Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

Thanks for all the hardwork everyone has put into setting up this event !

I'm in Austin and ready for Texas Round-Up ! Yeee Hah !

I believe one of members will try to stream the event on ustream, Will post the link friday if it works out !

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

Thank you to all the volunteers and teams that made it out! I would say that the Roundup was a HUGE success! Everything ran smoothly for us thanks to all the hard work put in, and next year, you can count on even more volunteers and help from 2789!

There were also some great workshops and meetings during the event, and I've got great feelings about this coming year! Again, thank you very much to everyone who helped organize and participated in the event, don't be strangers until kickoff!

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

I have sooooo many people to thank, and it's going to take a while to get all my thoughts together considering how frazzled and fried my brain is right now. So a really quick thank you to EVERYONE until I get a real thank you up!

And now what everyone was probably looking forward to - the list of Award Recipients! I've attached the script so that you can read more about who won and why! (Realized this did not work when posted last night... Will attach it when I can get to my computer).

Champions - 118, 1477, 653
Finalists - 624, 148, 3481

Mentors Tournament Champions: 624, 2587, 2789
Skills Challenge Champion - 1477
Austin CAN Award (Most Canned Goods Donated) - 9999 (pre-rookie)

Team Judged Awards:
Gracious Professionalism - 2158
Creativity in Design - 118
Team Spirit - 9999 (pre-rookie)
Play of the Day - 148

CONGRATULATIONS ALL & THANK YOU AGAIN!

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

Hmmm, interested in the pre-rookie that picked up a couple awards. Who are they?

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

I'd like to take a swing at this one after some rest. They are the amazing Shadetree Mechanics.

(Please note the awesome and amazing pun - shade tree and swing. It will make you smile. And, that is what they do.):)

Ask Jess how the judged awards were judged. It's very cool.

Jane

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

Thanks to everyone for such a great event. It was really fun to get majority of the Texas teams together for some awesome off-season robot fun. I really appreciate all the hard work and time the event staff and volunteers put in to make this even run as smooth as possible and the ensure that everyone got to play. I didn't make it to the seminars but I heard they were all great and helpful.

I would really like to point out such awesome gracious professionalism by 2158, 418, and a few other teams I didn't catch the names of that gave parts, tools, a place to work and anything the pre-rookie team needed in order to have a fully functional robot at this event. I'm also glad they got a chance to experience elimination as well. I believe they will be a great team and fully prepared come 2012 season.

It was awesome to play with 624 and 2789 in the mentor tournament. It was fun to be behind the driver station again. We hope to come back and defend our title next year. :)

Congrats to 118, 1477, and 653 on winning the event. This was the 2nd event that 118 and 1477 won together and the 3rd time they've been on the same alliance. (Lone Star, IRI, and Texas Round Up) You guys looked great out there and put on quite a show against 148, 3481 and 624.

Overall, great event, and I can't thank everyone enough for all the hard work. (Awesome looking trophies by the way :D ) Austin is such a nice city if you've never been. Can't wait for next year!! :)

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

The KleinBots 2011 rookie team would like to say thank you for such a great time. Kleinbots, Team 3735 had a long day of fixing up the practice day and turned around for Saturday to win 6 of their 8 qualifying matches. Ranked 9th in overall we ultimately became the 6th seeded alliance captain. Picking team 2789 and 457 as our alliance for the finals. We lost to the 3rd seeded alliance in the first round of finals but the experience was great.

Our 3 new drivers played every match while our older now graduated members tried to take a step back as we pass on the reigns for the second year of KleinBots awesomeness.

We made a lot of new friends and connections and hope to see them this next season as equals on the field once again.

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

Jess,
Thanks for all your hard work and the hard work of all the other volunteers. We had a great time this weekend!! A quick correction if I may:

Our third partner was 3481, not 2952 :)

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

THANK YOU ADRIENNE! I appreciate it!

Ooops! My apologies. I blame being exhausted yesterday and not raking down the info before leaving. All corrected!

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

THANKS, Adrienne!! GREAT seeing you guys again and competing _together_ again... ;-)

Robowranglers rock!!

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

We FRC ROOKIES too... ;-)

And THANKS to guidance/support from #148 Robowranglers... we had an _awesome_ first year!!

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

Didn't realize 3400's were rookies also this year. So many new teams joining FIRST every year is exciting. Already going to be in the 4000s this next year then.

Maybe you were so professional you just fooled us. My apologies though should be corrected.

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

LOL... I don't know about being "so professional"... but, if you saw our pit area at the Alamo Regional you'd have seen that we made quite a bit of progress...

I think our strong points are _keen interest_, leaning-into-the-process, and _strong_ work ethic... maybe this creates a veneer of more seasoned than we really are... ;-)

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

Here's the Award Script I promised previously, as well as the Awards Ballot we used for the TRR. I've had a bunch of questions from people about the awards process. Rather than having Judges decide which teams would be recognized with awards, we asked teams to nominate their peers and turn their awards ballots in to Pit Admin before eliminations. The winners were decided based on who was nominated most for the specific award and the award script was then based off of the justification teams provided. Overall, I think it was extremely successful and certainly want to consider utilizing this process next year.

Re: Inaugural 2011 Texas Robot Round-up!
 

This is a newly forming team that will have the experience of veteran mentors and students who were part of another team in the area and they will benefit from it.

Before anyone begins to question their rookie status, it was suggested to the team mentors that they go through proper channels to discuss that status and have an understanding of it. They have followed through with that suggestion.

--
This was a very well-run event and I think any FRC team that could have made it to Texas to compete, would have been proud to have been a part of such an outstanding inaugural event. I also think that they would have had a heck of a good time. It's my hope that TRR will be around for a very long time and will grow a reputation of collaborative excellence and making the impossible, possible - with teams supporting each other on the road to success.

Standing proud,
Jane