Already planning next year, we are compiling a folder with good information about FIRST. Thus, I’d like to know if anyone has written speeches, quotes, etc. of important people in FIRST, like Dean Kamen, Woodie Flowers, Jim Utaski and others.
Thanks in advance,
This year we managed to get woodie’s speech announcing our Judges Award.
I think Manoel is talking about other kind of speeches, like when Dean talks about how important engineering is, for example.
http://www.cyberposium.com/cyberposium2002/webcast/webcast.asp#2000archive
Here is a link to some speaches that have been given at Harvard. One is a good speach Dean gave.
Nice server side bandwith too. At least when I last watched it at 3am est. If I remember/run across any more I’ll let you know.
I was lucky enough to be able to attend an event at the U.S. Capitol last summer when Dean gave the kick-off talk for the annual “Science Coalition” presentation to Congress (Teams 116, 122 and 365 were invited to send some team members and robots to help provide a “FIRST presence”). The Science Coalition is a lobbying group made up of 400 university presidents and Congressional liaison officers there to ask Congress for more Federal tax money for basic research (and guess where basic research money goes? Yup, straight to the universities! But of coure - they will tell you - their cause is not at all self-serving. 
). They had invited Dean to speak, expecting him to automatically be supportive of their cause.
I guess they don’t know him very well.
He started out saying (I’ll never forget these lines) “I am here under protest. I think that what you are doing is fundamentally wrong, at every level. And now I am going to tell you why…” Which he did for the next 20 minutes. He explained exactly why he doesn’t like the way Congress deals with lobbyists, the problems with the Coalition’s approach to fund raising, and why he does not believe in asking the Government for taxpayer money that should be provided by corporate sources. It was great! It left a whole room full of lobbyists with their jaws on the floor (I don’t think anyone had been that honest with them in a long time), and a certain marketing director from FIRST trying to hide under the table (hi Laura!).
To my eternal regret, I don’t have a copy of the speech. I am hoping that someone, somewhere, has a videotape of it. If anyone does (NASA Knights? Team MOE?), I am willing to pay cash to get a copy.
-dave
“We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?”
- Niels Bohr
Dave:
Whoa baby. What a speech that one was! I was one of the lucky adult mentors there. You could have heard grass grow after a few words of that speech.
Unfortunately, the Miracle Workerz (Team #365) did not get any video of THE speech. I thought I remember some Science Coalition folks recording video. Of course, after the speech, the video might have been destroyed in a heinous manner.
Sorry. But if you find a copy of that, I would be very interested.
Long Live Dean!
John
Wow, now I’m interested in that speech. What about the minutes of the meeting? maybe someone official had a tape recorder;)
As the usual kickoff and cerimonies speeches are webcasted, it’s VERY likely that someone has one of them recorded.
If you do or know someone who does, please post a reply.
Probably FIRST have them too. What happens when you guys ask FIRST for the competition videos?
If im not mistaken, i belive SOAP has some of the speeches. ill look at the archives and see what i can come accross. We will definatly have thisyears speeches, and im pretty sure we have last years speeches.
Sorry i don’t have much to add to this, but in a request for help related to this thread, does anyone remember Dean’s speech in closing ceremonies at nationals, i believe 2 years ago (finals 2001) When he said something along the lines of the way the world worked, i’ve got this gold, you’ve got that land, and i’ll give you this gold, and you give me that land, but today in the world there are ‘n’ billion people… (full of those dramatic pauses Dean always puts in) so everyone has a little less gold… a little less land… But if i have an idea, and you have an idea, and we trade, now we both have two ideas…
I don’t even need a video or audio copy of this, if anyone has a copy and could just type up exactly what he said, or if anyone remembers it pretty close to exactly what he said, I’d really appreciate it.
I don't personally have any copies of Dean's speeches, but i think my roommate (another FIRSTer since high school) found some vids of interviews with Dean Kamen on Cyber Blue's webpage, I could be wrong about that but it might be worth a look.*Originally posted by Ben Mitchell *
**Wow, now I’m interested in that speech. What about the minutes of the meeting? maybe someone official had a tape recorder;) **
is this a piece of it?
That was my first year on the team, and I still remember hearing Dean speak and thinking “I bet they won’t ask him to come back again.” But he made very valid points, and I liked his speach (he even talked to us kids for quite a bit afterwards, asking about our plans and making sure FIRST was in them). Anyway, I’m sorry to say that team 122 doesn’t have any video of the speach.
Stephen
hahaa i wanna see the script for deans Speach last year… ya know the one that was like an hour long…