[FRC Blog] Who's at Salt Lake Comic Con this Weekend?

[Hallry]

Posted on the FRC Blog, 9/5/14: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog-2014-Salt-Lake-Comic-Con

Who's at Salt Lake Comic Con this Weekend?

Blog Date: Friday, September 5, 2014 - 14:13

Turns out we are. Organizers are predicting about 150,000 attendees. Several FRC teams from the area will be putting on a demonstration event.

Check it out:



Getting ready for the weekend



A smiling Richard Anderson, FIRST Regional Director, apparently unaware that his day is about to get ugly

[Meredith Novak]

What a great picture of Richard. He is such a wonderful person! But I don't think that ogre agrees.

[Mark McLeod]

I wouldn't call him an ogre to his face, orc's probably don't like that.

[Jon Stratis]

Man, that second picture has CD Caption Contest written all over it!

[JB987]

I spy two robots from our friends on 3245! Have fun James and the rest of the Ravens company and take lots of pictures.

[Mr V]

Good to see that "my" field made it there. I wonder why there is no truss, FIRST knew that we don't have and weren't sending a truss. I'm just worried that the pieces for the truss won't make it back home, seeing them sitting in the human player area.

[James3245]

Thanks Joe. It has been a great event. We'll be there again all day today. It is fantastic exposure for FIRST. We get hundreds of people watching every demo match. After the match they get a close up with robots and talk to students. Then they move on to other things at the convention and several hundred new bystanders are there for the next match 20 minutes later. By the end of today, day 3 of the convention, tens of thousands of people will have seen FRC robots in action up close on a competition field.


Thank you to Richard Anderson our regional director for making this happen - great exposure for FIRST and lots of fun for local teams.

987's Clint has been a great FTA for the event, quick to accommodate what is an atypical event for FRC teams and field system.

As for truss: we don't have one and it doesn't matter. We are simply running demo matches with no scoring, no penalties, no seeding...just fun. In fact today, we hope to put both our 2012 and 2013 bots on the field and shoot some basketballs and frisbees through the high goal while other robots are working with this year's game pieces. Should be a good laugh for the teams and fascinating for the bystanders.

The vast majority of those watching are seeing FRC for the first time ever and of course have no idea about this year's game. They are focused on the robots and how they move and what they can do.

[James3245]

a little more follow-up on FIRST at Salt Lake ComicCon, with video from a talented quadcopter pilot/video editor who is a student on our team.

From the video you will note how packed the venue was. At more than one point the fire marshals shut the entrances as the crowd had reached the 80,000 person capacity of the convention center.

The Utah regional competition is in a stadium type venue and gets good attendance, but we've never needed fire marshals for crowd control. Sometimes you have to take the message directly to where the people in addition to trying to get them to visit you. In this sense, Comic Con presence was a big win for FIRST and a nice complementary event to go along with our regional.

It was also great to have three days with a competition field with lots of friendly play but with no competition. For several newcomers on our team this was their first team activity and during it they got to drive a competition robot on a real field in front of hundreds of spectators. They are now hooked! (If we were playing "real" games that "counted" such as in a competitive offseason event there would have been less team enthusiasm for turning over the driver stations to absolute rookies.)

I'll repeat my thanks to RD Richard Anderson and also to Clief Castleton of Team 4585 for their tireless efforts to arrange for a competition field and to organize participation of many teams. If FIRST can pull this off at other similar events it would be well worth it.

[JB987]

Kudo's to Richard, Clief, James and all of the Utah teams at Comic Con for making it REAL LOUD! Great outreach guys.