Germans in FIRST?!?

[GermanZod]

Hi there

My name is David and I was an exchange student in Oconomowoc, WI back in 1999. This was the first year our high school participated in the FIRST competition as team No 269. We had such an awesome time, words just can't describe it.

I was so thrilled by the competition that I tried to start a German team, too.

First off, I showed all the video documentation we had done to my class mates at school. They were in for it but the harder part of course is to get a sponsor for your team.

Luckily I live in Bochum which is right in the "Ruhrgebiet" (a district that is very industrial) with the car manufacturer Opel (part of GM) in my city.

So I collected all my videos, made a presentation and even got an appointment with the PR manager of Opel to show him what I got.

Unfurtunately I never heard from him again after the meething although he told me that he would contact me after talking to some leaders....

I don't want to stop your enthusiasm and your motivation but keep in mind that Germany's economy isn't doing too well and I bet you won't find a lot of companies (and I'm thinking about bigger ones that could most probably afford it in contrast to smaller companies) that are willing to have some engineers work for the competition and not for them... and to spend thousands of dollars (imagine... shipping, parts and whatsoever and also getting the whole team over to the US!!!).

If you still wanna try it (maybe we can get MORE (say like... 10) of us (that's exchange students who have participated in the FIRST competition) together) just let me know... maybe we can all talk to various companies and try to get one big team going (although I imagine that would probably be really hard logistically...).

I'm gonna start working for Porsche in September. So when I have established myself there I might try to get them to start a team!

We'll see... I hope we can get a German team going sometime in the future