Dean's BAE Homework--political propaganda

[sw293]

New Jersey's 12th Congressional District (which includes Trenton, home to the NJ Regional) is represented by Rush Holt, former Assisstant Director at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Holt, who lives in Hopewell Township (also home to team 293) spends a lot of time in the district and in fact just today attended a local town hall meeting. Holt is also a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee and he convened the first "Einstein's Alley" conference with the goal of strengthening central NJ as a hotbed of science, technology and innovation in the 21st century. He would no doubt be more than willing to speak at a FIRST regional.

As I have mentioned earlier on these forums, it behooves winners of regional championships and chairmans awards to write their legislators (state or federal). Your legislator might congratulate your team on the floor of the state legislature or even the US House.

[Elite101]

This would be huge for spreading the FIRST Fever across the country. Furthermore, since it is now just FIRST and no longer US FIRST, maybe the time should be taken out to increase international teams. I know in the NJ Regional, the Vice Consolate of Brazil was there to watch one of the Brazilian teams be chosen for an alliance and end up becoming finalists. If we could just encourage members of the international community to come out and just watch for a day... see what happens and the excitement of a competition... I think it would really help. This would especially be true if they came out to Nationals, where you cannot not cheer or have some feeling of excitement while watching the competition.

[Andrew Blair]

This is a great thing; I just need to buckle down and write. But petey if you havn't mailed that yet, your wiki link is wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST


But the letter does look good. A very good model.

[Petey]

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

This is a great thing; I just need to buckle down and write. But petey if you havn't mailed that yet, your wiki link is wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST

Crap.

Oh, well. As we've seen on /., plenty of politicians are familiar with Wiki and will probably know how to find it if they want to.

But the letter does look good. A very good model.

Thanks, sir...although I am a little disappointed Dean hasn't released some sort of blast about it that would actually inspire all students to do such a thing. Oh well. I bet all his time is taken up selecting his differentiated wardrobe...

--Petey

[MattK]

I think its almost impossible for every school in the country to have a FIRST team when even registration is $6k. There seems to be a major problem with this all... we are loosing companies that are potential FIRST Team sponsors- yet - FIRST is trying to gobble up as many High Schools as possible... the system is growing to fast, and will suffer the consequences at some point.

[Petey]

Agreed. The problem is not mentors, as Dean said. The problem is money.

FIRST needs to make it less expensive or convince the government or some giant corporation to subsidize programs.

But that won't happen as long as similarly expensive football, etc programs don't receive such funding beyond the local level.

--Petey

[Steve Howland]

I just sent mine - to those looking to contact your Sentors, here is a site that I found useful.
http://www.senate.com/stindex.html
It's a directory page - click on your state abbreviation and you will be given direct links to your senator's email adresses and websites. There is also an option to find the congressmen for your district but the site only allows you to contact your personal representative; not the whole state.

[Martinez]

I think this is a good idea. When President Bush spoke during the State of the Union about supporting programs that motivate young people into technology fields (yes I'm paraphrasing), I thought FIRST would be the perfect match. After my rookie year, I felt every school in the country should know what FIRST is and be involved at least in some way.

Sadly, my high school never had a FIRST team and may never get one. I learned about it in college and now am very glad I did. Every person here should be glad they have a Robotics team and can at least get involved at some level. Perhaps it is from my own experiences, but Dean's homework always touches me and have fallen for all the propaganda.

Yes, I could give up on FIRST. Yes, I could take the easy way out and join Chuck pernamently. However, these kids in Owego diserve a team of their own. Lockheed Martin Owego should not only know about it but be actively involved. Its what keeps me motivated, its what keeps me going.

So go out their and get new teams onboard! Go out their and get new sponsors! Talk to your congressmen and be part of the democratic process. Its ok to be active, its ok to be a lobbiest espeically if it is for the betterment of society!

/steps off his soapbox.
Sorry for the Rant. I just fell it should be said.

[KenWittlief]

I think a piece of important information is missing here.

We get government officials to attend events. Then what?

What exactly do we want state and federal government to DO to support FIRST?

We should have the best answer to this question. If we leave it up to them then who knows what their respose will be ?

[nuggetsyl]

Originally Posted by Petey

Agreed. The problem is not mentors, as Dean said. The problem is money.

FIRST needs to make it less expensive or convince the government or some giant corporation to subsidize programs.

But that won't happen as long as similarly expensive football, etc programs don't receive such funding beyond the local level.

--Petey

How much does you fooball team cost your school????? Yet they find money for that.

shaun

[sgeorge]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

How much does you fooball team cost your school????? Yet they find money for that.

shaun

Yes, they do find money for the sports teams and not for much else. That will not change. As long as we need to continue to beg from taxpayers and corporations for funding we continue to prove Dean wrong.
We don't have a shortage of mentors. We have a huge shortage of available funds.
We continue to see teams win regional events and not be able to afford to attend the championship. That is a lack of funds, not a lack of mentors.
FIRST is too expensive for the startup organization to sustain without a lot of outside money to help them along.

Just my 2 cents worth

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by sgeorge

Yes, they do find money for the sports teams and not for much else. That will not change.

I think you have to be more positive. I think that there should be more of a push for Schools to treat FIRST teams like varsity sports. A good way to gain some ground with schools is to try and start a robotics class so that the program is integrated into the curriculum.

[Nawaid Ladak]

You should have your letter handwritten and mailed off for like (whats the price of stamps again, they always seem to go up) $.37USD or $.39USD (w/e it is), that way, it is ALWAYS filtered by hand. and it has a better chance of getting on your congressman's desk. also, you can send a seprete copy to FIRST Place, or Dean's Personal Resedence. with a recipt from Kinko's or the UPS store for like $.10USD.

Im gona do my letter for my team before the Florida Regional, so we can hand it to the Governer himself when he is there on friday.

[Martinez]

The problem I see it is more of communication and publicity then necciarly funds. Yes, the Robotics program is extremely expensive however unlike a football team the money should not be coming from the educational system ie taxpayers but rather through corporations. The idea at least in my mind is to get local industries in technology to support the community through financial investment into a robotics program. Really your comparing apples to oranges.

However, how are we going to obtain the goal of one robotics team to every high school in America and then the world?

People need to know it exist.
The public needs to know the good its doing.
Corporations need to see its worth the investment.

One way to achive this is to talk to our politicians. Constantly they talk about supporting programs that keep kids off the streets, teach them strong moral values and educating them for high tech fields. FIRST does all three, a proven model that works.

Imagine what would happen if Govenour Pataki, Senator Clinton or even President Bush came out and said I support FIRST. This would serve to raise public awarness of the program which in of itself would spearhead new teams.

Close to know one in the Owego area knows about FIRST. I have had three meetings with upper management at Lockheed not just because I'm trying to get their approval but also to educate them as to what it is. They are not even aware of the 30+ Lockheed supported teams.

Really what we need to do is get the word out there. Writing a letter to your Congress Person is exactly that.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

How much does you fooball team cost your school????? Yet they find money for that.

shaun

yeah here in texas they find the money for football by cutting art/music/AP classes.

but I must agree with the above poster that the problem is not mentorship its sponsership . . pearce(1745) has been trying to form a team for the past 5 years, and it was only this year that some how we scavanged 6k before the deadline(see. miracle)