Is business too overlooked by FIRST?

[dcarr]

Just to continue the thought process a bit...

I think FIRST provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to students how engineers and business people can work together and play off one another's strengths.

Too often in my university setting as a CS major I see developers who look down on business people, who in their minds, lack any real skill. And vice versa - business majors with a "hot startup" who just need a "code monkey" to "make it show up on the iPhone."

I think educating students before they get to college can improve the climate in general and improve the likelihood of balanced partnerships that foster innovation.

[FrankJ]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Sorry it was hard to tell if he was serious or not.

Sorry I thought I put the sardonic humor smiley on my post

The OP has the right idea. Business planning & sustainability is a big part of running a First team. Ask any Chairmans winner. You don't get there without a sustained effort.

Anyway look under the mentor resources in the FRC section of First web site. When at a competition go around & talk to the multi year teams. Especially EI & Chairman winners. Part of how they got there is being helpful.

Our Business plan is here

As primarily a robot mentor I am really happy for & proud of our business & outreach teams. We would not be where we are without them. Of they wouldn't have a robot without us.

[Jessica Boucher]

As someone who has lived with this question for the past decade....yes. But it's better. (warning, this is long!)

I was a student in FRC in 99, graduated in 2001. I chose to go to Babson College (#1 in Entrepreneurship for 20 years by US News! Hell yeah!) and only applied to business programs. I also was accepted into UCONN (Storrs), Northeastern, and Bentley.

One of the main reasons for applying to Northeastern was to join 125. After being accepted I received a call from on a wednesday night claiming to be the "dean of the Business school", asking what could convince me to go to NU. I asked how close the Engineering building was. He couldn't tell me, and asked why I cared. I then spent the next 10 minutes explaining FIRST, and when I hung up the phone I knew I wasn't going there.

(Side note: I'm friends with the 125 leadership now and they know this story. We chalk it up to large university problems, and laugh about what might have been had I been there in that time period.)

Upon graduating HS, I had three years of dedication to the program, and zero chance of scholarship. None of the scholarships were for anything outside of STEM majors. I remember the comments and snide remarks I got when I shared I was going to business school, but I didn't care. I knew engineering wasn't right for me, but I could find a way that worked.

If being a business kid in FRC was alienating, being a FRC kid in business school was much of the same. I definitely had a different mindset, different knowledge base. I was the only girl in my sorority with a toolbox, which made me the most popular girl during move-in. I asked questions regarding tech that my professors couldn't answer. In business school, my fascination with the internet was "weird", whereas from a CS or engineering perspective it was "normal".

Fast forward to now. I do feel that I chose the right path, that it prepared me in ways that students who chose engineering will never have. It has made me stronger, more resilient. Even though people still assume I'm an engineer and sneer when I tell them I went to business school, I can tell them that I just "play an engineer on TV". Business school taught me how to deal with people, and how to answer that question correctly.

I kept with FIRST ever since that day in 99 (except for 2003, which I heard was ok to skip ). 15 seasons, 14 years of volunteering, and I love where I am now. Being Chief VC and starting up the NE District are great challenges that I am proud of, and I can't wait to do more in 2015. My husband is in FIRST, and I can't imagine our lives without it.

My day job is awesome too. I stuck with software after graduating college, and now I'm a Salesforce consultant for nonprofits. My FIRST experience helps me every single day with my current clients, and my tech background makes me smarter than the average business school grad. I have a MEd in Instructional Design as well, which I chose to pursue after my study of Learning Management Systems.

***

So, back to the start. Is it overlooked? Yes. Is it better? Definitely yes! There's scholarship money that wasn't there before, not just for business, but for everyone. I know now FIRST needs to focus on STEM careers to stay relevant in their nonprofit market. I LOVE that we're expanding into other realms, as culture change means changing everyone, not just the tech companies.

We've come a long way. We have a long way to go.

