[Cory]

We usually send 4-5 people to the remote kickoff at San Jose State (Teacher, myself and other mentor, and 1-2 of the top students)

The rest of the team meets us back at the school where we inventory the kit, and then talk about student contracts, rules and guidelines for working in our lab, procedure to gain access to NASA, etc. Then we show a tape of the kickoff, explain the game details to anyone who has questions, and begin brainstorming of basic robot strategy. We stress that this point is not where you say "I think we should have a double jointed arm that picks up the tubes like this and puts them on like so" but rather figure out WHAT we want the robot to do. How comes later.

After that we bring a smaller group of students to our lab at NASA to begin building the field, and brainstorming specifically how to accomplish game challenges. In the past two years there hasn't been much debate as to what the best way to play the game was, so immediately after returning to the lab we got into the specifics of how to do things.

It sounds like a lot of teams don't work too much on Saturday. We go straight from 6 AM to pretty deep into the night. I think we all got tired and went home at 11:00 or midnight last year.