Problem: Many, if not most, of the news articles that I’ve read about the championship events have their information wrong or portray the event as if it were a science fair. They don’t capture the intensity and excitement that is FIRST.
Solution: Media cheat sheets.
Does anyone know of an official media cheat sheet produced by FIRST? I haven’t been able to find one.
Has anyone made their own FIRST media cheat sheet?
If there isn’t one out there already, I’ll probably end up just making one and publishing it here, as soon as I’m recovered from roboflu.
This 100% needs to happen, the trick it to not make it too sterile. Images portraying excitement is the best way I can think of doing that. Perhaps someone who has made one of these cheat sheets before can elaborate on some of the finer points of A) What basic info should be spoon-fed. B) How to pass certain emotion in such a short format.
That is an excellent idea. Over the years I have learned that if a news article knows the difference between robots and cars then it is a successful article. Be nice to have a cheat sheet that could simplify stuff.
The FIRST website’s “press room”](https://www.firstinspires.org/about/press-room) page probably is the closest to what you’re looking for. The FIRST FAQ document pretty well covers everything, but may include too much info.
I think the most important aspect is to compare this to a high school sports event with students cheering STEM instead of touchdowns. I try to add that element to the media releases I do for our regional.
The closest thing I’ve seen is probably FIRST Robotics Competition: How it Works which is available via the Press Room previously mentioned. Not sure how widely circulated this is, though.
That, accompanied by the 2018 Season Factsshould at least clarify most of the ~confusion~.
Yeah… you can literally spoon feed this info to media but 99% of the time they will not get it unless they participated in the activity. I can’t even tell you how many times the drum corps I marched in was referred to as a marching band or had ridiculously wrong information.
You just have to be glad they covered it all because honestly this isn’t on a lot of people’s radars.
As for images, I think some of the most powerful images in FRC are of students screaming and hugging after competition wins. It captures the exuberance and raw emotion that people often only associate with traditional sports.
And for phrases, Citrus Dad phrased it well above: “students cheering STEM instead of touchdowns”. Communicating the idea that hundreds of students sit in stands screaming their hearts out for robot drivers performing on the field is important.
FIRST does this on a lot of their promotional/ decorative material. I am not sure if this is the same material that non-initiated media commonly finds.
It doesn’t help that FIRST’s competition structure is unlike that of High-school sports (with respect to Words at any rate). Worlds just has so many teams competing on an (inter)national level there isn’t a reasonable analog that I can think of (high school or otherwise). March Madness except 12x bigger is the best I can do, and that isn’t even close to being held under 1(2) roof(s). (Maybe the world cup? But that still misses the number of teams by a long shot despite being more centrally-ish located.)
It would be nice to get one of FIRST’s marketing/media people in this conversation.
