Orange County, CA Offseason Event

[Pauline Tasci]

With the success of the inaugural Orange County Regional some members of OCRA (Orange County Robotics Alliance) and FIRST OC would love to get the discussion started on hosting our very own offseason event that would benefit teams this upcoming fall.

The growth in our small county has been huge over the last several years and we want to make sure every team in our community feels welcome and prepared for the upcoming 2017 season. This event will be great practice for new drive teams, robot rebuilds, and more!

The event would include:
-A full competition field (no wood fields here)
-Workshops led by top students and mentors in the OC Area
-Q and A sessions with industry professionals
and more!

We would love to figure out what the community would love to see at this event, plus seasons in which we would host.

Thanks!

[SenorZ]

This would be great. Especially for us in HB since we welcomed a new team at Huntington Beach HS this year, and a new team should be joining from Edison HS, too.

If a venue is needed, I can always lobby my school for use of the gym. It is really big, and early Fall may not have too many sports going on.

...also, is this going to conflict with the LA robotics event held at Valencia HS? Or is this more workshop, less competition?

[Pauline Tasci]

Originally Posted by SenorZ

...also, is this going to conflict with the LA robotics event held at Valencia HS? Or is this more workshop, less competition?

This event is not associated with LA robotics and will include a full real field, unlike that of Fall Classic.
SCRFF's event is the end of September, we will plan an event whenever a majority of teams interested can make it, understandably a lot of teams will be participating in Fall Classic.
We want this to be more event and with workshops sprinkled in between.

Thanks for the location offer, we will look into it as we have some other locations we are looking at.

[tylerc102]

We'd love to attend, but it would be very useful if it did not interfere with the battle at the border competition either. We would hate to have to decide between the two events.

[kaliken]

This is great! Hopefully you guys don't mind some LA area teams coming down for a visit!!

We used to go down to San Diego for the Holy Cows workshops but they didn't hold it this past year. I know you are looking at mainly an event but if you had a couple really good workshops I could see it being very helpful to lots of teams. Its great to inspire students early with both some workshops and a taste of competition.

[Pauline Tasci]

Originally Posted by kaliken

This is great! Hopefully you guys don't mind some LA area teams coming down for a visit!!

We used to go down to San Diego for the Holy Cows workshops but they didn't hold it this past year. I know you are looking at mainly an event but if you had a couple really good workshops I could see it being very helpful to lots of teams. Its great to inspire students early with both some workshops and a taste of competition.

thanks! We want to incorporate our usual OC workshops into this as well. The more people we have willing to teach classes the more we can offer. Thanks!

[waialua359]

We would be interested if it was September or later in the Fall.
Doing offseason in China and robot has to go to California anyway and back, before heading home to Hawaii.

[rsisk]

Nice job FIRSTOC! Another off-season event in SoCal is going to be awesome! I just hope it is scheduled so we can make all three.

[FRC_498]

Willing to have a team from Arizona join you?? We are looking at doing some off season events and since you're only a short 5hr away, it would be good to meet some new teams!

[Red2486]

CRUSH from AZ might also be interested if the event was open to out of state teams. AZ teams have the state championship in mid-October, so before that, in September or August would work best for us (again, if it ends up being open to out of state teams).

[connor.worley]

Consider us interested.

[Pauline Tasci]

This is awesome! So many out of state teams are interested.

Our thoughts right now are Oct 8/9!

But we are open to more suggestions.

Fall Classic is Sep 24/25 and I expect Battle at the Border will be late Oct, the other 2 offseasons in So Cal.

[sanddrag]

I could see us getting on board with this.

[Ali Ahmed]

Originally Posted by Pauline Tasci

Our thoughts right now are Oct 8/9!

Would this be a two day tournament or 2 separate one-day tournaments?

Also, have you guys made any decisions on pricing? Or allowing teams to compete with 2 robots?

Consider Team 4 interested.

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by FRC_498

Willing to have a team from Arizona join you?? We are looking at doing some off season events and since you're only a short 5hr away, it would be good to meet some new teams!

Cobra Commanders are always welcome in sunny SoCal! Along with CRUSH, Dragons, Plasma, Team Paradise, CAUTION, N.E.R.D.S, Firebirds, Falcon, Coconuts and all the other fun AZ teams!