**FIRST EMAIL**/SharingFIRST

[Joe Ross]

Is anyone else having trouble keeping track of the new sites FIRST is starting?

First they announced Think Tank, a knowledge transfer site.

The Think Tank (TT) is an application designed to assist teams participating in FIRST Robotics Competitions (FRC) to share ideas, transfer knowledge and discuss technological advancements in the field of robotics engineering. The goals of the TT include helping teams to improve their performance at robotics competitions and to encourage teams to increase their familiarity of the principles of robotics, science, technology, and engineering.

Then came FIRSTCommunity a social networking site for FIRST alumni.

The FIRSTCommunity social site was created to encourage personal and professional networking among FIRST Alumni, Mentors, Coaches, and Volunteers. It’s an amazing opportunity to tap into a network estimated at over one million strong and growing.

And now there is [deleted] a social networking and knowledge sharing site for girls.

SharingFIRST is designed to be an opportunity for the FIRST community to share and collaboratively build an online repository of robotic knowledge and practice, promoting widespread access to the production and design processes of robotics, engineering and competitions strategies. The project serves to promote leadership, especially in young women, and empower our participants through developing expertise in inventing, designing, and creating new products.

Within the past 4 months, FIRST and their partners have started 3 new sites, which all seem to overlap with each other. Earlier this year, there was a thread complaining about how scattered online resources were. Doesn't this make it worse? It seems like starting these three sites will keep any of them from reaching critical mass.