Kickoff day

[feverittm]

Great Timing.

Our team is having our 'Week-in-a-Day' exercise -- A mock Kickoff and First Week activities -- this Saturday. We have done these in the past and they have been very useful especially for those who have never been involved with FRC before. I will pick a previous game and the team and mentors (I haven't told them which game either) will work though the process. I usually tweak the rules slightly in order to make them more relevant and to eliminate any issues seen before with this specific game.

On the actual Kickoff we normally meet very early (like 6:30AM -- our Kickoff starts at 7:00am with the broadcast at like 8:00) since we are on the West Coast (I always feel bad for those folks even further West of us). We meet with about 10 or so other teams in a auditorium at the local university to watch the broadcast.

After the broadcast the teams break apart to head back to their respective locations. A small group will then head off to pick up the KoP and bring it back with them. We do have a couple of teams that just send a couple of folks to the event just to pick up their KoP for their teams who are watching remotely.

After getting back to the school with the K0P we have a small group (3-4 folks) go to another small room to inventory the KoP and get the game piece(s) (if any) to the rest of the team for review. We also take over anything 'special' to review as well (like last year we took the control system stuff over).

In the meantime the remainder of the team is gathering together, eating breakfast, and then re-watching the game animation while the mentors are busy printing up the manuals. We usually print up like 5 copies of the manual so that all the small groups can have a copy.

The remainder of the day is usually spent in small groups going over the rules, dissecting the game, and making up some charts with high level game strategy details (like "how do you score and how many points", "what are the different sections of the game - autonomous, teleop, endgame" and how long are they?). These charts are left up around the room for the rest of the season for review at a glance. We also take the time to note any major changes in rules (like the 'travel perimeter' last year) for our veteran members.

As others have said, we focus first on the game itself - no robots! We look at the game play, strategy. We try to figure out what should happen when. Only when the we truly understand the parts of the game do we start to outline what things on a robot (systems) would be required to do them.

Our who process probably takes 3-4 days with strategic analysis usually taking the whole first day.

I hope this helps