Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

Hi Everyone,

I would like you all to know that the FIRST FRC team in Australia will be starting this up coming season. Special thanks to Team Phoenix (team 2342) for the loan of their overdrive robot. The Aussie team is being started at Macquarie University in the Sydney area. We already have generated quite a bit of interest! To find out more please look at our preliminary web page on the Macquarie University site. We look forward to seeing you at competitions this upcoming season!!!

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Soooo.... you finally let the cat out of the bag!:)


Just to let all of you know, if anyone should start a team in Australia, it should be Sarah (along with her family of course.;))

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YAYY!!!

Our team talked about it a lot the beginning of last season. Everyone said they wanted to go last year, but decided not to go due to educational and budget reasons. Honestly, we probably wont manage to go to the Australia Regional anytime soon, but if we were closer to Australia then the east side of the US, we would probably go once or twice.

Congrats on getting a regional in Australia!
:D

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Just to be clear, we are NOT starting an Aussie regional. Just one FRC team. Our plan is to compete at an existing regional in the USA.

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Actually no, there is no Australian regional:( , only one team(currently unknown name and number) However, the hope is that they will be able to start several more teams in the Sydney area, but only one team for now. They believe that once they can get a good number of FIRST teams that they can get FIRST to start a regional. YEAH!!!:] And they have already started a good 5 FLL teams in there area.

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Oh, my bad... Never-the-less, congratulations on bringing FIRST to Aussie... ;)

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That's great !!!

Actually there may be not one but TWO teams starting in Australia. We have been working with a group for a few months in Melbourne. Their event would not be in Australia since there is no regional but in the states.

And if it all works out there may be another announcement.

.

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We already have about 100 kids interested, we are going to hold our first informational meeting soon. Some of these kids are willing to take an hour and a half train ride just to build the robot! We are going to have 2342's robot at the upcoming Open Day at Macquarie University where we hope to get more kids interested. We are also going to hold our state's FLL championship tournament this November. We can't wait to get started!

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That's quite impressive for Team Phoenix and this new rookie team. I wish you good luck. :)


Welcome to FIRST!

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*two thumbs up and a big grin*

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That is dedication, and they haven't even experienced a build season to get them hooked :eek:

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With kids who are that willing and dedicated, you could get a FRC regional in Australia in no time!

^__^

Good for them!

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I'm green with envy. You get to go surfing on First and Second Christmas!

-Nick

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It was nice working with you last spring and I'm glad to see your robot made it through the shipping gauntlet. If you need any other help, please feel free to contact me by PM, email, or through our team website.
Best Wishes for a great 2010 season!

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Welcome aboard to any one from Down Under! If you need help this is a good place to ask for it. Many of us check daily and sometime more often so if you are in need of a an answer just ask. Please remember, we are 12 hours difference in some cases so we may be sleeping when you ask your question.

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Haha, that's a good one, Al. :p

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Yeah, but when we wake up, we'll be more than happy to answer. It may not be the answer you wanted to hear, but we will do our best to make sure it is the correct one. This is assuming 3105 (Manila, Philippines) doesn't answer first...

And I'm sure that the L.A., San Diego, or Hawaii regionals would be very happy to have you show up!

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I usually stay up until 2:00 AM so that we can catch up on whats new.

I hope that they can make it all the way up here to GSR.:]

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Haha, if they made it to GSR it'd be amazingly epic.

Congrats!

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Could you give us the contact information for the group you are working with in Melbourne? It would be great if the two teams could work together on some issues that we are going to face as the first Aussie teams. If you would prefer, you can e-mail us at frc@ics.mq.edu.au. Thanks!

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Gladly. I will do this offline for now since our group hasn't made an official announcement yet.

Ed

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We registered the team today! :D We are still waiting for FIRST to give us the official team number, but we are so excited to be the newest members of the FIRST family!

Can't wait for kick-off!:)

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Where is the like button? :D

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I don't know, but I'm pressing it!

I wonder what the number is...

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Congratulations!!! ^__^
Welcome to FIRST!

I'm gonna guess that is around the 3100's...
The highest number that can be reached in TBA (i think) is 3122, so maybe the 3200's too.

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The lowest one they can get is 3130. See Bill's Blog.

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I'm going to guess 3131.... has a rather cool ring to it.:rolleyes:

Can't wait until kickoff when you can get the kids started...

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While I am sure American regionals would be delighted to host the Aussie team(s), especially the ones in Hawaii and along the West Coast nearest to Australia, I would like to point out that they would be equally welcomed at regionals in other countries as well. FIRST is, indeed, bigger than the USA and that for many teams is one of its great appeals. Adding another country to the list of international participants is great!

Welcome aboard, Aussies!

Jason

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Your new job: Get esteemed education professionals and politicians involved. Its a big job, but I trust that Australia has a good focus on education. :)

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We know that long term this is going to be one of the most important things to do so that FIRST--both FLL and FRC--will grow the way they have in the USA. We are already working on the education aspect. We are going to work at Macquarie University where we already have a bunch of the professors excited as well as the grad students. We has been going around to a bunch of the local high schools (which over here cover both FLL and FRC ages) trying to recruit more kids for the team. Our talk also encourages kids to get involved in STEM even if FIRST is not the right outlet for them.

