2016-2017 Email Blast #5

Louisiana FIRST Tech Challenge Coaches,

1. Scrimmage(s)
2. Dean’s List Award nominations
3. Competition volunteers
4. New programming software

I hope everyone is having a great build so far!

If you’re worried that your team is behind, don’t panic.  Some teams (ahem) already have fully functional robots with particle intakes and shooters, while my team has nothing but a rolling chassis, and other may still be struggling to get wheels on a frame.  We’ll do our best to make sure every team has a working robot at competition.

1. Scrimmage(s)

1. a) We have a New Orleans area scrimmage scheduled the morning of December 3, courtesy of Team 10337 Dark Matter at Mandeville Junior High.  They have limited space available, so they are giving priority to teams in the greater New Orleans area.  Here is the registration Google form:https://goo.gl/KCSOli
2. b) We need a scrimmage in the Baton Rouge area.  Can anyone get a school gym or cafeteria for an evening, morning, or afternoon in December or early January?  Thanks!

2. Dean’s List Award nominations

All, an important deadline is coming up.

In an effort to recognize the leadership and dedication of FIRST’s most outstanding FIRST Tech Challenge students, the Kamen family sponsors an Award for selected top students known as the FIRST Dean’s List. Each FIRST Tech Challenge Team is invited to select up to two (2) students who are in the 10^th or 11^th grade (sophomores or juniors).

The deadline to make a submission is the 15th of the month prior to the event in which the student will be interviewed – the Qualifying Tournaments. For the January event, the deadline to nominate a student for the Dean’s List is December 15, 2016.  For the February Qualifier, there will be a January deadline.

For more information about the Dean’s List nomination, please review the Dean’s List Submission Guide on the FIRST website:

http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/resource_library/ftc/2016-2017-season/dean’s-list-submissions.pdf

3. Competition Volunteers

We need key volunteers trained for our events, so we need your help to recruit mentors, parents, colleagues, coworkers, etc., to help staff our events.  Positions that require a training and certification tests include both technical and some non-technical positions, so we’re not just looking for engineers:

Control System Advisor

Field Technical Advisor

Referee

Scorekeeper

Robot Inspector
Judge, Judge Advisor

Dean’s List Interviewer

Dean’s List Reviewer

Volunteers need to apply to an event on the VIMS site to get access to training.   We have just the January event on the site, but we’ll get the others, and folks can apply to the one event now just for training:

https://my.firstinspires.org/FIRSTPortal/Login/VIMS_Login.aspx

4. New programming software 

There is a new way to program the robot coming soon.  It isn’t posted yet, but keep an eye on the resources pages at FIRST for a new visual programming environment that allows development directly on the robot controller phone over a wifi connection using a browser.  There will be no need to unplug and replug the robot phone to update the code on the robot.