Making FIRST Viral

[JohnFogarty]

Here we are about to start another year of FIRST. FLL begins in a month or so and FTC right after that. Then a few months later we have FRC back in our lives again. So I have a very very serious question on my mind that I think someone out there needs to be paid to think of the right solution.

"How can we make FIRST viral?"

You know we are still the world's most unknown competition and organization that inspires kids to achieve great things.

Take a look at YouTube for a second...type in FIRST Robotics and search by editing your search settings to sort by view count. What do you see? I see that our only high view count video is the i.am.FIRST campaign...which still only has a little over 200,000 views. What else do you see...oh yeah... A DARPA video that has been on the net less than a month that has well over 2 million views. Tell me...why haven't we got a video that even approaches that kind of view count. I watched that Darpa video...It's amazing stuff, but I can honestly say I was more entertained by the Robonauts reveal video than I was of that Darpa video and that video only has 63,000 views.

This is a legitimate problem. I'd much rather see FIRST videos on VINE than videos of people doing the freaking Gas Pedal dance.

Goal for 2014. Get me one FIRST related video over 1,000,000 views. Then we have accomplished something. Which will only be the beginning of the journey.

My thoughts may not make the most sense but I think most of you will understand.