We would love to get the politicians involved to help grow the programs. Also they might be able to put out some grants to help teams form in more rural areas. (In the outback, sometimes families can be miles from the nearest family, so getting funding for them could be a problem)

The other thing that we want to look at is how to involve the media, since a lot of the morning shows are taped in central Sydney (which is about an hour by train/bus from the university) as well as one of the biggest newspaper in the country is in Sydney. This way we would have a national audience without traveling around the entire nation!:)

Any help that anyone could give us in any of these areas would be great!

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O o o o o o! Can the team name please be the RoboRoos!? :D

Btw, told you some of us would still be up (and I'm on the East coast :p )

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Is that at Beaconhills College in Pakenham near Melbourne by any chance?

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my bad !!.... there are other countries too !!

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Nope... A couple of high schools in the area.

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HAHAHAHA...:D

They name has already been considered.... we've had several discussions about the team name and RoboRoos was going to be the name but they changed their mind and decided that they would have the discussion with the team members when the meetings start up.

Hehehe i thought that someone would mention that name on here.:)

Re: Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

Actually, that is our current team name. The team will have to make a final decision once we are meeting, but The RoboRoos is the (very) tentative name! (For those of you who are not that into sports, the SocceRoos are the national soccer team, and the HockeyRoos are the national field hockey team.)

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Welcome to FIRST! :)

Wasn't there also a New Zeland team? Maybe there can be some cooperation between the two teams/regionals or something...

Spread the word around the world. :D

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Sarah... thanks for telling me that you changed your mind.:p

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This is a great year to be bringing a new team to FIRST!!

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Awesome job! We did a presentation for people who were considering joining the team, and we were able to mention the new Australian teams when we gave our speech about how international FIRST is [:

Good luck this season and beyond!

(and by the way, RoboRoos would be AWESOME! I hope you guys end up deciding to use it!)

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We registered--at 2AM in the morning our (Sydney) time--for GSR. We are looking forward to competing at this premier event and can't wait for March!!! We also got our official team number, 3132, when we registered!

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Welcome!

Glad to see everything worked out. We shipped our 2005 robot to New Zealand in hopes the local teams could drum up the support to start some teams, and possibly a regional, but things seem to have fizzled out:confused:

Re: Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

Umm, Hi,
I'm one of the guys on the Aussie team. Things are going well we got about 20-30 people in the team. We still haven't got a name yet but thats on the to-do list for the next meeting.
So... Yeah :)

Thanks
timytamy

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WELCOME!!!!

I guess that you can be considered the first team member!;)

P.S. Love the username, I heard that those are really good, can't wait until Sarah comes back over here so I can try one!:cool:

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First off, Welcome to FIRST.
Secondly, Welcome to Chief Delphi.

I see you are coming to BAE GSR ... if you need anything, just look me up, We'll make sure you get what you need.

Good luck, and I look forward to competing with, and against, you and your teammates.

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We are having a team meeting tonight, where--if all goes well--we will decide on our team name. So, I guess you all should check first thing in the morning!!!

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Thanks, and they do taste great... mmm... chocolate...

Thanks. Please forgive my ignorance but could somebody please explain what BAE GSR is? :confused:

Thanks again
timytamy

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BAE Granite State Regional, it is a Regional. I'll let someone more informed than me tell you more (Im a Midwest guy myself)

Re: Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

Several of the regionals have been given a three-letter "nickname". Here are a few:

GSR--Granite State Regional
SVR--Silicon Valley Regional
GTR--Greater Toronto Regional
MWR--Midwest Regional
WPI--WPI Regional

There are some others, but they've had a name change or two and no longer have an applicable common three-letter nickname.

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So... you are probably all wondering what the team name is.

We are now team 3132--Thunder Down Under. For those of you who enjoy The Outback Steakhouse, this name might have more meaning to you...:D

Anyhow, we are looking forward to seeing you all at GSR in March!!!

Re: Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

First off, congratulations on coming up with a name!

More info for Granite State Regional (GSR) can be found here timytamy- http://www.baesystemsfirst.org/regional/

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That's an awesome name! I'll be excited to see what you guys come up with for your team imagery; you can do a lot with "thunder" and the general Australian image/stereotypes. Good luck!


Also, if any of the new users use the search function and look at old threads, GLR was the very competitive Great Lakes Regional, which was abolished with the rest of the regionals in MI when the district system was put into effect last year. (however, the MI State Championship is at the same venue)

Re: Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

Thanks for clearing that up. One more thing is BAE a sponsor or something, I've something about sponsoring our team (one of the mentors works there... I think)

So as you've been told we've got a name now and we are looking at getting a domain for the website.

I checked the member page and it looks like we have a grand total of 5 team members on Chief Delphi (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/me...&s ort=field5 look for 3132in the teams field) :yikes:

Thanks
timytamy

Re: Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

Thanks for clearing that up. Is BAE a sponsor? (one of our mentors works there)

As you no we now have a name. Thunder Down Under got chosen against RoboRoos 15-4 and there were a few other ones that got one or two votes. So we are now Thunder Down Under!!!!
We also have 5 people on Chief Delphi (look for 3132 on the member page)

Thanks again
timytamy

Re: Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

Yes.

