My elevator pitch for FIRST has been tweaked throughout the years, and I've found this short sound byte has worked the best to get people interested and asking questions:
FIRST stands for, "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." Basically, students work alongside engineers and other mentors to build a robot to compete in a given game each year."
One thing I dislike about this pitch is that it leaves out a HUGE chunk of people/jobs on a team, but to list off all the jobs and hard work that go into a FIRST team could potentially take days...which I'm totally not opposed to to, but this could leave a normal-non-robotics-obsessed person feeling overwhelmed and might lead to them not wanting to ask questions.
Anywho, this one seems to work for me!
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!