[Kris Verdeyen]

... is the sheer audacity that Dean Kamen had when he concieved it. A man looks at a society that values entertainers and athletes more than the people who do the work, and decides to change the world.

Just like that.

There was nothing clichéd or cheesy about the way he decided to do it, either. He didn't lobby Congress for "Be Kind to Engineers Day", he created a grass-roots program that, even today, a little over a decade after its inception, we can already see working. The culture of sports and music and movies is becoming a culture of sports and music and movies and engineering. The biggest example of the world shifting is the Battlebots phenomenon. Granted, it's not perfect, and doesn't share the same core values that FIRST does, but it has engineers being interviewed like they were athletes, and that's a step towards our goal.

I'm proud to be a part of FIRST.