Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

612 sends down a van full of students and adult mentors to VCU for kit pickup, while the rest of the team watches the webcast on a projector at school

Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

If you are going to NH for kickoff tomorrow and Saturday, be sure to bring your consent form with you: http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc...nt.aspx?id=418

Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

86 reserves one of the big conference rooms at JEA to watch the webcast. Every student is required to attend.

4 of the mentors go to Manchester to attend kickoff.

Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

9:00 am: The school library slowly fills with the team members and caffinated beverages in a 1:1 ratio.

10:00 am: After finally getting the webcast up we sit there and watch it, many of my less enthusiastic friends have started to doze off by this point...

11:00 am... ish: With rules in hand, and the libraries circular tables occupied by about 5 groups everyone starts talking and eating lunch until about 12:30. At this time most of our crazy ideas start to come out.

12:30-3:00: The team starts to decide on how to play the game in the best possible way, the groups each present their strategies and the great debate begins...

4:00 pm: A final conclusive strategy is likely decided on and the KOP is inspected (thanks to one of our mentors yearly pilgramage to the Ontario Science Centre Kickoff) We all go home with plans for Sunday, as our design will begin then.

Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

Since 2004 our team gathers at the local diner at 6:15am, we eat breakfast

then we go and gather again at the high school, organize who is driving which students and then proceed to SUNY Stony Brook to watch the webcast.

We all then go home for an hour, and met at then high school to read the rules together.

Then everyone goes home for the night to think about designs and re read the rules

Sunday we met at our Library at 1:30pm to present our thoughts and ideas, we make lists of pros and cons, and by Weds have our "final design" which is then drawn in inventor by our cad team

thats pretty much how our Kick off weekend has gone since 2004, before then we had a webcast at our school, and watched from there, but we like getting together with the other Long Island teams to watch the kick off

Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

1930 is gonna head to RIT (home of the FLR) and watch the webcast with a bunch of other Rochester area teams.

Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

I believe your team will be coming back from the local kickoff with two bins + 2 boxes from IFI which => 1 KOP.

Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

In the past, 1379 has had a few go to the local kickoff hosted by SPSU (about 30 minutes away) with the rest watching the webcast from the school, and then we spend Saturday analyzing and starting to brainstorm. This year we're changing things around a little and having people watch the webcast together, get a copy of the critical sections of the rules (Game/Arena/Robot), and then come back Sunday afternoon to start brainstorming. This allows the team leaders to bring the KoP back to school and inventory/organize and at the same time gives everybody a chance to full read the rules before starting any work. That (hopefully) eliminates brainstorming ideas like "If we make a wedge on the bottom of the robot, we can flip the other bots over."
That's the idea, at least. If nothing else, it's one last night of possible sleep before my brain gets totally overloaded with robot ideas.

I like some of these ideas about simulating the game. Strategy has always been one of our weaknesses in the past.

Re: Kickoff Procedure?
 

That has me written all over it:D