Eric Mack On-Line

As my readers know, I've been coaching robotics teams in the U.S. First competitions for the past six years. (Our all-girls homeschool Jr. Robotics team, the LEGO Mountaineers, have earned top awards at several competitions.)  In that time, I've watched robotics go from being the side line geek activity to something very cool. (It's still a geek activity)

This year, Dean Kamen encouraged the FIRST Teams to get the word out that FIRST is a viable education program to encourage young people to pursue studies and even careers in science and technologies. Well the White House got the message, looked at the 15-year successful track record of the FIRST Robotics program and will be honoring the top team in each category on Monday at the White House. How cool is that?

To the FIRST Community:

We are thrilled to announce that three FIRST teams will be honored by President George W. Bush at the White House on Monday, April 30, 2007.  

Approximately one hundred students and mentors representing three of the top teams from the FIRST Community will meet with the President to share their experiences and achievements.  The teams, who received top honors at this month's FIRST Championship held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, are:

• Team 365, the "Miracle Workerz" of MOE Robotics Group from Wilmington, Delaware who won the FIRST Robotics Competition 2007 Chairman's Award
• Team 1677, "Access 9" from South Bend, Indiana who was awarded the 2nd Place FIRST LEGO League Champion's Award
• Team 3053, "Occam's Engineers" from Mendham, New Jersey who received the FIRST Vex Challenge Inspire Award

FIRST Founder Dean Kamen, FIRST Chairman John Abele, FIRST President Paul Gudonis, NASA Program Executive for Solar System Exploration Dave Lavery, and key sponsors of this visit to Washington from BAE Systems, Boston Scientific, and General Motors, will join the teams at this celebration of their achievements.

Following the White House visit, the teams will attend a Congressional Reception hosted by Congressman Jim Langevin where they will give presentations, demonstrate their robots, and share their accomplishments with members of Congress.

FIRST thanks our good friend Congressman Langevin for his recognition and encouragement of FIRST over the years.  We appreciate this opportunity to recognize our Championship teams.

FIRST also thanks the following sponsors for their continued involvement as well as for their support of this event: BAE Systems, Boston Scientific, and General Motors.

With the competition season behind us, we are preparing to compete in a new competition that includes an "on-the-spot" event where the kids have 60 minutes to design, build, and program a robot to complete an assigned mission - with no coach or parents present. For this event., we invited two boys to join our team to encourage them to join a FIRST team. I'm busy coaching the kids now on strategy and problem solving skills. It should be fun. Selfishly, I wish Bruce, Michael, and I were all young enough to enter the event ourselves. Then I could go to the White House, too.

I'm very proud of our team and of all U.S. FIRST teams and I want to extend my congratulations to the teams and thanks to all of the coaches, mentors, and sponsors that make this possible.