able to take advantage of an environment of a competition, and make a positive difference in people and their path in Life. People learn by doing things, by interacting with other people. People find their path of Life by walking through it. And that’s what FIRST does to people, it give them an experience they will never forget, and its happening at this moment right now.


I can’t help but think that the reason why FIRST’s mission is so simple because they want to give everyone the freedom to create what they want, which is the right way to do it. After all, you shouldn’t tell people how to live their life… You can only show them the paths. Sure, you can say “FIRST should concentrate in inspiring this and teaching that”, but at the end, some people will get inspired by it (science and technology in this case), some other people will benefit from the process and decide to do something else.

I think the way to look at this question, is to understand that the success in this program is to come up with your definition of success, and going through the process to achieve that.