[liviamarrs]

As the Chief Community Operations Officer on my team, I work a lot with politicians, STEM professionals, teachers, and business leaders. I always volunteer as a student ambassador at FIRST events, so I meet with a wide range of sponsors in particular. In all these encounters, I never fail to get nervous and uncomfortable when I'm asked about my future plans. I've watched the surprise and even disappointment of countless people as they get less interested in what I have to say when I tell them that I don't want to major in engineering.

I understand that I'm not the poster child for FIRST, but I still represent the incredible impact that FIRST can have on a student's education and life opportunities.

I feel like some of the problems lie in how FIRST markets its programs to sponsors, promising this amazingly huge and talented group of engineers. No one comes out on the field to talk to the future business leaders, the graphic designers, the inspiring activists. The program has developed to the point where sponsors should understand the effect they have in fostering all different kinds of people and interests. I know there has been talk of changing how FIRST fundraises from the top down, so maybe they're already on top of this.

[Mike Schreiber]

I think there are a few reasons you'll never see this focus within FIRST to inspiring business skills:

1) Business Administration/Management is already the most popular college major.

2) A new FIRST teams long term sustainability is not completely up to the students on the team, on successful (surviving/sustainable) teams, this is mostly a mentor driven initiative. This is not to say there are not exceptions, but usually someone needs to be around for more than a few years to keep the team going.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Sorry it was hard to tell if he was serious or not.

Problem of the Internet--why smilies were invented!

[pandamonium]

As a former team captain I was verry excited to go into engineering after all I was a robot nerd. I did a business internship and fell in love. I have felt that business is not adequately represented even with the award. No other high school program is as involved as FIRST. Do I have a degree in engineering No but I do have a solid career I am verry happy with.

[Daskov]

Originally Posted by Mike Schreiber

2) A new FIRST teams long term sustainability is not completely up to the students on the team, on successful (surviving/sustainable) teams, this is mostly a mentor driven initiative. This is not to say there are not exceptions, but usually someone needs to be around for more than a few years to keep the team going.

I would have to disagree. Coming from a heavily student run team, it is up to the students to make the team sustainable. Mentors are never the ones (at least in my experiences) creating new initiatives to undertake, contacting and meeting with new sponsors, or creating documents to help future donorship/sponsorship leads keep track of the past, present, and future team finances. On all teams I have encountered, it is a completely student run section of the team. Not to say that mentors don't help out; if a student has questions or concerns, that is who they turn to.

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Speaking of NEMO it does exist. http://www.firstnemo.org/resources.htm

Thanks for the NEMO shout-out!

We held the 11th NEMO annual meeting at the Championship last Friday in St. Louis. Woodie stopped in to say hi but ended up spending 45 minutes answering questions from the attendees. It was very special.

NEMO is now up to almost 900 registered members. When Kathie and I started NEMO there was almost nothing on the FIRST website re: all the things that needed to be done on a team outside of building a robot. There are many more resources there now. We are hoping to work on updating the mentor-written resource papers on the NEMO site, but need everyone's help.

[DevBal5012]

My team is always stressing the business aspect of the team, after all without a proper administrative side of a team, the engineering side wouldn't be able to do what they do and the team would never progress. I believe FIRST should emphasize marketing and business as a whole and stress this aspect of teams more in the future.

[elschumacher]

So, I've been the Business Head Captain for our team for the past 2 years, and what I've found is that FIRST thinks it does a better job about business kids than it does. Here's an example. Not for the first time, I was asked by judges what I wanted to do in college - IR and Business. It was extremely disheartening to me to see their polite nods and glazing expressions as they turned their attention entirely back to my co-presenter, a future engineer. I wasted a solid twenty seconds in a Chairman's presentation this year justifying my choice of major, and while it helped the presentation in the long run, I don't think I should have felt the need to justify my own future. Another example is the common question of "how many of your alums go into STEM fields?" Since I'm not a STEM-kid, I'm hurting the numbers - thus, because numbers matter, I'm damaging the awards pitch. It may not matter for much, but it's the attitude towards it mattering at all that bothers me.

