While sponsorship is important, one of things I feel that is sometimes overlooked is how the sponsors participate and interact with their team. Some teams get technical help from their sponsors, while others just get a check.
For 1089, I am grateful that we have a corporate contact at BMS who actually knows what's going on in our team. He's an incredibly busy man, but he really has put heart set in our program. At the NJ regional, he actually had put his hands in and was working with the students on our robot! At nationals, when I called him from Atlanta to let him know how the BMS teams were doing, he said "So, did you fix that power drainage problem?" -- this man knew what our students were doing, and was genuinely interested in how our team (and the other BMS teams) were doing. It made me proud to know that we have corporate sponsors with genuine interest.
There's so much to say about a sponsor who gets involved and cares about your team over one who just signs a check.
I'm not trying to play the "my sponsor is better than yours" game, by ANY means, but I am just saying that I've come to appreciate that people who work in big business are STILL people who care -- not just about how their money is being spent, but how this program will help benefit the future.
Man, FIRST is amazing
