Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Congratulations to the alliance of 768, 1218 & 1699 for your big win. It was nice to see that if our team couldn't win the event at least our minibot could help out. I would also like to congratulate Fred Needel for winning the woodie Flowers Award. It didn't occur to me that you didn't have one until we walked out onto the field for the presentation and you didn't come with us. You are very deserving. I was also glad to see that Greg could be there for the presentation.

Congrats to 836 for winning the Chairman's Award. You are a great team and very deserving.

I would like to send our thanks out to 1403 & 88 for helping us form a great alliance. After the first round I felt we had a great chance to win it all. It seems that we got bit by the unlucky bug in that Semi-final. I am just glad to see that a red card did not make the difference in who went to the finals.

I would say the best part of the weekend was sharing a pit with MOE. You guys made the event fun for us and showed my kids what a HOF team is. I hope we can hang out again at Championship. Thanks for being a class act and a fun group. You give us something to strive for.

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Congratulations to the alliance of 768, 1218 & 1699!

REX 1727 would like to give a huge thanks to teams 836 [Robobees] and team 768 [Techno Warriors] for their display gracious professionalism in helping us by providing tools we'd forgotten and helping us solve problems we could not figure out ourselves.

Great regional everybody and hope to see you at DC.

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

I had a lot of fun at my first Chesapeake Regional - thanks to all of the friendly people from the Baltimore area who welcomed 1124 in, and it was nice to see some familiar faces from New England as well!

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

First of all congrats to 836 Robobees for winning RCA and being a Finalist. I thought something might be brewing when you didn't win the Gracious Professionalism Award. Special thanks to all your members that helped the students of our MOEbile pit & me fix multiple robots. Also your robot probably gave the best individual performance in the elims. Best of luck at the Championship.

Congrats to 846 for winning REI. I sat behind your team and you were all very nice, and spirited. It was fun having you in Baltimore, thanks for visiting from Cali.

Congrats to Fred Needel for winning WFFA, long overdue. Congrats to the Shades for winning the second volunteer award, can't say I've ever seen that before.

Congrats to the winning alliance of 768, 1218 & 1699. It was one of the most interesting finals I've seen. See all of you at the Championship! I guess our friends, the CHAbots, will no longer be registering for Philly since they have their ticket to St. Louis punched. I am sure we will see them there Sat, anyway.

Thanks you to our alliance partners, 2199 and 2377. We fought the good fight against in the toughest QF matchup against 340, 1403, & 88. We lost the first match that featured the MD highest combined score of 194. In match 2, we had the unfortunate issue with C Company's DS reboot (their robot was fine, but never regained comms), so it was even more of an uphill battle. Our robot certainly could have performed better to give us a chance to advance.

To 340, it was great being your pit neighbors again. Whenever I got a free moment it seems like I spent it talking with your team members and/or admiring your robot. Your presence advanced minibots at this regional by leaps and bounds. You loaned minibots to many teams including the eventual champion 768. Your advice inspired minibots on 1218 and 1403 to name a few. I know we will be following the tips you gave use as we seek to improve Larry, Curly and Shemp (our minibots). Unfortunately, we never got to play on the same alliance, and the scheduler saw fit to pit us against each other in the last qual match, where we knocked you out of the top seed. It is not the first time we have knocked down a top seed, that ended up hurting our elim situation and it probably will not be the last. After the Robobees gave up their Captain's spot to join the #1 alliance it shifted our alliances into an inevitable #4 vs #5 QF showdown. Your alliance with Cougar Robotics & TJ^2 was formidable, I called out your picks in stereo, because they were the same as our list. You guys out played and out strategized us, well played. I thought for sure your alliance would go the distance, but I guess it wasn't in the cards.

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

What an amzing weekend!

I was able to make the trip from Virginia Tech to see our robot in person for the first time.

The Chesapeake Regional never fails to have exciting eliminations, and this year was no different. I want to thank 714 for allowing us to join their alliance and 237 for completing the alliance. It was an emotional rollercoaster the entire time, and the better team won.

