Outreach exhibit opportunities

[LinuxArchitect]

I am sponsoring a sci/tech educational exhibit that will be on display at a few major shows in the Washington DC area, and I have two announcements.

The big event is the USA Science and Engineering Festival, April 27-29, at the Washington Convention Center. We currently have two booths reserved. If any other FIRST team is planning to exhibit, or would like to sign up now, we can coordinate and ask the organizers to put us together or in the same general area. This is a huge event. We're expecting 20,000 visitors to our booth over the three day event. The cost to exhibit is not that much, less than $1000, but if you need help finding a sponsor to cover the cost, let me know.

Yes, the science festival is the same week as the championship event in St. Louis. In fact, we've planned to set up a set of large screens to cross broadcast the two events. If you plan to be in St Louis , let me know if you would like to coordinate the St Louis side of the broadcast.

My second announcement is an invitation to FRC and FTC teams to participate in the design and construction of our exhibit and/or to construct a satellite exhibit which we can tie into the primary exhibit via a webcast. We will also be giving a challenge to FLL teams to build a second half of the exhibit. Together the two exhibits tell a story... please visit the exhibit development website and let me know what you think. You can get a website account by clicking on the participate tab, or give feedback here. The website is still under construction, but we're ready to invite you to join now, to have you influence the rest of this project at an early stage.

Participation in the science festival, either directly or via our exhibit or a remote satellite event, is a major opportunity to show support for science and technology and to gain exposure for your team and your sponsors. April 27th is a special media day, reserved for school kids and local politicians. Of course, "local" for us includes folks like the President. Just saying.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

George
Coach, Team 53

[LinuxArchitect]

A few people have asked what we are building. That is still open for debate depending heavily on what the participants (you) want to do.

We're designing a modular exhibit. Each piece is something that an individual or small team can produce.

It might be an nxt robot that transports an object a few feet. But the micro controller could be anything, arduino, vex, cRIO, etc. The rest of the module could be LEGO, or wood, or VEX metal, or anything safe to the operators and visitors of the exhibit. We have one team building a blimp.

And the task a device performs could be anything. The device in a module might be stationary or it might move around, though space will be tight. Going vertical might be fun. But we're thinking the exhibit will chain the modules together to perhaps transport a ball or marbles from one side of the exhibit to the other. Kinda like a LEGO Great Ball Contraptions.

Kids who come to the exhibit will be able to interact with various modules, e.g. via joysticks, push buttons, or sensors. Use your imagination.

Three more important features of the overall exhibit...

1. We will webcast the exhibit, and we're seeking people who want to host satellite events and build modules for them. Obviously, everyone can't come to DC. Some of you will be in St. Louis. Or if you did come to DC, we might not have room to host your module. But we can easily hook you into the webcast. We actually want to make it interactive; e.g. when a special sensor in the exhibit is triggered, actual control of the event could switch to a remote site for a few minutes.

2. This is not a one time event. We can set it up in a classroom or a basement and continue development, especially of the remote sites, before and after the USA Science and Engineering Festival.

3. We have non-technical projects too. For example, one of our mentors is creating a story line for the overall theme (alien cow abductions, if you haven't seen our website yet). We will be seeking authors to contribute chapters to the story, and we'll even look to publish it as a kids book.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

George