You need to CARE!

[Schnabel]

So this subject was kinda brought up in the Google Trends thread.

More and more people gain knowledge of FIRST every day, and we have a pretty strong force of students and mentors out there to help this happen, but once people know about FIRST, maybe they just don't care about it any more. Or on the flip side, maybe they just don't care to know more about it.

So my question is, how would you make someone who has no interest whatsoever in FIRST actually care that it's even there when they:
A) have no previous knowledge of FIRST and don't want to learn about it or
B) know about FIRST, and just don't care?

[Akash Rastogi]

"20 years from now you might be looking for that one machine that takes you off dialysis, the invention that gives your life freedom to move around during a session. For all you know it won't be there. It won't be around because in the classroom was a kid out there with the potential to make it and you didn't push him or her hard enough to go into FIRST or into engineering. Now you're sitting at home in your uncomfortable chair going through dialysis, your home as a prison for hours at a time. Live with it, because you didn't help that one kid promote anything better.

That's what I'd tell someone who knew of FIRST and didn't care what it was. Kinda grim, but I believe in it.

[Steve W]

The best way I know of is to get them to an event and show them around in the pits. Get them to talk with the students and success is sure to follow. It did with me.