I hope that i can spread some light over FRC Israel.
In the first year,2005, we had 16 teams, 2006 had 24 teams and 2007 had 36 teams. 2008 is expected to have 45 teams, and hopefully in 2009 we will have 2 regionals here!
Israel has long been a good show in the Firebots competition winning 1st 2nd or 3rd places year after year. FRC was a natural, and most FRC Israeli schools have had teams in the Firecompetition before having an FRC team.
The Technion is Israel's best technical institute (in which im proud to study
), and it is also FIRST Israel's biggest sponser along with UMI (The Israeli name for General Motors). GM sponsors about 10-15 Israeli teams year after year.
Israel is a natural in FIRST. This year we had the best achievemnt with team 1574 - MISCAR beeing rankes 2nd in Newton Division, and lost in the semis. You can ask the guys from 148 about how it is working with them, i for one know that they are great people, who make awesome robots year after year (3 times in a row regional champs doesn't come that easy).
Many people do not know tat the Israeli FRC has some arab teams, one of them is an all-girl team. Can you imagine that, an all girl arab team! (if you don't know, its very hard for a woman in the muslim religion to develop a career in anything, and in Science and Engenieerin its really special).
We also have 1 team from a Druze village. (its another religion, who speaks arab and keeps its religion in secret so we dont know much about it)
The First Israel regional is a beautifull thing to see, while in Gaza Arabs and Israelis are fighting, in FRC they are forming a winning alliance! Maybe FRC WILL casue world peace, who knows, eh ?
Israel also has more than 40 FLL teams, many of them beeing from Southern Israel, which is considered as an undeveloped region, compared to the Northern and Central parts of Israel.
Dean Kamen has personally visited the first FRC regional in Israel, and we keep expecting to seem him year after year. DEAN PLEASE COME IN 2008!!!
The Israeli FRC regional has grown so big, that the largest basketball stadium in Israel can no longer provide enough space for us, and we will (maybe) move next year to the biggest hangars in Israel, also placed in Tel Aviv.
Jon Mittelman and Greg Needle have voulenteered for 2-3 years in the FRC Israeli regional, and from this year and on Israel will have it's own key voulenteers (oh boy, i hope i can be one of those!).
Also, in the 2007 Regional Shimon Peres, at that time the Prime Minister's replacement (In israel prime minister>>president), and now the President of Israel attended the event and watched a few matchs, and this year he has already made FIRST a Presidential project which will involve the I.D.F (Israeli Defence Force) and Oracle CO.
We dont know how the army will infulence FIRST, but its a known fact that the Israeli Army is the best and most developed technological 'thing' in Israel, and it should support FIRST goals, as it wants those engineers. (I myself am a student for b.sc at the Technion via I.D.F)
You all are welcome to ask any questions. =]