San Antonio Kick-off input sought

[Andrew Schuetze]

I need to formalize plans for the 2008 FRC local kick-off to be held here in San Antonio, Texas. It was great to see 9 teams here in San Antonio for kick-off this last year. It was a bit of a squeeze to get all the teams accomodated with students & mentors in the 100 seat multi-media auditorium at the Advanced Technology Center. Edgewood ISD is set to have the rennovations completed on their 1,500 seat auditorium sometime in late October / early November. So I am thinking that this would be easier for me to arrange and will definately allow all the teams to bring as many members, mentors, ... fans that they want to kick-off.

My question to the Central and South Texas FRC teams is How important is it to have the kit distribution and game field element presentation on the same property as the webcast viewing? Last year we had to drive 1.5 miles to the adjacent college campus after the viewing but then the gamefield was in a cool aircraft hanger with lots of airframes and engines used to teach. If we were to do that again but have the webcast at the Academy the drive would be a 10 minutes as it is all in the same neighborhood. We could probably lift a curtain and screen to reveal the game field elements right on stage and dispense kits out the back on the dock entrance doors and have everything in one location.

Second question: If the entire kick-off was held at the Edgewood Academy / Auditorium site, would you make use of classroom space to hold debriefing sessions with your team or would you eat a quick lunch and head back to your town for field construction / ...

Follow-up question to my second: If you were to use Edgewood Academy classroom space for a debriefing session, would you like to join in on a community lunch of say chili-dogs and chips? This could be worked cooperatively much as 499 has done the last two years in Atlanta.

Please post any thoughts that you might have in regards to FRC 2008 kick-off in San Antonio

[Richard McClellan]

I don't think driving 10 minutes would be much of a problem, though good driving directions would be much appreciated...last year my team sort of got split up for a while because no one seemed to know how to get to the hanger.

We probably wouldn't try to hold any debriefing sessions because it's hard for us to get a lot of our team to come to San Antonio from Austin, so our plan would be to meet back up with more of our team members in Austin later that afternoon.

A community lunch sounds like a good idea though, to help teams get to know each other a little bit.