Silicon Valley Regional in SF Chronicle

[TheLostRenegade]

Here is the link to the article showcasing the Silicon Valley Regional in San Jose, CA. It was on the front page of the Bay Area section, with color photos and all.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/17/BAG0GON6J31.DTL&hw=robotics&sn=001&sc=1000

[Stvn]

Hmm... Quotes from Cheesypoofs and Apes of Wrath, and two pictures of us(Team 100). One of our robot and one of our safety captain (complete with hat).

[AznPrincess3089]

Does anyone else think the media kind of missed out on the fact that San Jose was the largest gathering (okay it was just seven of us) of all girls teams in the history of FIRST? There were two showings in the news Friday night on the 11 o'clock news about it and, though 254's drive team is quite amazingly photogenic and 100's orange decor brightens the whole stadium, the only woman I saw interviewed was a mom from Team 100.

[Joe Ross]

Anybody who describes the Cheesy Poof's robot as cobbled together needs to go back to journalism school.

[AdamHeard]

It's almost like they were trying to make it sound as boring as possible...
"The best six robots in the San Jose tournament will win the right to hang even more life preservers at the national championships"

The phrase "hang even more life preservers" just brings it down...

As Joe mentioned before, I don't see how anyone, especially a casual observer, could think 254's robot was "cobbled" together.

[Justin]

Here's my question. Is this years game _really_ that complicated??? I mean compared to some previous games this game is pretty basic which team has more tubes on the rack and which team has the most robots on the back of another. Yet the report's central point seemed to be that this is a horribly complicated game and program to mess with. Also would it have killed them to refer to it as FIRST once in a while? I feel like Robotics makes us sound so generic and lumps us in w/all the other Robotics competitions but FIRST is more than that. Also just once I'd like to see a report mention that the top prize in FIRST isn't even about winning the competition it is this thing called the Chairman's Award....although I guess that might be to complicated ;-)

Justin

[sanddrag]

It's almost like they were trying to make it sound as boring as possible..Oh, but you must have missed the exciting opening "Something important is going on in San Jose." and all along I thought San Jose didn't matter to anyone since nothing ever happened there.

and what about this almost impossible for anyone older than a teenager to figure out.

I'm sorry, but it seems the author of this article just completely did not get the right idea here.

This tells me FIRST needs a really good press kit explaining a lot of the background because often times journalists are just clueless, and the article ends up not doing a lot of great things for FIRST.

[Nuttyman54]

I must say, I'm disappointed. The San Jose Mercury News had run some decent articles in 05 and 06, and this is way below them. I would have expected better from the SF Chronicle.

On that note, it IS press, regardless of how poorly written