Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle gave her state of the State address on Tuesday, January 22nd, and invited representatives from all 24 Hawaii teams to be in attendance. In her speech, broadcast live across the State, she recognized FIRST robotics and our innagural Hawaii regional and mentioned what an outstanding program it is. All the representatives from the teams were asked to stand to receive recognition and applause from the legislators and others in attendance. Afterwards we were all invited up to her office to “talk story” and take pictures. Our Lt. Governor sat with the team at Nationals last year and she attended the kickoff this year. We in Hawaii have been very fortunate to have such support at the highest levels of government.
We were honored to have our representative from the State House, Clift Tsuji, catch a flight home from Oahu the night before and sit with us at 5 am to watch the kickoff on the Big Island. He told us he’s committed to helping us sustain our participation and to expand FIRST throughout the State. I hope all of you can challenge your Governors and Government officials to do the same!
Dont you mean teh GOVINATOR??? hehehe. But I wish our Governor, congressmen/woman, and our reps would listen to us. I mean it would look good for Hilary to show up at an event since she is running for pres.
This being an election year I’m surprised more politicians on the Mainland aren’t showing their support? Don’t be afraid to ask them to come out and see what you are doing. Our local House Rep Clift Tsuji came out and then returned with the Majority leader of the State Senate and several other Reps to our school for a presentation on robots in October. We’re going to start sending them updates regularly now. A lot of States are looking for STEM initiatives and FIRST is the superbowl of STEM. Its a fairly easy sell. Feel free to tell them what kind of support we’re getting…maybe it will get them off their chairs when they hear their fellow politicians are involved in other States??
Hilary might, but Governor Spitzer already has and hopefully will continue to support FIRST. Spitzer even mentioned the NYC regional in his State of the State speech, as quoted here:
“When I visited a robotics competition, kids from around the State were so energized and excited about their inventions, it had the feel of a BCS bowl game.”
So yes, we can expect more government cooperation in the future.
That is really cool. I might send the invite to some of the delegates/reps from VA to attend VCU. It’s not to horrible of a drive from D.C. to Richmond, VA.
We talked with our Lt. Governor’s staff today and I believe we may have him as our guest speaker at our Robotics open house tour the last week of construction, in addition to our top key State DOE officials, with a few Senators too.
