Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

I'd like to know any tips you have for teams that have never been to St. Louis / CMP before. We intend to take travel in two vans and the hotel that we are staying at has free parking so we should have travel in the city handled. Anything ranging from tips about robot preparation to places to eat would be appreciated.

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Quick and cheap eats at Jimmy Johns
https://www.jimmyjohns.com/

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Eric Curry of Team 1208 Metool Brigade has posted a guide to St. Louis in the past. Here's a link to his most recent post, for teams attending the St. Louis Regional a few weeks ago.

Maybe 1208 is planning a Championship update? :)

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Thanks, I wasn't aware of the regional guides existence

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Here is the latest version of Team 1208's Championship Guide:

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

The biggest tip you can have... get everything booked ASAP! This includes hotel, flight, dinners, and anything else your team wants to do while in town. Things fill up FAST when there are hundreds of FRC, FTC, and FLL teams in town!

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

ROBOPROM! The students loved it and it was great social for the mentors! Also if you have never been to St. Louis the Arch is walking distance and pretty neat to check out. Book everything as soon as you can as the city will be busy with LOTS of other teams. Oh and good luck!

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

SO GOOD! Food and service! We walked in with about 50 people, and we all had food in 15 minutes - not to mention the employees there are super friendly. Definitely make a stop there if you get the chance.


My tip would be to make sure that those working in the pit don't get stuck there the entire time. There's so much to see, do, and experience at champs - and yet it's really easy to miss it all by working on the robot the entire time. Make sure they sub out and get time to visit other pits, collect pins, watch matches, but merch, etc. Champs is a blast!


Also, have some sort of scouting plan in mind - maybe a collaboration with other teams. Last year 4814 ended up as the first (second maybe?) seed in their division, and they hadn't been scouting (they were a rookie team playing defence - they never expected they would be picking). Needless to say they had a mad rush Friday night/Saturday morning trying to whip a plan into action.

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Bring extra $$$ for the FIRST store so that you can buy your memorabilia for your 1st ever FRC World Championship experience.:)

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

If you have time I highly recommend visiting the City Museum, it will totally change your perspective of the word museum.

http://www.citymuseum.org/

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Scholarship Row. Seriously, not just for juniors. Send the sophomores too. Heck, send ALL the students (just not at once, folks there get overwhelmed and then can't talk to students) .

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Good chance to speak with key suppliers too, like AndyMark, Bishop Wisecarver, and so many more.

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Take the opportunity to go check out some of the best robots in the world up close. I was lucky enough to get a close look at 67 and 1114s robots at CMP in 2012 and that's something I will never forget.

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Attend the Conference. There are some really great presentations each year. The presentation abstracts will be published soon. http://www3.usfirst.org/roboticsprog...nd-conferences

Encourage your mentors to attend the annual NEMO (Non-Engineering Mentor Organization) meeting, to be held Friday morning from 10am to noon - come and go as your schedule dictates- in room 255 in America's Center. Open to all college-age and adult mentors - we will be discussing non-technical topics of interest to the group. http://www.firstnemo.org

Re: Tips for First Time Championship Attendees
 

Make sure to reserve Roboprom tickets on time if you have people planing on attending. Bring good shoes, you will walk, A LOT.