QUESTION OF THE WEEK!!!

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Posted by Matt Leese.

Student on team #7 from Parkville High School and NASA, Black & Decker, AAI, Raytheon.

Posted on 8/1/2000 6:52 PM MST


In Reply to: QUESTION OF THE WEEK!!! posted by Andy Grady on 7/30/2000 10:46 PM MST:



I'm going to go out on a limb with this one and say the National Mall in Washington, DC. The only problem is that there isn't a stadium but I figure that if Disney can put up a tent stadium so can the federal government. After all this is the FIRST National (well, really international, but most of the teams are from the US...) Championship. The main advantage is talk about publicity. I'm pretty sure a lot of news organizations would cover something with 10,000 people on the National Mall. Space would could be a problem but there is a lot of National Park Land around. I guess this most likely won't happen but I guess wishful thinking is okay.

Matt

[archiver]

Posted by Mike Sperber.

Engineer on team #175, BuzzRobotics, from Enrico Fermi High School and UTC/Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems.

Posted on 8/2/2000 6:32 AM MST


In Reply to: Re: QUESTION OF THE WEEK!!! posted by Matt Leese on 8/1/2000 6:52 PM MST:



Just about any city can play host to Nationals, with benefits for each one: Chicago is centrally located, Washington DC would would have the draw of the national media and interest of the politians, etc.

However, despite all the 'problems' with Disney (price, distractions, etc.), there are a lot of benefits that I don't think are being fully realized. There is no other venue, that I can think of, which can almost guarantee visibility to people from across the US at one time. By holding the event at Disney, Disney takes care of bringing people to the Orlando area and EPCOT, and they do a great job at that. But, more needs to be done to bring the people from the gates of EPCOT, into the FIRST stadium and pits. There is no other place that you can touch so many people at one time, with very little effort.

Disney did a great job this year by putting FIRST into their EPCOT activites guide and map, but more needs to be done. If you build it, they will come - well, Disney and FIRST built it, now we all need to work with Disney and FIRST to make them come.

just my thoughts
-mike