Re: Registration 2013
 

I think Cantonese is spoken there rather than Mandarin.

zhe yan
這

Do any of the Spokane Regional teams have members fluent in Cantonese?
That would be a nice veteran team contact to make.

Re: Registration 2013
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen#Languages Sounds likely that Mandarin is the lingua franca of the younger demographic of Shenzhen...:)

Re: Registration 2013
 

I will check and see if I have any students thats can help.
We will be at Spokane. I will see if I have any students that know also...

R

Re: Registration 2013
 

They speak both Mandarin and Cantonese. I would say almost all people in Shenzhen can speak Mandarin and most people can speak Cantonese. My guess is they learn English also in school. By the way, Shenzhen is not practically in Hong Kong. I am very glad to see a team coming from there. Hopefully they will expand to other cities.

Re: Registration 2013
 

During my recent visit to China, I found that almost all the teenagers spoke English quite well. Probably much better than Americans trained in Mandarin or Cantonese speak those languages. My point is that the language barrier will not be a major problem.

Re: Registration 2013
 

Do we need an American teenager to translate for us older folks? :)

Re: Registration 2013
 

I've made a few trips to Guangdong province recently, on business for Whirlpool. We have both engineering labs and motor suppliers in that part of China. Shenzhen is among the easiest parts of China for foreign travelers to reach -- I like going by ferry from HK. I will very likely be there again for a few days during the upcoming build season.

I agree with Eric's comment above re: language. There are more than 100 million people in Guangdong province today, and a significant fraction of them either speak or are learning to speak English. Of course many of those are young people, with better than average education and a keen interest in science and technology.

Back to my question: does anyone know if FRC 4813 has mentor support from a veteran team?

Re: Registration 2013
 

Team 1208 would love to mentor and support them, but we are not going to the Spokane Regional. If no one from that regional steps up, we will be glad to fill that role.

Re: Registration 2013
 

Put Singapore on the list to mentor, too.
This one needs a Toronto West mentoring team.
No language barrier here, unless the mentoring team is French-Canadian I suppose...

Team Number: 4817
Team Name: Singapore American School
Team Location: Singapore
Team Nickname: Singapore Eagles
Event: 2013 Greater Toronto West Regional

P.S.
Singapore has the furthest to travel to their event at 9300 miles (great circle distance).
Beating out the two Girls/Boys of Blacktown, Australia teams (7700 miles) and the Los Angeles team attending Israel (7500 miles).

Re: Registration 2013
 

Our Singapore FTC sister team will be visiting the US in January for a competition. They have made this trip many times since 2005, when they participated in their first FVC event at Champs. Team 341 also did a trip to Singapore, with our FRC robot in tow, back in 2006. The trip took 36 hours door to door. (and nothing went wrong with the flights or transfers) That was a very tough commute, but well worth the visit. Very glad to see a team from Singapore making the move towards FRC.

Re: Registration 2013
 

We will certainly be available to mentor them ...How do we get contact information? We will be at the Spokane Regional

thanks

Re: Registration 2013
 

No contact info. is listed in TIMS for them.
I'd try contacting FIRST HQ, maybe Carla Proulx, FRC International Coordinator.

Re: Registration 2013
 

Idle curiosity lead to this...
FRC teams (as of last weekend when I did this) will travel 1.4 million miles to attend events.
That doesn't count the district championships or the additional 367 teams expected to attend the World Championship in St. Louis.
Hawaii wins because all of Australia is attending (or maybe not because a bunch of Australian teams just got removed).

These are the sum of the one-way great circle travel distances in miles of the teams attending each event.

The first two columns are the total for the event & average per team.
The next two columns picked an arbitrary cutoff of 300 mi (as the crow flies) and did the total & average (avgs are a little low, but I'll fix them).

column 1 -----------------column 2-----------------column 3 -----------column 4
Total Travel Distance -- Avg Distance/team -- Total Local Travel -- Avg Local Travel -- Event

