2009 San Diego Regional
 

So who's coming to the San Diego Regional this year?

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Our team is going through a raging debate between San Diego, NYC and Finger Lakes for week #2. As of now San Diego is winning with about half the votes counted. :)

After doing some research, it looks like a great event and obviously a great town.

One question... Any word on whether there will be a social on Thursday or Friday? Hopefully we will see you in March.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

I'm not sure if there will be a social. Most likely there won't, but things can change.

If you stay in one of the hotels across the street from or in the same neighborhood as the venue, there's several beaches and parks within walking distance. If there isn't going to be a social, perhaps one of the local teams can plan something at a park or beach.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Team 1323 is debating between San Diego and Silicon. We hope to make it to both if we have the money.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

2493 Robokong will be there

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Miss Daisy has officially registered for San Diego and I have to say that we are very excited to be making the cross-continental journey! Due to the change up in regional scheduling this year we can't go to our usual regionals but I have to say I am not disappointed to be visiting some fresh new teams and making some new friends! Can't wait to see you all there in the spring!

Also, I hear there's beaches? Any good ones our team should check out?

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Yes, several.

Mission Bay/Beach is the closest beach to the event. There's lots of stuff to do there, including Belmont Park, which is home to the historic Giant Dipper. There's also several good restaurants right on the board walk. We took team 1998, a team we were hosting from Michigan, here last year and they had a blast.

Ocean Beach is the next closest. This is home to the longest pier on the west coast (over 1000 ft long). It's also considered a mecca for antique enthusiasts. Also another good place for food. Hodad's is about 2 blocks from Ocean Beach and is probably one of the best burgers in San Diego.

Pacific Beach is just north of Mission Beach. In fact there's a boardwalk connecting the two beaches. A good place to go if you have an extra day. The concentration of bars makes it much more adult oriented at night. However, if you do have an extra day to spend, it's worth the visit. Lots of thrift shops, restaurants just blocks from the beach. One of the best places to get breakfast is at Kona's
. Just make sure you have enough time. The line is usually a block or two down the street.

Any beaches beyond those three and it's going to be a bit of a drive. If you're staying near the venue you should be able to get to any of those beach withing 10-15 minutes by car.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

If anyone is brave enough to go snorkeling, La Jolla Cove is pretty awesome. I'm not sure if all the fish and sea life are around in March, and the water would be quite cold, but it was very cool the time I went there.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

I have created a Twitter account called http:\\www.twitter.com\FIRSTSD

If you twitter a reply to @FIRSTSD, it will be retweeted to everyone following FIRSTSD.

My goal is to offer a way for anyone at the San Diego Regional to Twitter with others at the regional.

For more details of how to use this Twitter account, and how it works, go to http:\\www.robokong2493.com\twitter_accounts.html

Good luck and see you at the competition!

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

The URL gets kind of messed up for some reason, I believe it should be http://www.robokong2493.com/twitter_accounts.html

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Oh I'm required to be there....

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

I'll be there.
Volunteering, i hope :)
IF anyone gets back to me (hint hint john jack)
:D

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

1388 is going to be there. we are hopeing for xerox creativity 3rd time in a row with our robot, gyration. check out our baby.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=74250

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

At the beginning of build season I thought about doing something like this, and then came up with a hundred reasons why we couldn't/shouldn't do it.

You have proven me wrong.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

This was one of my ideas too. I am thoroughly excited to see this on the field.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

We are flying out in the morning. Can't wait to play in SD.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

I'm pumped... see you all around lunchtime on Thursday.

Andy
(head ref)

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Dang it, I knew we should've gone to San Diego.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

A small group of members from Team 399 will be there on Saturday to cheer teams on and scout :)

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Andy, you're our head ref? Oh now I'm VERY excited. I will be a scorekeeper.

George

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Awesome! I look forward to seeing you there Andy. :)

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

...wow... What. A. Regional.

While the field was shallow, the regional saw some of the best (strategical) matches I've seen so far. I have a couple of thanks to give out.

1) Miss Daisy
You guys are awesome. It great getting to play with and against you guys. Dinner Friday night was great. I'm glad both our teams got together so well. In the finals, you guys kept out hopes alive by calling a much needed time out for our alliance partner (1388). While you guys weren't the most dominate team at the regional, you guys certainly proved that NO ONE is invincible and that a good strategy can carry you very far in this game.

