Why these seven countries?

[XaulZan11]

I'm writing a paper about, among other things, the spread or expansion of FIRST. According usfirst.org, teams come from seven countries: Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, U.K., U.S. I'm wondering why FRC has spread to these seven?

[Guy Davidson]

I'll go with the ones I know:

US - FIRST was started here, and spread here.
Canada/Mexico - boardering countries, hence much easier to travel, ship, etc.
Israel - Israel is one of the biggest hubs of technological development outside of the US, and home to many succesful companies. I am not familiar with the whole story of how FIRST got to Israel, but I was not the least bit surprised when I found out that it is there.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

I'm writing a paper about, among other things, the spread or exampansion of FIRST. According usfirst.org, teams come from seven countries: Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, U.K., U.S. I'm wondering why FRC has spread to these seven?

Are you writing your paper on the expansion of FIRST or FRC? (The countries you listed are only the areas where FRC has expanded to.)

If you are writing on the expansion of FIRST, you must include:

• United States
• Brazil
• Canada
• Mexico
• Peru
• Chili
• Austria
• Denmark
• France
• Germany
• United Kingdom
• Benelux
• Turkey
• Sweden
• Norway
• Switzerland
• Spain
• Iceland
• Portugal
• Lithuania
• Hungary
• Australia
• China
• Japan
• Hong Kong
• Israel
• Japan
• Korea
• Jordan
• Singapore
• Saudi Arabia
• Taiwan
• Egypt
• South Africa
• Netherlands

Remember FIRST does not equal FRC!

[DonRotolo]

Language may have something to do with it. Also, for some counties, you will find one or a few very dedicated supporters that literally brought FRC to that country. Brazil may fall into this category.

Don

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

I'm writing a paper about, among other things, the spread or expansion of FIRST. According usfirst.org, teams come from seven countries: Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, U.K., U.S. I'm wondering why FRC has spread to these seven?

As far as Brazil, perhaps contacting someone from team 383 would be wise to find out some answers.

http://wiki.chiefdelphi.com/index.php/383

Província de São Pedro High School has been participating in the FIRST robotics competition since 2000, being the first non-English speaking language school to take part in FIRST.

The countries make sense in natural expansion: Mexico & Canada for reasons stated above.. closest to the home base of FIRST.

UK makes sense.. Language reasons come to mind. Easy to be in a competition when you have the language set already.

Team 759 was the first one from that country. We competed with them in NYC in 2002 and beyond and a former Team Mentor and parent on 237 who has since passed away helped them that year from build season through competion season.

http://wiki.chiefdelphi.com/index.php/759

Israel is an unknown.. the sites for the teams involved are monstly incomplete on the Wiki site, but it looks as if a few of the pioneers in the 2005 Pilot over there decided to jump aboard to this after getting involved in the International Fire Fighting competition and then "graduated" to FIRST.

What or who in particular brought FIRST to Israel? Who knows.

Maybe it was Dean himself doing work over there with DEKA or any of his other companies.. idk.

There were some people here who actually volunteered at the Pilot and the first "real" regional over there who browse CD.
Maybe they can offer some more in depth reasons/explanations.


The last is the Netherlands. LEGO, who has always been a huge supporter/sponsor of FIRST by the LEGO League, is based over there and there are a ton of FLL teams over there...

It would make sense that FRC was the next logical step for these teams who were revolutionizing FLL right in LEGO company's backyard..

http://www.team2037.com/2007season/about.php

The about section kinda goes into some detail about the first FIRST team from the Netherlands, but contact them for more info.

I'm sure we'll see a lot more teams from the Netherlands participate in FRC in the future.

[Bomberofdoom]

As far as I know, the idea of FIRST in Israel first came up when a couple of guys from the Technion of Israel in Haifa went to one of the Championship events of FIRST in Atlanta, and they noticed the FRC and the whole concpet of raising more people searching for careers in engineering, and said "Why don't we do this over here, in Israel?". So they contacted FIRST and got some couple of volunteers from the US to come and help try to bring the project to Israel. The details of the project where brought in front of the Ministry of Education of Israel and they accepted the project as a high school project in technology for schools in Israel.

First year there were around 16 teams, the regional competition was in a confrence building, if I'm not mistaken, near the Technion and the following year, because of the expansion of the project across the country, the regional competition was transfered to the Nokia Hall Stadium in Tel Aviv, which is a sports stadium for the israeli basketball team Maccabi Tel Aviv.

I'm quite sure there's lots of mistakes in what i said and I hope someone will correct me. I might try to contact the Technion guys who started the project. Would be nice to write an article about how FIRST started in Israel.

[Tottanka]

I hope that i can spread some light over FRC Israel.
In the first year,2005, we had 16 teams, 2006 had 24 teams and 2007 had 36 teams. 2008 is expected to have 45 teams, and hopefully in 2009 we will have 2 regionals here!

Israel has long been a good show in the Firebots competition winning 1st 2nd or 3rd places year after year. FRC was a natural, and most FRC Israeli schools have had teams in the Firecompetition before having an FRC team.
The Technion is Israel's best technical institute (in which im proud to study), and it is also FIRST Israel's biggest sponser along with UMI (The Israeli name for General Motors). GM sponsors about 10-15 Israeli teams year after year.

Israel is a natural in FIRST. This year we had the best achievemnt with team 1574 - MISCAR beeing rankes 2nd in Newton Division, and lost in the semis. You can ask the guys from 148 about how it is working with them, i for one know that they are great people, who make awesome robots year after year (3 times in a row regional champs doesn't come that easy).

Many people do not know tat the Israeli FRC has some arab teams, one of them is an all-girl team. Can you imagine that, an all girl arab team! (if you don't know, its very hard for a woman in the muslim religion to develop a career in anything, and in Science and Engenieerin its really special).

