RobotEvents.com Chief Delphi Sneak Peek!!!

[Jason Morrella]

Innovation First, Inc. and Autodesk invite you to take a sneak peek at RobotEvents.com – a new online portal designed to enhance and promote a variety of successful, technology based programs for education and to help make these programs more accessible to schools, students and mentors in every community.

In essence, Robotevents.com was designed for you – because we know it takes a great deal of passion, dedication, hard work and funding to make sure students have access to these beneficial competitions, workshops and events.

The site is not set to officially launch for another week (we will be fine tuning it, making some tweaks and adding more events and information), but we wanted to let the Chief Delphi community be the first to see it. We’re excited about the site, eager to get your reaction and looking forward to feedback. We hope you find value in RobotEvents.com and take advantage of the new site soon!

http://www.robotevents.com/

[N7UJJ]

Excellent.
I especially like the search for all events by state!
I even registered!

I predict this will be a very popular and valuable site.

Good to hear from you Jason. You are missed. (There is yet an AZ Regional Director. Want your job back????)

Allan

[taggartbg]

I think this is a great site. It should really pull in a lot of schools to get involved with robotics education. I especially love the Calendar search function, very efficient.

The site is also comprehensive, well made, and easy to navigate - A+.

I expect good things from this.

/Taggart

[Andrew Bates]

Are any robot events going to be added or just FIRST related events?

[Rich Kressly]

FIRST is obviously featured, but other programs are using the system as well. You'll see Botball and BEST among others there. Special thanks to Autodesk for the support of this venture with IFI. The hope is that the whole community (FIRST and similar programs that inspire students to affect the future) becomes better connected and utilize these resources to maximize the impact of what they do.

[Pavan Dave]

I love the site content, and everything! The navigation was very easy, and very informative for people interested in different events.

Pavan.

[Tottanka]

This is a really great webby =]

[KathieK]

The site is not set to officially launch for another week (we will be fine tuning it, making some tweaks and adding more events and information)...
It will be a nice resource for teams to have all of this information in one place.
(Please note that the information listed for some events may not be correct at this time but I'm sure it will be addressed once the site goes live.)

[Andrew Schuetze]

Looks like a very usefull site and something of a one-stop shopping experience. Is there a mechanism for suggesting likes to other competitions not listed? Such as the MATE-ROV and the NURC challenge set-up by Fredi @ Carl Hayden HS.

[falconmaster]

This is fabulous!! Can we-APASE, Arizona Promoters of Applied Science in Education have our event the Honeywell Hometown Solutions National Underwater Robotics Challenge promoted on your site? What do we have to do?

[Greg Needel]

This is fabulous!! Can we-APASE, Arizona Promoters of Applied Science in Education have our event the Honeywell Hometown Solutions National Underwater Robotics Challenge promoted on your site? What do we have to do?


Right on the bottom of the front page

http://www.robotevents.com/event_promotion.php

[Bill_Hancoc]

Neato

Reminds me of Myautoevents.com

[falconmaster]

Right on the bottom of the front page

http://www.robotevents.com/event_promotion.php

Thanks!

[CraigHickman]

Seriously awesome! The layout is great! It's going to be really cool once this fills up with stuff. It's so cool it warranted being added to my top bar in Firefox!

[Mike Martus]

Very nice resource to get a full flavor of whats going on with Robotics Education and "Hands on" activities.

All to often we get focused upon just one experience when in fact there are many other opportunities for our students to participate in.

Very nice site....well organized and easy to navigate.

[Kate00]

http://www.robotevents.com/fundraising.php

Wow. That is possibly the coolest fundraising idea ever. Hexbugs were one of the highlights of Atlanta this past year. So neat.

"Special note for all FIRST related programs and events:

A sponsor has provided a grant to cover any/all FIRST related programs and events. If your group is running a FIRST related event (official competition, qualifier, practice, off season competition, workshop, kickoff - FLL, FTC or FRC) and would like to list your event on RobotEvents.com and/or use the RobotEvents.com Registration System for your event, you most likely qualify for one of these grants."
http://www.robotevents.com/event_promotion.php

Again, wow. This is such a useful resource - a free registration system for events, and event promotion. Event promotion can be so hard to do, but it's always great to see a free and widespread way to promote an event, especially for those that don't check CD very often.

This website is really well designed, it feels so intuitive, and everything is so easy to find. This is really what I had hoped to see last year when FIRST redesigned their website.

