fundraising and beer companies

[Kevin Sevcik]

I think the real point here is that a beer company might be sponsoring a team for the exact same reason that NASA and Lockheed and others do. These companies have no products to sell to the public, they're just interested in encouraging kids to be engineers or to go to college and be something.

First off, engineers most certainly work at a brewery full time. There's a awful heck of a lot of mechanical equipment there, and someone has plan maintenence schedules, decide when to replace things, analyze process data for any excursions, etc. Breweries aren't that much different from chemical plants. The only difference is that you can drink the stuff that comes out of breweries.

Secondly, FIRST isn't just about engineering. I've seen quite a few students come out of our chairman's award team with a healthy interest in business. There's even an entreprenuership award. And beer companies certainly need business people.

So, I think a beer company sponsoring a team is only a problem if the company is advertising beer. A Bud Light logo on the side of a robot is bad. An Anheuser-Busch logo probably wouldn't be.