Favorite Memories Of The 2011 Season

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Hi All,

I've been thinking about some favorite memories of mine from the season ...

Please share one (or more) of yours.

Jane

OK, Jane, here goes:

This season I've been mentoring a rookie team, 3620 The Average Joes. They had a really good year in many ways, but did not go to St. Louis. When I returned, they wanted to hear my impressions of the Championship. These were some of the highlights I told them about:

• Karthik's workshop on Team Strategy. 3620 will be studying that presentation, and several others provided on the 1114 website, as they prepare for 2012.
• The New Cool. Several 3620 members are reading Neil Bascomb's book now. They were impressed to hear that I got to meet both the author and the principal character of that book, Amir Abo-Shaeer. Many here on CD know that I am passionate about inspecting robots -- 1717 was the first team to present their robot for inspection at Curie on Wednesday evening, and the first inspection that I completed.
• My Robot Inspector hat, autographed by Dean Kamen, Woodie Flowers, and Andy Baker.
• Watching 233 attempt, and nearly complete, a three tube autonomous during one of their Friday afternoon qualifying matches on Newton. I was queueing, right behind their alliance station. Very cool to watch.
• Seeing the new cRIO and several other interesting demos by NI. Stuff that teams can use, and that we can use in my real job.
• Seeing some very cool AndyMark products. Andy, we still need to talk about that demonstration bot ...
• 2081's minibot competition at their Curie pit, and the impressively low times put up by several teams. Thanks you, 2081 for making this fun, and congratulations to 1986 for their low time -- 0.900 sec. Well earned can of SPAM, and a very nice award plaque.
• Morgan Freeman, on Archimedes. Talk about your star-power!
• Bill Miller up on the FRC Live! stage, telling us what's coming and doing his best to answer questions.
• FRC fields in the pits. These reminded me of Michigan Districts -- but we have more seating and fewer teams. I think FIRST can, and will, improve the pit field experience for FRC participants and viewers next year, but the basic idea is great.
• and, The Black Eyed Peas. Entertainment stars celebrating FIRST. Loudly. How cool is that?

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And one more: seeing 931's minibot featured prominently during the video overture to the Friday night awards ceremony & BEP concert.