Congrats to 846 for the Engineering Inspiration Award. You guys were awesome pit neighbors!

Congrats to 768, for several different reasons. You guys are truely inspirational and deserve to win. Mr. Fred Needel on receiving the Woodie Flowers Award. I alway look forward to being next to your team in the pits.

Congrats to the winning alliance - 768, 1218, and 1699. The finals were amzing.

A special thanks to team 365 (GO MOE!). You guys are truely inspirational. Both of our teams spent countless hours working beside each other in the pits to help teams out. If we did not have the parts/experience required, I knew I could count on guys to help. Thanks again for laying out a great foundation for us to follow!

Thanks to all the volunteers! Thank you Steve Shade for heading up another awesome group of refs. I know what it is like to be the guy that has to deliver the "bad" messages, and you handled it very well.

A special thanks to Greg Needel, you are one of the best announcers out there. The whole Needel family is one to model after.

Thanks again to everybody! Hope to see everyone in St. Louis!

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

REX 1727 would like to thank the ROBOBEES for their help with our programming. We figured out during one our matches that our robot had many technical issues. Robobees were a great help!

Congrats ROBOBEES! Good Luck in St. Louis!

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Thanks for the shout out, MikeE! We had over 700 entries into that system, and we've got several ideas for the next iteration we'll be unleashing next year!

On behalf of FRC 2789, I have to say that I agree, this was a very friendly regional, and we would like to thank all the great teams and volunteers, especially Robyn Needel, who made it a point to make us feel welcome!

Everyone in our team's community (students, mentors, teachers, school administrators, sponsors, etc.) is beaming with pride over the fact that we're bringing the Chesapeake Regional Entrepreneurship Award home! If anyone's interested in taking a look at our business plan, one of our students has posted a PDF copy of it here on Chief Delphi, here it is if you'd like to take a look at it:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2471

We'd also like to thank the field judges for presenting our team with the Queuing Award! While its not an official FIRST award, we are very proud and grateful that our efforts to take care of the little things were recognized and rewarded by such a hard-working group of volunteers!

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Did anyone archive the Chesapeake Regional and have plans to make it accessible to others? Thanks! :)

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Hey all, congrats to everyone!

I was the volunteer photographer running all around, getting general event photos. In all, I got around 4500 photos. I will be tagging them, and uploading them to my personal site for anyone to download/use. (Here's 2010's by the way http://chesapeake.atomopoly.com/ ) I should hopefully have them up in the next week or so.

Here's some teasers:

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Great photos! Thanks for capturing the energy of the event! I can't wait to see the other 4495 of them! :D

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

MOE 365 had a great time at the Chesapeake Regional. The great venue, nice location for unloading, helpful and professional volunteers, terrific teams, and proximity to the Inner Harbor makes this a really enjoyable regional to attend.

Congratulations to 836 - Robobees on your Regional Chairman's Award. You guys are a great group and it is always a pleasure interacting with you all. Many of your team members were out and about at other pits helping teams. You are a well-deserving Chairman's team to represent the Chesapeake Regional in St Louis. Oh, you have a great bot, too!

We were so glad to see our old friends, GRR - 340 make the trek from Rochester to Baltimore for this event. It is always a pleasure to interact with you guys! Thanks for partnering with us to create our uberpit! Congrats on the RCA at FLR. Another great robot and team. Inspiration goes both ways. Thanks for your friendship and continued inspiration.

A bit shout out to the regional winners - 768, 1218, and 1699. These are a group of terrific teams. Well fought and deserved regional win to you all!

Fred Needel - Regional Woodie Flowers Award winner - congratulations! You are the embodiment of what the WFA is all about.

To our alliance partners, 2199 - Robolions and 2377 - C Company, it was nice running a few matches with you guys. You were great to work with. Sorry it only lasted a brief time. We had a powerhouse opponent right out of the gate and knew it wouldn't be easy.

To all volunteers and FIRST staff running the event - thanks for making our experience so enjoyable. You all made it happen.

