Best Is Good

[LSevcik]

Yes, you are right BEST does not have national media attention nor have they had their nationals at Epcot. Unlike FIRST, BEST is a total volunteer organization made up of dedicated engineers, professionals, and just regular moms and dads that want to make a difference in young people's lives. BEST does not charge fees or have a national headquarters that does fundraising, assembles kits, hire public relations firms or media people. The BEST volunteers that design the game, do accounting, fundraising, purchase kit of parts, assemble kits, run the competitions, do the media, web page etc do it all as volunteers. Hundreds and hundreds of hours with no pay. Why do they do this? Because they want all students to have access to a robotics competition and not have to fundraise to participate.

You are also correct that BEST has a link to FIRST on its website. It has links to lots of things associated with engineering education programs. Kudos to BEST for promoting robotics education. One would think that FIRST could learn something from BEST's example.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I just have one other thought. There are BEST teams that don't like FIRST for some reason, and apparently there are FIRST teams that look down on BEST as FIRST junior. Or atleast that's what this sounds like. I can't understand this mindset. These are both wonderful robotics competitions with the aim of inspiring students. I would think that teams would want to praise other robotics competitions that inspire students. FLL isn't at all like FIRST, but teams support it whole-heartedly. So I'm just confused why someone would want to cut down another program with the same goal as FIRST.