FRC Blogged - FMS White Paper, The New Media Award, and District Dates

[ehochstein]

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr.../blog-08-28-12

Blog Date: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 13:31.Hello Teams,

As promised in the Einstein Investigation Report, FRC Engineering has created a white paper to help you understand how the Field Management System (FMS) works. You can download the document here.

Also, what do Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, and iPhones have in common? Each were invented after the Website Award – recognizing excellence in student designed, built, and managed team websites – was introduced by FRC. The ways to create and deliver content have grown exponentially over the last ten years, so it’s time to evolve the FRC Website Award. To continue to challenge FRC students, the Website Award has morphed into the New Media Award.

The FRC New Media Award will recognize a team’s creative use of digital media and devices to create and distribute content that is used to promote the team’s profile, achievements, and outreach, along with the FIRST mission. We are working feverishly to ready the New Media Award for the 2013 season. Continue to tune in to the FRC Blog – we’ll keep you posted as the New Media Award takes shape.

And, keep working on your team sites. Websites will still count toward the New Media Award as they are a part of digital media – even though now you have many additional ways to create and spread the word about FIRST and your team. In any case, I’m sure you aren’t working on your websites ‘just’ to win an award! Awards are a wonderful way to recognize a job well done, but if you think about it, letting people know about your team and getting people excited about science and technology is where the real value is.

Finally, for folks participating in the District structure only (MAR and Michigan teams), the registration dates for district events are a little different this year:

•9/27/2012 District Initial Event Registration opens. District teams may only register for one district event during Initial Event Registration. This will allow more district teams to get into their first choice district event before slots are filled by teams choosing their second event.
•10/11/12 District Second Event Registration opens. District teams may choose their second district event. Just like last year, district teams may not register for a regional event until they have registered for their two district events.
•10/25/12 Regional Second Event registration opens.
I’ll blog again soon.
Frank

[BigJ]

Oh no, now every "WEAR SAFETY GLASSES" sign taped up on a wall in the venue will have "FOLLOW US ON TWITTER/PINTEREST/FACEBOOK/YOUTUBE!" on it

[Gray Adams]

Originally Posted by FMS Whitepaper

Unplugging a joystick in FMS Mode will not result in the robot being disabled. If a joystick becomes
disconnected, simply plugging it back in will not result in it returning to normal operation. The user must press
F1 on the DS to manually rescan the USB interface to redetect the joystick.

Well that would have been good to know...

[bardd]

Did anybody else have problems with downloading the file? Every time I click the link Chrome crashes...

edit: It works fine now.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by bardd

Did anybody else have problems with downloading the file? Every time I click the link Chrome crashes...

Works fine for me.

[rcmolloy]

I do feel like this was heavily influenced by 1114's phone app. The amount of information in that little guy is great for any teams starting up. I wouldn't be surprised if they happened to win it this year on the National level.

[JaneYoung]

I hope that the new award does takes shape quickly so that they provide all the information to the teams and to potential evaluators in a timely fashion. Realizing that it is necessary to stay current with technology's advancements, I think it will place a lot more work on the evaluators and they need to be prepared.

It will be a worthy award but I think I'll put my hand down as an evaluator for the award in the upcoming season. More people who work with and stay current with the technological advancements in these areas will need to step up.

Jane

[rachelholladay]

I'm a little nervous about the 'New Media' Award only due to the uncertainty. On my team we work very hard on our website and social media but I'm unsure what else would fall under a team's 'media presence'? I guess I'd feel reassured with more details but I have a feeling we might not get those in till the 2013 awards manual released much later on.

[Dan 1038]

Originally Posted by rcmolloy

I do feel like this was heavily influenced by 1114's phone app. The amount of information in that little guy is great for any teams starting up. I wouldn't be surprised if they happened to win it this year on the National level.

Ok, I give... What did Karthik and his little team north of the border do that I missed? What phone app?

Edit - found it, very cool!!!

[Walter Deitzler]

Originally Posted by Dan 1038

Ok, I give... What did Karthik and his little team north of the border do that I missed? What phone app?

The SimPhone app.

Its a pretty cool thing.