Here is some information about this event:
Event: Science Day on Capitol Hill
Participants: The Science Coalition - a group of college/university representatives (mainly) and some others. Podesta/Mattoon - a DC lobbying group.
Purpose: A day for university professors to lobby congress in an organized way for more funding for technology programs.
FIRST involvement: Dean Kamen was the keynote speaker at a breakfast. The FIRST folks wanted to also show the universities and congresspeople what FIRST robotics is about. Four FIRST teams participated: Teams #53, #116, #122, and #365. The teams consisted of the team robot and 5-6 student and adult representatives.
Teams basically were on hand to show off their robots and to talk with university reps (mostly) and congresspeople (some) about their experience with FIRST.
Dean had about 15 minutes to talk. He brought the I-Bot and what looked like a possible sterling engine. I believe his plan was to talk a bit and then show a video about FIRST. However, hisis talk went overtime and he did not get a chance to even show the video.
I believe that this was a good event to expose more colleges and universities to FIRST. Dean made an effort to encourage more college involvement with FIRST.
From a congress side, no team member spoke to the whole group. Conversation was between individual team members and whoever came over to see the robot or whoever we could corral to talk about it. Some people hung around to talk, while others just looked. Our team (365 - DuPont Miracle Workerz) had more conversations with university professors. We also did speak to staffers of our state representatives.
It was a very nice experience for our team members. It also gave us a chance to interact on a more personal level with members from other teams. We did get a chance to chat with Dean a bit. I asked him about next year's game. His response was "this game is so sick that even I am nervous about it." Relevant fact or misleading clue -- you be the judge.