Of course, I love FIRST, and being in the program has opened my eyes to how cool STEM is. I don't want to do engineering, but I'm in awe of everyone who has the aptitude and drive to do it all. My point is that it's a little frustrating when the program that means so much to me treats me as though I am less important than my build colleagues. FIRST is always going to be first-of-all about engineering, and I wouldn't want it any other way, but I would like to feel as though I'm not incorrect if I choose to pursue my non-STEM interests.

And to back up the student-run thing, our team is almost entirely student-run, mentor-advised. Our mentors are always there to help if we need it, but it's our responsibility to make most decisions regarding the team's well-being and future sustainability.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by elschumacher

So, I've been the Business Head Captain for our team for the past 2 years, and what I've found is that FIRST thinks it does a better job about business kids than it does. Here's an example. Not for the first time, I was asked by judges what I wanted to do in college - IR and Business. It was extremely disheartening to me to see their polite nods and glazing expressions as they turned their attention entirely back to my co-presenter, a future engineer. I wasted a solid twenty seconds in a Chairman's presentation this year justifying my choice of major, and while it helped the presentation in the long run, I don't think I should have felt the need to justify my own future. Another example is the common question of "how many of your alums go into STEM fields?" Since I'm not a STEM-kid, I'm hurting the numbers - thus, because numbers matter, I'm damaging the awards pitch. It may not matter for much, but it's the attitude towards it mattering at all that bothers me.

If FIRST is failing to acknowledge that business is a STEM field, then they are missing the boat. As an economist (and business/scouting team mentor) I can tell you that I use LOTS of math (and science & technology) in my everyday work. I know that business people use complex mathematics as well. Wall Street financial analysts use valuation and risk models that many engineers cannot comprehend. Perhaps FIRST if too focused on the "E" and not enough on the "ST...M".

[BigJ]

As an opposite anecdote, a judge at one of our regionals this year told our students that we produce "too many" STEM majors and not enough business people and that we should try to "be more balanced" (as if we assign what our students become interested in ).

My students were more than a little confused.

[Jessica Boucher]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

If FIRST is failing to acknowledge that business is a STEM field, then they are missing the boat.

Aaaand here's where I disagree. It CAN be a STEM field, but it is not always. Know why Babson sticks out in this list of salaries full of ivies and tech schools? Because they're all going into finance/accounting. And I can tell you all of my friends who were super-finance-focused didn't give a care about my robot business.

FIRST has a lot of competition for non-profit dollars. Not just with the usual suspects (Vex, BBIQ, etc), but with other NPOs. I've written about this before, but there's more "seemingly needier" organizations out there. FIRST falls within the education/job growth category of NPO, and usually "job growth" is not as pressing as the "feeding and housing and eradicating disease" orgs. As FIRST grows to non-tech companies to Make it Loud, this will become more and more prevalent.

They need to be laser-focused when going for grants and large donations, or else they won't get them. This is why I'm very happy for the quiet revolution: scholarships are available, the Entrepreneurship Award, etc. I also believe in the butterfly effect: their experience may inspire a new engineer who didn't think they could go into a STEM career. That also makes my day.

[Jonathan Norris]

YES! I believe that FIRST needs to have a bigger emphasis on entrepreneurship. STEM shouldn't be just about getting a better job, we should inspire our incredible students to start companies and create NEW jobs.

610 has had a great history of helping to develop great entrepreneaurs, the founder of Kik (Canada's largest consumer tech startup), one of the founders of BufferBox (YC, acquired by Google), and all 4 co-founders of my startup Taplytics (YC) are all 610 alumni. And I know there are many other FIRST alumni who have started great companies and are very senior employees at great companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple. I've been saying for years that the experience of building a FRC robot directly relates to building a startup. We need to do a better job of inspiring our students to start great new companies.

Edit: Almost forgot, a talented group of current 610 students are well on their way to adding to that list with Nimja, here is their thank you video.