**FIRST EMAIL**/Call for Proposals - 2008 FIRST Robotics Conference

[Mark McLeod]

Greetings FRC Teams:

FIRST is seeking presentation proposals for the fifth annual FIRST Robotics Conference. 45-minute workshops on topics of interest to FIRST Robotics (FRC), FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) and FIRST LEGO League (FLL) teams, coaches, mentors, students and prospective leaders will be accepted. You may present alone or as a team.

The goal of the conference is to provide personal and professional development for K-12 educators, non-engineering mentors, technical mentors and students.

We encourage presentations in all technical and non-technical areas that might interest current and future FRC, FTC, and FLL teams and coaches. For 2008, we are particularly interested in presentations which address sustainability of teams in all programs, initiatives to encourage growth in a region, and tools for developing curriculum around FIRST programs. We also have a special interest in seeing proposals from current students in addition to the usual proposals from mentors and coaches.

If you are interested in submitting a proposal for a 45-minute presentation in Atlanta, please submit an abstract on or before December 23, 2007 via our web form. You will be asked to submit the following information:


* