Team Project: New Years Eve Ball Drop

[Andy Baker]

Does your city or town want to have a Ball Drop celebration for New Years Eve???

As you may have seen on these forums, the TechnoKats conduct a Ball Drop for our town's New Years celebration. Maybe, you saw our latest ball in our pit at the championships.

This project started back in 1998 and we have received much attention from our city. Each year, the local newspaper and radio stations give us attention, and we have access to the mayor and many local businesses becauase of this effort. Delphi, our team's main sponsor, considers this a major effort of community involvement, since they fund our team's ball drop costs.



We've gotten pretty good at conducting this ball drop, and we have a 3rd iteration of this design in the works. We are to the point that we could provide a "Ball Drop kit" to someone who would want to build a ball and conduct a similar event in their community.

Maybe your FIRST team wants to tackle a large fall project. Possibly, you are looking for a way to energize your community, bring recognition to your team (and Science and Technology), and you want to get your team working together on a technical project to get them prepared for the 2007 FIRST season.

We could provide hardware (at a cost), documentation, and advice concerning how to complete this project (free).

Let me know if you or your team would be interested in this, even if it may not be for this coming fall. If there is a strong interest from a couple of teams, then mentoring other "Ball Drop teams" would be one of our team's fall projects.

Thanks,
Andy Baker