2) 1388 - Eagle Robotics
Once again, it was a great pleasure to team up with you guys again. We certainly made a strong push, too bad we couldn't make it last a little longer.

3) Andy - Team 968
I told you this after the regional, but we would not have been finalists without your help on Friday. Your suggestions and work with our team made all the difference and was a perfect example of what makes FIRST so special.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Of course Jon would tell y'all himself because he is too humble, but congrats to him for being the Regional Woodie Flowers Award recipient, and to the Holy Cows (1538) for winning the RCA.

And then there was Miss Daisy (341) who helped the rookie team from Brazil (3032) build a robot on Thursday because theirs was stuck in customs. They were on the field competing by Friday. GP in action!

And 968, wow, what an offensive power house. Very impressive play.... until Goliath met David in team 2543 whose defensive strategy in the Elimination rounds had the entire arena on their feet and cheering.

And then the six rookie teams; 2827, 2839, 2984, 3021, 3032, and 3041. Watch out for these up and coming teams, especially 2839, winner of Highest Rookie Seed and Rookie All Star!

The San Diego Regional is the best and it is because of the great volunteers, the awesome teams, mentors, and parents, and especially because TeamSanDiego rocks!

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

wow, san diego was so fun. it was a great regional to be at. i want to thank our alliance partners teams 1538 and 1348 for a great finals rounds and i expecialy want to thank miss daisy so much for sacrificing their time card for us to try and fix our gyro. what happened was the match before, our shaft that connected our gyro to our window motor broke and unfortunatly, we didnt have a spare. we did our best to try and fix it, but we had no luck. i want to thank you guys again for your help and all of the teams. 1538, have fun at atlanta and same to miss daisy and their alliance. hopefully, 1388 will either win or get something at the LA regional that will get us to atlanta so that we can see eachother at atlanta

-David

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

San Diego was definetely a fun and exciting regional. The upset of Ms.Daisy over Rawc was amzaing! Would have been even more exciting if my alliance were able to upset 1388 and 1538's alliance :( Two dead alliance partners in the 3rd match(812 & 2485) ruined the momentum lol. Congrats to all the teams who made it to the finals! We will be in Vegas with a faster and better robot!

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

...wow... is right, Jon...

The daisies have made it safely back to Philadelphia, and I don't know that I've ever been so disappointed to come back home. We had one of the most memorable regionals in our 10 year history out in San Diego. Yeah, things went our way on the field (more on that later), but the thrills of victory will only last a moment. The friendships we formed with so many people from so many far away teams will last much longer, and ultimately be more rewarding. We now have new friends to look for in Atlanta, and you better believe that we will seek you out.

Thanks and congratulations to:

-Jim Beck and all of Team San Diego. Your tight knit family of local teams and their regional director is a model for all of FIRST. Some of you aren't known on these forums with the same acclaim as other older teams, but you should be. To a person each one of you was exceptional to us and made our stay an absolute pleasure. You guys get it.

-Team 1538 and especially WFFA recipient Jon Jack. You are truly a complete team. On the field you had an effective machine that fought well all the way through the finals. Off of it you not only won a (very well deserved) Chairman's Award, you reached out to our team by taking us out to Old Town San Diego on Friday night. To say that we had a blast would be an understatement. If you ever make it out to the Philadelphia area, we will return the favor in a second!

-Team 968 for putting on a dominant performance. To those teams that will face RAWC or the Cheesy Poofs this season or offseason - watch out! You better bring your A game (and a little luck) if you want to stand a chance!

-Team 1572. You guys started on Thursday with a shooter. It worked okay, but like the vast majority of shooters this season it wasn't particularly consistent and couldn't put up the volume of a dumper. Not content to rest on your laurels, you went out and completely redid your scoring mechanism in time for the playoffs. And boy did it work well. I love seeing teams that never stop making improvements to their machine, and who adapt well to a challenge!

-Team 1388. Your gyro-enhanced agility was one of the technical high points of the competition. In finals match 1, you managed to finally pin Daisy down and unload a huge score on us - you were the first and only team able to do it the entire regional!

-Andy Baker and Dan Greene. With 37 teams, the San Diego Regional is one of the smallest FIRST regionals this year. But we still managed to get two WFA winners to help lead the way!

