How did you findout about/became involved with in FIRST?

[dictionaria13]

I heard about our team last year, which was the team's rookie year, but I didn't think I'd be interested. A bunch of my friends were on the team, so I heard a lot about it from them. Turns out it's VERY interesting!

[Suitster]

I learned about FIRST at our county fair in 2010, when 1511 set up a full field and was (supposedly) running their robot around (trying to get it to work). I talked with one of their mentors for several hours. I was going to set up a team at our school, but I felt the cost was prohibitive. A year later, 1551 helped set up our team.

[rsisk]

My wife Dona started judging at LA Regional about 2004. Never really understood what she did during the weekend in March, all I knew was the kids and I had the house to ourselves.

Then in 2008 she convinced the school where she was teaching to start an FRC team and asked if I would be the programming mentor. Sure, whatever. Sounded like fun.

Oh boy.... that was the start of something huge!

That year I helped rookie team 2493 Robokong build a robot (wait, what? There are things called omni wheels? How cool is that! Our long based robot steering problems were solved!). The team competed in San Diego, and Dona and I judged in LA.

The next year we added judging in Phoenix to the agenda and I also added field setup/teardown.

Then we added judging at CMP in 2010. In 2011 I became a FIRST Senior Mentor for SoCal, along with adding judging and inspecting at the Alamo regional.

2012, we have now started 12 FRC teams, about the same FLL teams, competed at San Diego, judged in LA, AZ, CVR, SVR, MAR CMP, and CMP. Inspected at LA, AZ, CVR, SVR, and CMP. Control system advisor in LA. Judged 4 FLL Qualifying tournaments and 3 FLL championship tournaments.

Future plans? Start an FRC regional in the Inland Empire and develop Robokong University - training for mentors.... in addition to everything else we do.

On another note, it is interesting to read this thread and learn of all the great ways to get more students involved in FIRST. Great thread!

[GaryVoshol]

I blame it on my daughter's elementary teacher. She told us, "B.. really ought to be on this MindStorms team." (That's what we called FLL, named after the product.) So the next year they started with Volcanic Panic.

The next year, FLL came up with this thing called a Project, and my wife became the project coach.

After 4 years, we thought maybe we ought to help out at the state tournament. We did queuing for technical presentations, and we kept those slow tech judges on schedule! Members of my daughter's now graduated FLL team judged this new thing they had, Jr FLL.

That same year my daughter joined the FRC team. We found that going to competitions was really pretty boring, especially on practice day. Lots of waiting around to see your team on the field for 2 minutes. So the following year we started volunteering. After stints in queuing and pit admin, I became a referee and was asked to be a head referee when we went to the district system and suddenly had more than twice the number of events to cover. Also about that time I started reffing in FLL, and have been one of the state head refs for several years now.

So even though my daughter will graduate from college this year - with the help of thousands and thousands of dollars of scholarships, much of them earned because of her FIRST experiences - I'm staying with it. I want to help give other young people the experiences and opportunities my daughter had. And it's a load of fun!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Back in 1995, my son had joined the TV club at school to follow in Dad's footsteps. I helped out and then in early 96, a robot team had started at my son's school. The team approached the club and told them they needed to do video documentation of the build. So he started shooting and then found out that he might have a shot at going to Disney for the Champs. I assisted with editing and some chaperone duties but never worked on the robot. The next year he abandoned video (thank you!) and started working on the mechanical team. So I took on more chaperone duties covering animation and editing and some shooting. Then the rookie Midwest Regional took place about twenty minutes away. My wife and I attended and somewhere in the middle of the weekend an electrical problem started on the robot. I was called into the pit and have been there ever since. When non-team volunteers were still inspecting, the Midwest Regional didn't have enough inspectors and they kept coming to me asking questions. I mentored the team on robot rules and meeting inspections at the time. Eventually, I was pulled in and then First allowed team volunteers to inspect. That first year I was lead at Midwest and assisted at other events. I was not inspecting officially (didn't arrive until Thursday afternoon) at 2003 Champs but was assigned to help teams that had problems or failed inspection. In 2004 I was asked to be a division lead inspector at champs and somewhere around 2007, First decided they needed someone to point a finger at for Champs and the other three LRIs pointed at me. A few years ago, Russ Beavis decided to step back from leading LRI training and inspection operations to concentrate on his DEKA work. First asked me to take over and gave me the title Chief Robot Inspector. Thanks to Russ for helping me along the way, I couldn't do this job if he hadn't prepared me. Thanks to Frank Merrick who keeps everything going for us at First and thanks to all the people who inspect all year long. They make this one of the most fun things you can do at competitions. I still mentor WildStang electrical students and visit schools who have yet to learn about First programs. I inspect for FTC and Vex tournaments and judge FLL when I can. In my younger (and crazier) days, I mentored as many as 7 FLL teams, WildStang and was an assistant Boy Scout leader all at the same time. I now know you need sometime for sleep and other things like CD where I visit daily.

[LeelandS]

My involvement with FIRST stemmed back to 6th grade, when I joined my middle school's FLL team. Now, at the time, I didn't know what FIRST was. My little mind was not able to comprehend all the talk about Gracious Professionalism and For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology stuff my mentor was throwing at me.

So for a few years, I viewed FLL and "The big robots" as two totally separate entities. That would change in 9th grade, when I officially joined FRC. Before that, I learned about FRC at one of the FLL championships at the University of Rochester. There was an FRC team there modeling out and demoing their robot for Triple Play. That's when they had me. I was hooked. And I've been here even since.

So, looking back, I found out about FIRST in 6th grade when the morning announcements told us about the "Lego Robotics Club".

[JesseK]

I started in 2005, when I notice Georgia Tech put up FIRST flyers around campus. Given that I'd kept my local year-round job through the summers while taking extra classes, I didn't have any internships under my belt. So I started mentoring. I learned quite a bit.

7 years later, after 6 years in the 'real world', I find it very concerning that many upcoming adults expect there to be some magic wand that whisks their problems away. This is deduced from what I read in the news, the way secondary education evolved in the mid-2000's, and from a few interesting peer relationships I've had over the years.

I continue to mentor in FIRST because:

1. It's fun (if it's ever not fun I'll find another way to mentor youth)
2. There's some satisfaction in knowing I've helped upcoming youth become better problem solvers, regardless of whether or not they're strictly engineers
3. There are slim pickins for leadership roles and non-contract technical training at work, even on my own time. Mentoring FRC is essentially the same as both of those in one package.

[V. Gray]

I was on the High Schools VEX Robotics team as an 8th grader, one of about 15 people I think. That year, we went to the VEX International Competition, and my teacher got really excited about robotics. She started our FRC Robotics Team the following year, and that was the formal introduction to FIRST. But we sort of said Hello back in my 6th grade year, when my father started a LEGO Mindstorms robotics club at my school.