Live AMAA with FRC Director Frank Merrick on 1/5 @ 8:30pm EST on Spotlight!

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Overall a pretty good segment. Frank has good responses to most of the questions, and is a good representative for FIRST and a good communicator. While most questions were answered very well, one thing that was rather disappointing is the low priority given to tracking alumni. To me, alumni are the bread and butter results of this program. They are the proof that what we are doing matters. And currently, we just let them all vanish without a trace. This is something that needs to change. FIRST has data on diversity of program participants, but no real data on alumni of program participants (at least none that is publicly available)

Also, I wish I (or someone) would have asked what Frank's thoughts are on practice robots, bag & tag, and the mythical 6-week build season. I'm not looking to re-beat that dead horse here in this thread, but it would be interesting to hear Frank's thoughts on the matter.

In regards of the alumni question, the problem is less of tracking alumni, it's getting alumni to want to be tracked and stay a part of FIRST. Any alumni that wants to stay affiliated with FIRST is already doing that through mentoring, volunteering, or even Chief Delphi. There is a limited database on alumni but it's probably not useful because the majority of alumni are not on it. Most people just look at FRC as something they did in high school and move on. If FIRST can figure out a really neat way to pull alumni back into the system, then that would be great. Until then though, I completely understand why it is a low priority. Especially since many of the best alumni are still a part of FIRST.