DoD Sponsorship of FIRST

[ChuckDickerson]

Thank you for your input. Do you have specific knowledge or are you speculating?

[ebarker]

I'm just reading tea leaves here. There are several things going on from my observations. There are discussions related to support of FIRST programs and there is efforts that Dean mentioned regarding creating a national brand awareness campaign like the Girls Scouts does.

DOD and the DOD contractors (and others) are very interested in getting on board. It just take time. Sometimes a LONG time. The military is rapidly moving toward robotics platforms for land, sea, and air.

IMHO DOD gets value at Nascar (recruitment) and they will get value at FIRST as soon as they can figure out how to get it done. I met some DOD related people in Atlanta last year. They know we are here.

It would be good to see teams funded in a similiar fashion as NASA teams.

I was basically suggesting that we wait until the announcement from FIRST come out regarding the partnerships Paul Gudonis and Dean Kamen mentioned come out.

[ChuckDickerson]

Originally Posted by ebarker

I'm just reading tea leaves here. There are several things going on from my observations. There are discussions related to support of FIRST programs and there is efforts that Dean mentioned regarding creating a national brand awareness campaign like the Girls Scouts does.

DOD and the DOD contractors (and others) are very interested in getting on board. It just take time. Sometimes a LONG time. The military is rapidly moving toward robotics platforms for land, sea, and air.

IMHO DOD gets value at Nascar (recruitment) and they will get value at FIRST as soon as they can figure out how to get it done. I met some DOD related people in Atlanta last year. They know we are here.

It would be good to see teams funded in a similiar fashion as NASA teams.

I was basically suggesting that we wait until the announcement from FIRST come out regarding the partnerships Paul Gudonis and Dean Kamen mentioned come out.

I agree 100% that they get return on their investment in racing, etc. via recruting. I've just been "fighting this battle" if you want to call it that for years internally and I have seen no signs that "they" are figuring it out. We know how to do it, we have plenty of working examples, just call NASA and ask how they do it. I am just hoping there is some big secret going on between FIRST and the DoD that we don't know about yet. If they didn't want the cat out of the bag though then Paul shouldn't have said anything about it at Kickoff. There is a big press release about the SAIC partnership. The JCPenney support is well known. Dunno about AT&T. I can only assume the others like the utilities/power companies are possibly going to be regional sponsors or something. It's also that the DoD is just so much larger than all the others and that it could have a positive global impact that has me wondering.

Of course the last thing I want to do is mess up some grand plan between FIRST and the DoD if there is such in the works. But Paul shouldn't get our (maybe it is just me) hopes up by announcing major "new and expanded" sponsorship from the DoD but then not giving us any further info like they have with the SAIC partnership.

As far as they knowing who we are, well sure they do. As an example, just go to the US Army Educational Outreach Program website. They list all the FIRST programs as something the Army sponsors. But what does that mean exactly? When you try to dig deeper they just direct you to the main FIRST website. I know what FIRST is. What I want to know is what exactly does the Army do to support FIRST since they claim it as part of their educational outreach efforts. I'm just trying to get a handle on what the current level of DoD sponsorship is for FIRST in general.

As a side note, every year at Atlanta I see the CIA logo on the big blue sponser banners. What up with that? I'm not at all being negative about the CIA. I'm just wondering how that works, and why the CIA would have "gotten it" years ago but DoD hasn't.