2006 Pittsburgh Regional

[petek]

I'd like to add my thanks to all of the great volunteers and teams who made the Pittsburgh regional happen. All throughout practice and qualifying we were able to stay on or even ahead of schedule, thanks to the efforts of a bunch of really dedicated FIRSTers. Though brutal competition and some insidious field bugs prolonged the elimination rounds, most of the week went with very few delays or problems. In particular I'd like to recognize three people:

When our event MC arrangements fell through, Wayne Penn stepped forward and took command of center stage. He kept the crowd in it with dance parties, his lively dialog and color-coordinated visuals (nice hair!). I had a great time working with Wayne, who even inspired this shy engineer to get up and dance and ham it up with him. This would be a pretty good story already, but there's more: Wayne was at Pittsburgh with his team (395, who deserve our thanks for sharing him with us) and managed to mentor them while keeping the field lively.

Sarah Nied (the volunteer formerly known as the Good Scoring Fairy of NJ, but now known as the Patron Saint of Truck #3) was on the board just to handle real-time scoring, but took it upon herself to become Field Supervisor when no one came forward to fill that wide-ranging and critical position. On top of that, she helped our scorekeepers (Bill & Eric Enslen) and tracked down the elusive clickers. I'm looking forward to working with you and Mike again when we join forces on the Truck #3 field in Philly.

And finally a shout out to Corey Chitwood our IFI guy. Corey likes to keep a low profile, but here I'm going to blow his cover because in Pittsburgh he was everywhere and anywhere there was a problem to be solved. Corey helped teams solve the 8.2 V Battery Bug, kept the robot controls controlling and stayed to the very end Saturday night helping pack up and load the truck. (John's half right: Corey and I were the last FIRST people to leave, though the wonderful event manager Shaunna and her Show Ready event folks and Todd and his AV crew were still there when we left).

Speaking of the AV crew, the final score in Pittsburgh was one hit each on the video guy and the sound guy and one on the sound board, with several near misses. The AV tables were just behind the red end of the field and there were frequent barrages arcing over toward them.