All the best to teams participating in additional regionals and/or the Championship event in coming weeks. Be safe and always show your Gracious Professionalism.

Go FIRST!

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Peter, as always, thank you for your volunteering and your amazing photos! :)

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

The event was great and I had a blast! It was great seeing friends (so so so many friends were there from NH to NY, PA to NJ, and DE to MD), making new ones, and most importantly it was great surprising my twin and seeing my upstate NY team 250 family! The competition was awesome and there was a lot of high energy from the quarter finals to the finals. Also, Peter, the photos look awesome, like John Said, I can't wait to see the other 4,495. :)

Cass

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Thank you to the Chesapeake Regional Committee for running a fun, color-coded* Regional.

*Color-coded = awesomely organized

Evidence of Color-Codedness at the Chesapeake Regional:

1. Lost & Found form: teams could alert pit admin of lost items by completing this form. As soon as I got this form, I knew the event was being run by color-coded people.

2. Great stand management: the aisles in the stands were kept clear. The announcers occasionally reminded people to avoid lingering in front of the aisles immediately against the field so that people in the stands could have an unobstructed view of the matches. Our scout team in the stands was especially grateful!

3. Great awards music: It seemed really pre-planned. Each song for each award really went with each award. I especially loved that they played Magnificent by U2 for the Chairman Award winners. Beautiful!

4. The music in general was awesome. I also liked that sometimes they played team specific songs, like the Jaws theme for the team with the Sammy the Shark robot.

5. Loved the placement of the vendor and sponsor booths in that concession area right against the pit area. It was very convenient to have them all there.

6. The team social was awesome!!! What a great way to build camaraderie among teams! All our students loved it! They want events like this to occur at all the Regionals we attend. They're even talking about collaborating with the Alamo Regional Committee to host a similar event next year.

7. Really great announcers. I like how they took the time to explain a few common penalties so that the audience could better follow the action.

8. The field refs had good chemistry. I liked how they conferred after every match. It made me trust their judgment because many minds, eyes, and ears were involved in the calls.

9. The Queuing Award that our team won suggests that the volunteers who managed the queuing system were making and compiling observations (maybe even data) on teams' ability to make it to matches on time. Definitely color-coded.

10. Loved, loved, loved that the national anthem was sung in 4 part harmony by a choir composed of students from several teams. I cried every single time.

And now for the shout-outs:

Congratulations to the winning alliance: FRC 1218, FRC 768, and FRC 1699! What an amazing suspenseful final round! Congratulations on having the mental toughness to keep your heads in the game and take advantage of a surprise opportunity to win this round.

Congratulations to the Chairman winners, the Robobees (FRC 836)! The work showcased in your Chairman Video was awesome and very inspiring.

Thank you to FRC 768 for helping our team navigate through this Regional. Special thanks to Robyn Needel for providing invaluable advice and assistance throughout the Regional. Congratulations on winning the Regional! I had a hunch you'd go far on Saturday by the end of the Friday qualification matches because of your team's prolific scoring and your ability to play PENALTY-FREE.

Thank you to Team Beta FRC 2836 for being great pit neighbors and for many interesting conversations. Good luck at the Hartford Regional!

Thank you to TJ2 (FRC 88) for taking the time to congratulate our scout team in the stands. It was sooo nice to get positive feedback on our public scouting database because we worked so hard throughout the Regional to keep it updated. It hurt our brains to gather all that data and it was nice to learn that we were not hurting our brains in vain.

Thanks to FRC 1124 for playing a great game of ninja with our team at the Team Social. Our team had a great time at the social thanks to your spirit and graciousness.

Thank you to the Entrepreneurship Award judges for giving our young team a chance to shine. We were not expecting to win this award until we were much older and more established. It's nice to know that we are on the right track to becoming a strong FIRST team that's in it for the long haul.

I may have forgotten people and teams because I left my little black notebook which contains at least half my brain at home. I will check my notebook later and update this post if needed.

Re: 2011 Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore
 

Some team shout outs from the Chesapeake:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Maryland.../2/paCYkuoPDHE