I'm excited for BTB 2004, and I'd admit... although I went very far with organizing the Blitz this year, there were a few small details that made me worried. No doubt I would have had everything settled by the date of the event... it would have just meant some late nights on my computer this summer. I'm happy that now I have plenty of time to start organizing the 04 competition, not to mention I can utillize everything I've learned during the past few months about running offseasons and apply that to next year's BTB, instead of learning along the way.

I'm trying to think of dates for next year, because we'd just run into similar problems next year if we schedule it for mid-august again. When do you think would be the best time to hold an offseason in the NE without intruding on the dates of the other offseasons around?

I'd like to hear what you think...

How about considering sometime late September? Let all the NY high schools go back in and get things together first.

It may be better to try to schedule earlier in the summertime or late in Spring. I know that when school starts up for us in the fall, there's much to be done with fundraising, logistics, etc. and it'd be hard to make time to go up to Boston for a day or 2 and get enough people to go. Maybe late May/early June?

Whatever you do don't do it in October!!!

My team volunteers and helps runTHIS to raise money for Juvenile Diabetes.

You could try the weekend before or after the 4th of July and try making it a patriotic thing or something of the like since it is in Boston. You could have awards for most patriatic robot, robot most representative of a historic event in Boston, etc. That is just my $.02

Believe it or not, but many Midwestern schools actually start in the middle of August Early August or very late July, or early July would all be good dates.

BTB 2004
 

Erin,

I'll add my disappointment to all the others! It takes so much effort to get the first one done--sorry you will have to wait another year to see it happen. And now what are we going to do with the 30-odd good bins left over from BC/4!?

In planning your date, here are the traditional other NE Tournaments to work around:

1) Rally in the Valley, Lebanon NH: 2nd or 3rd weekend in May
2) Mayhem on the Merrimack, Tyngsboro MA: 1st weekend in Jun
3) BattleCry @ WPI, Worcester MA: 2nd weekend in Jun
4) River Rage, Manchester NH: 2nd weekend in Sep
5) Bash at the Beach, East Lyme CT: Varies, 20 Sep this year, Oct/Aug in previous years

Seems like July is pretty wide open...

Ken