[Jon Stratis]

about half our team attends the local kickoff event, the other half watches it from our build space on the live stream. Once the stream is over, the half at the build space gets everything as ready as they can (including lunch!). That half will then try to finish eating just as the half with the kit of parts gets back to the build space. At that point, they trade places - the other half eats, while the half that is done goes through and sorts/inventories the kit of parts.

Then we go over the game rules as a group, maybe play the game animation a few times as well. Once we think we know how the game is played, we do our best to set up a quick "field", and "play" it with students as robots. Do that until we think we know all of the strategies for playing. Then come back and talk about the strategies we see as possible. That's pretty much it for kickoff day.

The next Monday we have our yearly fundraiser at a local restaurant (which includes us eating there for our meeting!), and we do more of the same. Talk strategy, and start talking design. We try to come up with 3-5 mechanisms we want to prototype that week. The rest of the week is spent prototyping and building the drive train. We ask the captains to collect the team decision for the overall design of the robot before our meeting the Saturday after kickoff.