[Nancy McIntyre]

In my 19 years as a teacher I have never found a program that has the impact on students, community members, and schools as FIRST has. Having been involved with FIRST as a FLL mentor, a FTC mentor, a FRC mentor, a FTC Co Partner in Los Angeles, and as the Chair of the Organizing Committee for the Los Angeles Regional I can say with 8 years of experience that FIRST is changing the culture in this nation. Today I have found what could be a “Miracle on Bedford Street.” RobotEvents.com is comprehensive website that features all of the official and unofficial FIRST platforms. Here is a site that will assist FIRST as the leader in robotics programs for schools just as Macys is to the world of retail. The primary site sponsors of AutoDesk and Innovation First have stepped forward to make life a little easier for teachers and mentors to get involved with robotics. It provides a huge amount of information on all of the programs that are out there and available to schools and allows the teachers and teams to go in the direction that is best for them. It also is helpful to event organizers to be able to promote their events and can be a big relief for event registration which can be a huge headache for new and small events.

FIRST is the capstone program in elementary, middle and high schools robotics today, but it is not practical for everyone. This site which provides information on many programs will help to raise the level of student participation in robotics in general which is good for all of us. So often I work with teachers who as much as they would like to be part of FIRST need to participate in one of the other programs for reasons beyond their control such as lack of funding, parent participation, administration support, time constraints and space to build. Often these same teachers contact me again after a few seasons. Now with some experience behind them and support they are ready to join the FIRST family of programs.

Congratulations to all those involved with RobotEvents.com for a job well done. I am looking forward to sharing the information with the teachers and mentors that I work with and using it to get the word out about all of the events that I am involved with in Southern California.

-Nancy McIntyre
Program Director
Eagle Engineering Team 1138

[Andy Baker]

This is a very worthwhile site. I'm amazed that no one has put together an all-inclusive site like this before.

We all get busy, and focus on our own competitions. Often we hear about events and competitions that we are not involved in, but we just don't take the time to dig into when and where these other competitions are held. Now, we can easily check out these other events. For instance, my main focus is FRC. But now, I have one place to go to in order to find out the details about these other events, even the ones outside of the FIRST community.

Conversely, another great thing about this site is that competitors who are focused on non-FIRST events can now easily check out FRC, FTC, and FLL and see what is up in their area without much effort. I can see this communication tool help grow FIRST programs.

This is a good thing for anyone involved in robotics competitions. I can't wait to see how big this site and community becomes.

Way to go, IFI and Autodesk, for backing the development of this site. Kudos to Jason Morrella for organizing the creation and development of this cool site.

Sincerely,
Andy Baker

[Ben Mitchell]

This is a fantastic idea, and as a teacher, having resources and options in one place is a great way to start searching for the right program for my needs.

Robotics tournaments and games, no matter what origin, have similiar aims in promoting interested in technological studies. I think bringing the "educational robot" community together, and not just the "FIRST community" is something that will benefit everyone in the long term. Every program has something to offer.

I've already passed the link on to several other teachers. It's a gold mine of information.

[Karthik]

The FIRST community is excellent at promoting itself within the community. Using tools such as email blasts and CD, we can have the entire community aware of an event in a matter of minutes. That being said, I know I still find it terribly difficult to promote events to people outside of FIRST. In the past there really hasn't been an efficient place to advertise. RobotEvents.com addresses this need. Now every event has an opportunity to make itself known to the entire community of people who support educational robotics. The fact that there is a special grant which covers all FIRST teams/events makes this site a perfect fit for the FIRST community.

Also, the Hexbug fundraising will be a great way for teams to raise money during the holiday season. At a margin of $5 per bug, it would be easy for teams large amounts of money in a short time span, while at the same time exposing people to the world of robotics.

[Fred Sayre]

On the map search there seems to be a Washington/Washington DC confusion ;)

Otherwise looks great! A good centralized location for information about all of the different robotics events will be terrific.

[lynca]

Great Site. It would be really neat if the competitions and events link to a google map of all the sites.

A step further would be to challenge all teams to start making maps on their websites about FRC, FTC, and FLL teams in their area so RobotEvents can make a nationwide database of how to find a team in your area.

Greg Marra started the idea for Regionals, http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58755

[KathieK]

A step further would be to challenge all teams to start making maps on their websites about FRC, FTC, and FLL teams in their area so RobotEvents can make a nationwide database of how to find a team in your area. I've done one on www.ctfirst.org for all the Connecticut programs, but as of right now it has last year's team data on it. I hope to be able to update it soon with teams which are currently registering.

[lynca]

I've done one on www.ctfirst.org for all the Connecticut programs, but as of right now it has last year's team data on it. I hope to be able to update it soon with teams which are currently registering.

This is fantastic , I was so inspired , I started one for FRC in Texas , Hopefully I can expand to FTC and FLL . Does anyone know where you can find the school information about FLL and FTC similar to usfirst.org's "what teams are in my state" ?

FIRST AUSTIN (http://www.firstaustin.org/)