Dean's Homework

[pwilczynski]

Every year, Dean gives the FIRST teams some little piece of homework to do. At the BAE regional in New Hampshire, and today at the UTC regional in Connecticut, he has requested that every member of every team e-mail their congressmen and elected officials (with a cc to dkamen@dekaresearch.com) to try and raise the visibility of FIRST in government. I was wondering how you feel about this.

Personally, I agree with this. FIRST is beginning to reach a 'critical mass' (Similar thread ). Corporations, which have thus far provided that large majority of teams with money to participate in the competitions, are now finding themselves at the point where more sponsorship is starting to have an effect on their profits. Government, as Dean mentioned this morning at UTC, has enough money to sponsor all of the FIRST teams that it needs. At $5,000 per team times ten thousand high schools (just a guestimate), that is $50,000,000, about the amount that the government spends 2,472 BILLION dollars per year. To me, government seems to have nothing to lose by spending this money on FIRST instead of on a useless study on something.

Just my 2 cents.