-The FIRST staff and all of the volunteers. When we went on a scouting mission to the NJ regional, we were very worried by what we saw. Luckily, this competition was almost entirely issue-free and the field was working like it had been around for years. We are all quick to blame FIRST for some of the troubles the new game and control system have brought, but in this case we need to give credit where it is due. Everything worked like clockwork.

-And lastly, Teams 1332 and 2543 for teaming up with us to create the best alliance on the field that afternoon. Each one of us brought something different to the table.

East (341 - PA)
Middle (1332 - CO)
and West (2543 - CA)

Old (341)
Middle Aged (1332)
and Young (2543)

Steady scoring (341)
Daring dumps (1332)
and devastating defense (2543)

I truly believe that it was the union of all of these diverse elements that brought us success. We worked like clockwork as a team. 1332 - once you got your dump timing down, you were a true threat to every trailer on the crater. And 2543 - you found your true calling in playing your West Coast take on old school East Coast defense. I told your drive team about how regionals are won and lost in the northeast (with heart, suffocating defense, and some broken parts along the way). And boy, did they run with it. You absolutely shut down a robot that was previously unstoppable. Watching you drive the opposition sideways all the way across the field was a beautiful sight.

In all, I hope everyone else had half the time that we did. San Diego has carved out a place in our hearts.

-Jared

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

As I watched online, there was some real excitement in San Diego.The 968 upset still has me scratching my head.

Congratulations to the winners and all participants.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

We are defiantly close here in SD, most of the teams here are all great friends, almost like family and we are always willing to extend anything and everything to each other as well as other out of state teams.

we also had 4 FTA's there, lol [only one was officially the FTA for the regional, but we had 3 other people who are or have been FTAs before]

I was the scorekeeper running the fields systems and we defiantly didn't have any huge errors, it was my first year doing the job and im honestly surprised it went so well, most of the actual issues we came across, me and our group back behind the table were able to fix them quickly and we were able to log them and we gave FIRST a bug sheet and they are currently working on the issues so later regionals this season wont encounter those errors.

I wanna thank every single team and person who was there. Because of the great work by the volunteers and teams it really made my job easy.

Did anyone have any problems/issues/recommendations with anything we did with running the event or anything really regarding the event that we could improve on for later years?

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Wow. This regional was amazing! Everyone did so well! The semi-finals and finals were intense matches. I want to thank our alliance partners 1348 and the holy cows! We were almost there. And Congrats to the holy cows for their RCA! Hope to join you in atlanta!

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

If I had to name one person on our alliance as MVP, it'd be you Katrina. You're consistency in scoring last minute supercells made the difference in several matches.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Thanks! It was awesome having you guys on our alliance... We made an awesome team. Two more wins and we would have had it. Hopefully we win at the LA regional and join you guys in Atlanta. Congrats on Woodie Flowers and Chairmans! You guys deserve it!


-Katrina

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

I visited on Friday and had a great time watching all the teams play =] Sadly I missed Saturday, shame. I would have loved to see my old team. Its crazy how last year we were a 11 person team struggling for funding and support from our school and the next year win in the finals =] Great job everyone, can't wait to see some video from the matches.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

As proof of a good regional, my voice is still a bit hoarse.

2102 had the most fun we've ever had cheering for every team on the list, and we can't wait to do it again at Phoenix.

The actual competition was amazing too, with the incredibly close scores, the insane semi-finals matches with 968 (and going crazy with Daisy after said semifinals matches), and of course the well deserved WFA and RCA for Jon Jack and The Holy Cows, you guys really went all out this year. Considering the extremely small number of teams that were able to trek out to San Diego, the regional was crazy fun. Good luck in future competitions everyone!

-Matt

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Your team was amazing and truly deserved the award you won. 2102 really made our team (and every team) feel at home in SD. After we signed up we were concerned that the small size of the event might make it a quiet regional. But that was not true at all. The building was rocking all weekend. Your team was a big part of that. By the way, my voice did not recover until Tuesday! ;)
Best of luck to 2102 and thanks to all of the SD teams for making us feel so welcome at your home regional. Our team truly appreciated the hospitality.

Re: 2009 San Diego Regional
 

Congratulations to everyone who took part in the San Diego Regional! It was great to be there as a guest (or, at least, as an unaligned volunteer - I was the Luminary Micro Jaguar support guy). I just posted info on some photos and video I shot during the competition to the wrong thread - head here to find the URLs. The pictures are all Creative Commons so you are welcome to download them, use them on web sites or print them for non commercial purposes.