Exciting New Competition

[MASherry]

Team 555 was thinking of creating a game, that would be released in september or october of 2004. This game would be a whole new game made by team 555. Teams would use FIRST kit parts from past years, but with most of the same rules as FIRST, in regards to inspection, weight, size, motors, electronics. Team 555 is located in Montclair, New Jersey (about 11 miles from NYC). Team 555 was wondering what teams would be interested in participating, also we were wondering if Teams who run offseason events could tell us how to get the stuff from innovation first and stuff. Please respond A.S.A.P.

[tkwetzel]

creating a game, that would be released in september or october of 2004.

That would be interesting, but upon creating a game, be sure to work through it all. The people in FIRST spend a lot of time working on each year's game and still put out updates and changes. And after all those updates, there is still often points of criticism on the game. If you create a game, be ready to accept lots of criticism, be it constructive or otherwise. Also, it would most likely be held only at one competition at or near your school and would have a limited number of entrants. I would think that there are many teams that would like to participate and use this event to teach new students the workings of the team before the actual FIRST competition and many teams would be turned away. A suggestion for that would be that you could talk to a few other schools who might be willing to hold a competition at there school.

Another suggestion in general would be to extend the 6 week build period. Many students spent countless hours working on their robots and doing it twice in a year might stress some of them out a little too much. It also gets into affecting schoolwork and such. A second competition may be too much for most teams.

It is a great idea, and would be great for any team that could participate.

[Paul H]

There's something here in Oakland County, Michigan like that named OCCRA. It is run by teams 1 (mostly), 33, and 47, along with Oakland Schools. I suggest you talk to Mr. Mac, Mike Martus, or Jim Zondag (forum names) about how to get everything set up. I do know that they do a lot of work to get everything worked out. There is an OCCRA forum under the offseason competitions category on ChiefDelphi.

It is great practice for the FIRST season. Our 2 best years ever (2001 and 2004) were the 2 years we had OCCRA teams. Also, team 469 won it the last 2 years, and they won FIRST last year and were national finalists this year.

[MASherry]

Thx, i'll be sure to check into that!