I Kept Quiet for far too long. This. Is. WAR!!!

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by Pavan Dave

FIRST isn't what it used to be. Nor will it ever be the same again.

Once in a while I see a comment like this that is totally lost on me. I don't have any knowledge of what FIRST use to be.

Where we are is only of modest importance. And where we are going is what is really important.

Effectively growing programs like FIRST and making a very big impact on our society is a tough organizational management problem that will take some smart and creative people to make it happen.

FIRST is over 200,000 students, 85,000 volunteers, 3,500 institutional participants, and a few dozen paid employees. The institutional leadership/management challenge is not trivial. Solving it is worthy of an article in the Harvard Business Review.

If there is some sort of lost knowledge or magic from the past that FIRST possessed and doesn't today I'd like to know more about it so we can capture it for posterity.