Posted by Matt Leese.
Student on team #7 from Parkville High School and NASA, Black & Decker, AAI, Raytheon.
Posted on 8/30/2000 8:58 AM MST
In Reply to: Disappointed by lack of FIRST coverage posted by Jason Iannuzzi on 8/30/2000 6:41 AM MST:
Well, as far as Robowars and Battlebots go, they get television coverage because it's very appealling to most people. To the average person it's much more exciting to watch robots destroy each other than it is to watch them put a ball in the goal. I can explain the Robo World Cup though. It might be because their games (soccer) is much easier to understand than anything that FIRST comes up with. People already know what soccer is and don't have to learn new rules about a game.
I think the real reason FIRST doesn't get a lot of coverage is because of a lack of good PR people. Most teams do the PR work themselves and it really needs trained professionals to do it right (I never thought I'd say that PR people were needed
. And as much as I love the people up in NH (i.e. FIRST Foundation), they haven't been able to get consistent news coverage of the event at all. Maybe it's time for a bit more work in this direction?
Matt