FIRST Objective

[rogerlsmith]

Hey Everyone,

I've started a new web site to promote FIRST using lots of videos and a non-technical forum. I'm hoping to get a lot of FIRST people involved in this so that it can be used to help schools, that aren't into FIRST, see how important it is.

My site is:

http://www.FirstObjective.org

I encourage everyone to register for an account. I promise, you won't get any spam from it.

Check it out, I've already added lots of videos. Your team may already have something there.

Your comments, suggestions and critiques are always welcome.

Sincerely,
Roger

[Pavan Dave]

The video portion (to the extent I have viewed) works well but it won't work in schools. It has YouTube videos. That is what we tried to outrun in FirstTube. We did not succeed and the project later was retired but if you really want I have a copy of the source code we had, but it will take a lot of work if you want to start from the lines that we started with. Besides that, I like it. It looks good.

Pavan Dave.

[rogerlsmith]

Thanks for checking out our site. The video component has the ability to allow direct uploads to the server. Before I enable this feature, I want to see how often videos are watched so that I have some idea of how much bandwidth is required. Hopefully before school starts we can have it so that users can upload some videos directly to the server.

Thanks for offering up the code from your site, if I get to the point of needing something like that I'll get in touch with you.

Thanks again for checking out this site, and I truly appreciate your comments and concerns.

Roger

[rogerlsmith]

For everyone concerned about having YouTube blocked at most schools and businesses, I've made changes to FIRST Objective to allow hosting videos on our server! However, there is an 8M file size limit.

If you wish to upload a FIRST related video and have it accessible at school or work, feel free to use FIRST Objective. If you need to sign up for an account, it's free and always will be (with no spam or advertising!).

http://www.firstobjective.org

Again, comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Thanks,
Roger

[AdamHeard]

I think it would be best to work out something with The Blue Alliance for videos.

They have a nice, solid site. And I noticed they now even have some videos back from 2002. It'd be cool if we could atleast get the finals from each yaer on there.

[rogerlsmith]

Yes, I am familiar with The Blue Alliance. I've been to their site in the past, tried out their podcast and just went back to see if I missed anything. Their site is great, however it seems to be more of a "scouting" or learn about your opponent type of site. This is great and serves a needed purpose. However, most sites I am familiar with all seem to fall into the same category - teams helping other teams.

FIRST Objective is different; we're trying to get more teams started, which is what Dean talked about in Atlanta. FIRST Objective is designed to be fun and exciting for students, mentors, teachers, etc... but is meant to help other schools see how fun and exciting FIRST can be. Not only does FIRST Objective have lots of videos of competitions, we also have some great team promo videos, hall of fame videos, animations, and I hope teams will begin recording their Chairman's Award presentations and adding them as well.

Beyond the videos, we have forums, blogs, users can have their own space for photos and comments. Registered users can also send instant messages to each other through the messaging system.

Check it out, if you like what we're doing, then I encourage you to sign up and invite your friends (yes there's a feature for that too).

Thanks for helping me make FIRST Objective a successful tool that will encourage more schools to get involved in FIRST.

Sincerely,
Roger