2013 Championship conferences

[RoboMom]

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...blast-03-26-13

2013 FIRST Championship Robotics Conferences Sponsored by Air National Guard: After reviewing survey results from last season’s Championship, we have taken strides to make this year’s FIRST Championship Robotics Conferences better than ever. Thanks to your input, admission to this year’s Robotics Conferences on Wednesday, April 24th, 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM and Thursday, April 25th, 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM will be free of charge!

There will be no registration required from team members, coaches or mentors, so please feel free to attend as many sessions as you want. We will be posting a schedule of workshops and panel discussions soon. We look forward to seeing you in St. Louis at the Robotics Conferences and for a terrific 2013 FIRST Championship!

I hope more info will be going out soon to the teams about the sessions and schedule.

I will be offering a conference session on Thursday on "Volunteers & Voluntolds." The targeted audience is anyone who deals with volunteer recruitment, management & recognition - especially for events. I'll be talking about hints for targeted recruitment, great sources of volunteers, some best practices and will have a ton of great links and sites for more info.

You get your money refunded if you don't learn something.

[EricLeifermann]

This is awesome that its now free! People no longer have good excuses to miss some of these awesome presentations.

Has a list of all the presentations this year been released yet?

[Phalanx]

Wow, That is truly awesome news.

I've attended many of the great sessions give at Championships over the years and they are definitely worth the money.

But now free thanks to the Air National Guard!
This is truly great.

[AlexD744]

Wonderful news!!! I'm definitely going to drag a lot of my team to these!

[Jorge Ayala]

I want to go to the conference "FIRST after high school". Is someone here who has attended that conference before?

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by Jorge Ayala

I want to go to the conference "FIRST after high school". Is someone here who has attended that conference before?

I know the person who is going to be running it. It will be worth it. I believe the conference is going to be on starting FIRST support organizations in college.

The person running the conference founded GOFIRST at the University of Minnesota http://www.mngofirst.org/. I'll be at this one myself (see if you can find me!) I am working on starting GOFIRST at Dunwoody College of Technology currently, by the time champs come around my student organization should be approved by the college.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Regarding the EWCP talk:

Twenty Four: Being Better Than Plowie
This presentation will focus on using mathematical analysis of the present and past games to help teams determine the most efficient usage of their resources. Topics covered will include: The importance of reading the rules, understanding scoring, and Monte Carlo simulations.
Our goal is to help FLL, FTC, and FRC teams understand the importance of "doing the math" when determining strategy. We will probably focus on FTC and FRC since it is a technical topic and some of the mathematics and concepts are, likely, a little beyond young students. We will bring in examples from FRC history of teams that have analyzed games and chosen not to pursue certain options.

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

I know the person who is going to be running it. It will be worth it. I believe the conference is going to be on starting FIRST support organizations in college.

The person running the conference founded GOFIRST at the University of Minnesota http://www.mngofirst.org/. I'll be at this one myself (see if you can find me!) I am working on starting GOFIRST at Dunwoody College of Technology currently, by the time champs come around my student organization should be approved by the college.

I'm trying to get an organization started up here at West Virginia University for alumni of FRC, FTC, and FLL. Looks like my application probably won't be put in until Fall, though. Time just got ahead of me. But my main goal is to eventually come up with some sort of national organization for FIRST alumni groups (similar to greek organizations, but not necessarily greek) to help FIRST in their goal of networking with their alumni.

This will be a great conference and I will definitely be there!

[Waffles]

Attending conferences is something to always look forward too at the Championship (my favorites being Karthik's on strategy, electrical, leadership, and the Chairman's ones)! It's even more fun to host one of your own

Myself, and another student hosted one in 2010 on Press Releases and interacting with News Media.

Glad to hear that they're free now.

I remember there being a lot of pressure on teams to make students absolutely try to attend conferences to get their money's worth in registration fees.

Hopefully this alleviates some!

[Renee Becker-Blau]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

I'm trying to get an organization started up here at West Virginia University for alumni of FRC, FTC, and FLL.

Great! For the presentation we will be talking about how FRC alumni can be involved with FIRST after college. Since there are so many FIRST Collegiate Support Organizations we will be talking about the different types of organizations, how you can start one, and I'll have a few representatives from some of the groups there so if anyone is considering going to one of the colleges that has a support organization they can get in touch with them. We will also talk about exactly what you mentioned before, forming a network of alumni organizations and coordinating the first discussion among the groups for June 2013.

We will also be talking about the expansion of the FIRST VISTA program and how you can volunteer for FIRST after college as an Americorp VISTA.

If you are a part of a FIRST Support Organization and would like to take a minute of the presentation to talk about your group please PM me!

(I apologize for any spelling errors, I am on my way to a conference with limited access to Internet and wrote this on my phone!)

Renee

[Carol]

We are also again having a panel discussion - Today’s Girls in Tomorrow’s Workplace - where women in various technical careers discuss the opportunities and challenges for women, with plenty of time for questions from the audience. This will be our third year presenting it.

We are still looking for a another panelist - any FIRST alum, mentor, parent who is interested in helping let me know. It is scheduled for Thursday at 2:00.

[SteveB2977]

Do these sessions ever get recorded and shared ?

I'm guessing many of the teams not at Championship would greatly benefit from the information shared.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by SteveB2977

Do these sessions ever get recorded and shared ?

I'm guessing many of the teams not at Championship would greatly benefit from the information shared.

The EWCP one will be recorded for sure. Not sure about the others.

[Tottanka]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

The EWCP one will be recorded for sure. Not sure about the others.

please be sure to post it on CD when you can. I'm very interested to hear this one, but am the coach of the Driveteam, so i'm not sure i can make it.
Thanks!

[Michael Hill]

Maybe I'm blind, but where are these taking place? I've never been to St. Louis for worlds.