67723 ----- 1782 ------ 1159 ------- 31 ------- HI
46462 ------ 845 ------ 6890 ------ 125 ------- NV
30255 ------ 917 ------- 713 ------- 22 ------- CMP
29149 ------ 883 ------- 116 -------- 4 ------- W CA
22445 ------ 423 ------ 3128 ------- 59 ------- SFL
20952 ------ 368 ------- 645 ------- 11 ------- NY
19287 ------ 321 ------ 4805 ------- 80 ------- FL
18941 ------ 357 ------ 1970 ------- 37 ------- IL
17864 ------ 288 ------ 6007 ------- 97 ------- SC
17738 ------ 422 ------ 6229 ------ 148 ------- Spokane
16436 ------ 283 ------ 1816 ------- 31 ------- DC
16003 ------ 276 ------ 3337 ------- 58 ------- TX
15145 ------ 352 ------ 2392 ------- 56 ------- Tor-W
14950 ------ 249 ------ 1873 ------- 31 ------- CA
13104 ------ 230 ------ 5758 ------ 101 ------- OH
12445 ------ 289 ------ 2345 ------- 55 ------- Dallas
11634 ------ 212 ------ 3512 ------- 64 ------- LA
11246 ------ 250 ------ 5969 ------ 133 ------- Northern Lights
11162 ------ 186 ------ 5782 ------- 96 ------- Alamo
10722 ------ 210 ------ 3049 ------- 60 ------- SAC
10419 ------ 282 ------ 4082 ------ 110 ------- Hub
10385 ------ 242 ------ 1962 ------- 46 ------- UT
10364 ------ 225 ------ 1184 ------- 26 ------- MA
10076 ------ 206 ------ 4138 ------- 84 ------- NC
9869 ------- 210 ------ 1116 ------- 24 ------- Israel
9086 ------- 239 ------ 2826 ------- 74 ------- IN
8721 ------- 159 ------ 2666 ------- 48 ------- SDC
8505 ------- 158 ------ 4763 ------- 88 ------- OK
7242 ------- 177 ------ 4320 ------ 105 ------- CV
7205 ------- 168 ------ 6233 ------ 145 ------- Lake S
7194 ------- 156 ------ 1587 ------- 35 ------- CO
7087 ------- 177 ------ 3295 ------- 82 ------- Tor-E
7048 ------- 110 ------ 4336 ------- 68 ------- VA
7021 ------- 149 ------ 2812 ------- 60 ------- TN
7006 ------- 137 ------ 5034 ------- 99 ------- Queen
6920 ------- 177 ------ 4853 ------ 124 ------- AR
6686 ------- 139 ------ 3028 ------- 63 ------- Inland
6445 ------- 117 ------ 1496 ------- 27 ------- SJC
5927 ------- 126 ------- 855 ------- 18 ------- LI
5787 ------- 123 ------ 3409 ------- 73 ------- FLR
5664 -------- 99 ------ 4125 ------- 72 ------- MD
5623 -------- 95 ------ 4203 ------- 71 ------- WI
5612 ------- 112 ------ 5612 ------ 112 ------- C WA
5546 ------- 135 ------ 1603 ------- 39 ------- Montreal
5342 ------- 134 ------ 4665 ------ 117 ------- Crossroads
5206 ------- 145 ------ 1904 ------- 53 ------- WOR
5022 ------- 132 ------ 3537 ------- 93 ------- Pine Tree
4674 -------- 87 ------ 2836 ------- 53 ------- KC
4443 -------- 73 ------ 3441 ------- 56 ------- OR
4185 -------- 70 ------ 2347 ------- 39 ------- 10K
4038 ------- 112 ------ 4038 ------ 112 ------- MI-Traverse
3956 -------- 82 ------ 2104 ------- 44 ------- AZ
3681 -------- 65 ------ 3681 ------- 65 ------- N Star
3490 ------- 116 ------ 2438 ------- 81 ------- MI-St Joseph
3419 -------- 61 ------ 3102 ------- 55 ------- GA
3202 -------- 73 ------ 3202 ------- 73 ------- PIT
2690 -------- 79 ------ 2260 ------- 66 ------- WAT
2679 -------- 62 ------ 2679 ------- 62 ------- MO
2587 -------- 59 ------ 2187 ------- 50 ------- NH
2063 -------- 33 ------ 1625 ------- 26 ------- WA
1983 -------- 64 ------ 1983 ------- 64 ------- MI-West
1793 -------- 37 ------ 1793 ------- 37 ------- CT
1698 -------- 51 ------ 1698 ------- 51 ------- MI-Gull
1202 -------- 33 ------ 1202 ------- 33 ------- MAR-TCNJ
1173 -------- 33 ------ 1173 ------- 33 ------- MAR-Hatboro
1137 -------- 37 ------ 1137 ------- 37 ------- MI-Troy
1106 -------- 36 ------ 1106 ------- 36 ------- MI-Grand Blanc
1101 -------- 36 ------ 1101 ------- 36 ------- MI-Kettering
1019 -------- 29 ------ 1019 ------- 29 ------- MAR-Mt Olive
957 --------- 27 ------- 957 ------- 27 ------- MAR-Bridgewater
939 --------- 30 ------- 939 ------- 30 ------- MAR-Lenape
689 --------- 22 ------- 689 ------- 22 ------- MI-Livonia
665 --------- 21 ------- 665 ------- 21 ------- MAR-Springside
627 --------- 21 ------- 627 ------- 21 ------- MI-Waterford
406 --------- 13 ------- 406 ------- 13 ------- MI-Detroit

Re: Registration 2013
 

Michigan hit 200 teams.

Two additional Chinese teams have replaced some of the dropped Australian teams at the Hawaii Regional.

Re: Registration 2013
 

Well, registration officially closed at noon today.
Don't think it ends quite so abruptly though. Many waitlists are still to be cleared, and teams will continue to drift in and out.

• 2562 teams
• 223 more teams than last season for 9.5% growth (below the past decade's average by ~3%)
• 382 new teams (17% fewer than last year)
• 25 resurrected veteran teams (came back after 2 to 7 years)
• 182 of last years vets are missing, but that's actually the best retention rate (93.3%) that FRC has ever had.