We also have 1 team from a Druze village. (its another religion, who speaks arab and keeps its religion in secret so we dont know much about it)
The First Israel regional is a beautifull thing to see, while in Gaza Arabs and Israelis are fighting, in FRC they are forming a winning alliance! Maybe FRC WILL casue world peace, who knows, eh ?

Israel also has more than 40 FLL teams, many of them beeing from Southern Israel, which is considered as an undeveloped region, compared to the Northern and Central parts of Israel.
Dean Kamen has personally visited the first FRC regional in Israel, and we keep expecting to seem him year after year. DEAN PLEASE COME IN 2008!!!

The Israeli FRC regional has grown so big, that the largest basketball stadium in Israel can no longer provide enough space for us, and we will (maybe) move next year to the biggest hangars in Israel, also placed in Tel Aviv.

Jon Mittelman and Greg Needle have voulenteered for 2-3 years in the FRC Israeli regional, and from this year and on Israel will have it's own key voulenteers (oh boy, i hope i can be one of those!).

Also, in the 2007 Regional Shimon Peres, at that time the Prime Minister's replacement (In israel prime minister>>president), and now the President of Israel attended the event and watched a few matchs, and this year he has already made FIRST a Presidential project which will involve the I.D.F (Israeli Defence Force) and Oracle CO.

We dont know how the army will infulence FIRST, but its a known fact that the Israeli Army is the best and most developed technological 'thing' in Israel, and it should support FIRST goals, as it wants those engineers. (I myself am a student for b.sc at the Technion via I.D.F)

You all are welcome to ask any questions. =]

[GeorgeTheEng]

I think you business and political connections also play as large part, as they do in how the events grow within the US.

For Brazil, take a look at the bio of FIRST's Vice Chairman, Jim Utaski.
http://www.usfirst.org/who/content.aspx?id=70

Also, if I remember correctly, the original Brazilian teams were sponsored by J&J.

[Janet Schoettle]

Some years back, when US FIRST became FIRST, I understood that some of the large corporations which sponsored US teams wanted to start teams where they had overseas operations. This may be one reason FIRST spread beyond the US.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Bomberofdoom

As far as I know, the idea of FIRST in Israel first came up when a couple of guys from the Technion of Israel in Haifa went to one of the Championship events of FIRST in Atlanta...
...I'm quite sure there's lots of mistakes in what i said and I hope someone will correct me. I might try to contact the Technion guys who started the project. Would be nice to write an article about how FIRST started in Israel.

I'm not sure the entire story either, but you left out one detail, the work done by Alisha Wallenstein. She worked with GM (UMI in Israel?) to help spread FIRST to Israel, including speaking to the Minister of Education. She is now the Israeli Regional Director.

[Greg Marra]

I have a list of teams broken down by quantity per region. Maybe you will find it useful:

http://thebluealliance.net/tbatv/teamlist.php

[dtengineering]

The history of FIRST in Canada is somewhat complex, as the international version of FIRST was preceded by... what was it called... Canada FIRST? I'm not personally up on all the ins and outs and details as we did not get involved until the FIRST Canadian Regional (now the GTR) was up and running and Canada FIRST was no more.

My understanding, however, from those who have tried both, is that this is a good thing, and I believe you can find out more from team 188, Woburn Robotics, the first non-US FRC team.

Jason

[Bomberofdoom]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I'm not sure the entire story either, but you left out one detail, the work done by Alisha Wallenstein. She worked with GM (UMI in Israel?) to help spread FIRST to Israel, including speaking to the Minister of Education. She is now the Israeli Regional Director.

Oh my Gosh! You're soo right!!!!
Alisha has been extremely supportive in all of the FIRST Israel activties. She's the most active and lively person in the directory of FIRST Israel and I feel she's a real inspiration to all the FIRST fans in Israel. (that's all I know about her, including what you said, Lave). Oh, ok well she was once in an FRC team when she was in High School in the US.

Thank you Alisha!!!!

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Tottanka

Israel is a natural in FIRST.

Liron, this whole post is inspirational and thought provoking. Thank you so much for sharing this information. It immediately made me think of something.

If you have done this already and I don't know about it, I apologize.
Have you made a video of your team/teams sharing this information? If you have, I'd love to see it. If you were to consider doing something with all of the teams or several of the teams together from Israel along with interviews from the volunteers you've mentioned and others that make FIRST Israel happen - it would be totally amazing. Again, if this has been done, I apologize. This is just such a good post showing those of us in the CD community what FIRST in Israel is like and some of the ways it is spreading its mission and opening doors of opportunity to students within the traditional cultures that otherwise would not be opening.

Jane

PS - to the 1st poster, John - have you considered contacting FIRST and asking for a brief interview? This is good stuff and is a part of our FIRST history. Good luck with your paper!

[Tottanka]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Liron, this whole post is inspirational and thought provoking. Thank you so much for sharing this information. It immediately made me think of something.

If you have done this already and I don't know about it, I apologize.
Have you made a video of your team/teams sharing this information? If you have, I'd love to see it. If you were to consider doing something with all of the teams or several of the teams together from Israel along with interviews from the volunteers you've mentioned and others that make FIRST Israel happen - it would be totally amazing. Again, if this has been done, I apologize. This is just such a good post showing those of us in the CD community what FIRST in Israel is like and some of the ways it is spreading its mission and opening doors of opportunity to students within the traditional cultures that otherwise would not be opening.

Jane

PS - to the 1st poster, John - have you considered contacting FIRST and asking for a brief interview? This is good stuff and is a part of our FIRST history. Good luck with your paper!

It's a great idea, but it's a video that will take time to make, at least until the regional. Be sure that me and my team will adopt your idea and try making something like that.
Thanks =]