Some regionals have sponsor names as part of the name, like the SPBLI Long Island Regional. (Don't ask me what SPBLI stands for; I don't know.) Others state the sponsor name after the regional name, like the San Diego Regional (sponsored by Qualcomm). VCU and UCF are old names for the Virginia and Florida regionals, respectively; those codes are for the sponsoring universities.

Kara: You forgot WMR, the West Michigan Regional. It's now a district event.

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School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc also just as Trenton used to be the Johnson&Johnson Mid-Atlantic Regional


Also, with a BAE employee on the team you could possibly get BAE funding. It might be a little late, but there's no harm in finding out. Note in my signature that there are many teams BAE sponsors from all over.
+.2

Re: Please welcome to the FIRST Family...
 

Yes, BAE is a large sponsor in FIRST. As mentioned they sponsor several regionals including the one your team is going to (it's full name is BAE Granite State Regional). Almost all the teams in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and lots of other teams around the states and possibly a couple around the world are or have been sponsored by BAE.

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One of the reasons we have so many BAE Systems mentors is that they are a sponsor of our team. If it were not for all the help BAE Systems has given us (both back in NH, and here in Sydney) this team would not have happened. Right by Macquarie Uni--where we meet--there is a HUGE technology park so we are looking at what other companies are there that might know about FIRST from the USA.

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Hello There.

A Quick Update for Progress of team 3132.............

We have now a team name and it is called................ "The Thunder Down Under". Yes, this name sounds creepy. But hey, it does make sense, doesn't it?

We have also managed to build Lego Robots for the little children of the FLL tournament later in the week, as part of our community service. Some people are also helping out in the tournament, such as judges and team helpers.

Finally, we have starting proper organising and training for the people in the sub-teams, especially those who are in Controls and Mechanical Building, with other sub-teams still being organised.

I can smell the sounds of a FRC tournament already. The only thing we need is a Team and Robot to come with it. Be sure to check the progress of 3132.

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Umm, FLL teams are supposed to build their own robots. I hope you didn't take that learning experience away from them.

Good for you on helping with the FLL tournament, though. That's a great service project for any FRC team.

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Part of me is thinking he meant the mission models for the tables, right Chuku? That is what i heard you guys were doing through phoenix spud.

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Not that creepy. I think you need to come to Michigan and play with 68 and 280 to make up a very ACDC-esque alliance. (TNT and two teams with Thunder in their names, come on! This is comic gold I'm giving you here!)

Have you guys considered setting up a blog or some other way of documenting your experiences starting FRC in a new country? If we ever hope to grow FRC to the scale the FLL has reached we will need to streamline this process as much as possible and your feedback could be priceless.

I also have to give you guys kudos on this part of your website:
(Emphasis added)

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Thanks Andrew. I used to live in NH, have done FLL for 5 years and did FRC (I was on team 2342) for 2 years. So, when we moved to Australia, my one condition was we had to start an FRC team. As I like to joke around, I have been involved in FIRST ever since I was -4 months old. So, I take FIRST pretty seriously, and your compliments mean a lot.

We were building the FLL mission models the other night as BrendanB pointed out. We had a great time building the sets that are going to be used at our states' competition. Most of our current team members--we are always looking for more people to join the team--are volunteering at the competition as either team helpers or ref assistants. We are all looking forward to encouraging the next generation of FRCers this upcoming Sunday. (Saturday night in the USA!!!)

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Hey,
Last night we had a big meeting and we started going over what we will be doing closer towards the build season.
We also are working towards getting the website goint, we bought a domain and one of our mentors have put a strange latin placeholder on there: thethunderdownunder.org :confused:

Hopefully we can get english on there soon! ;)

Thanks,
timytamy

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You could try to get an article about your efforts in the paper, maybe a news network will see it as an education or community story.

Congrats by the way. Best of luck.

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Thats one of the things we are looking at. We had a buisness subteam meeting a few weeks ago and that was mentioned.

At our last meeting there was a few people from the Uni's film school. They were also recording at the FLL tournament where we were helping out.

Thanks,
timytamy

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Hey TimyTamy and Pheonix
I'm one of the ex 759'ers (now mentoring), who were the first team from the UK, so if you have any questions regarding international stuff, like how to get teh kit of parts over and that sort of thing, feel free to give me a shout and i'll happily share any knowledge we have of the last 7-8 years of participating form another continent ;)
and totally awesome btw ;)

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Our website makes sense now!!!
http://thethunderdownunder.org

Thanks,
timytamy

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NICE!!!!!:ahh:

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I wonder if the kit motors run counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere? :rolleyes:

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Only on the left side of the robot.

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Hehehehehehe. I hope not, that would make things a little bit harder... :D

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YAY!!! You gotta love the laws of physics sometimes ;)

Thanks,
timytamy

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I can see it now....


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