Time to Share

I wanted to share an excerpt from this page on the US FIRST website. Note that the first set of numbers is FIRST's Overall Reach (including FLL, FTC and FRC), the FRC breakdown follows.

Overall Reach - All Programs Combined (projected for 2008/09 season)

* Over 196,000 students
* 17,589 teams
* 16,389 robots
* 53,000 mentors
* 32,000 event volunteers

See breakdowns by individual program below.

2009 FIRST Robotics Competition

* 1,684 teams
* 42,100 high-school students
* Teams from 48 states in the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Turkey, and the U.K.
* 40 Regional events in the U.S., Canada, and Israel; seven District competitions and one State Championship in Michigan
* FIRST Robotics Competition Championship at the FIRST Championship in Atlanta, GA, April 16-18, 2009
* Robots are built in 6 weeks from a common kit of parts provided by FIRST, and weigh up to 120 lbs. (excluding battery and bumpers)

I took a couple sections from this page to highlight the size of FIRST and also to try to crush the ideas that this is some kind of niche science fair project. I think the numbers quoted start to put this into perspective.

FIRST is a big deal and I hope people reading this understand that. If you are already involved in FIRST, I know you do. I hope there is at least one person that reads this, that does not already know about FIRST and it sparks some interest.

For more information, visit the official FIRST website at usfirst.org or my website at FIRSTObjective.org.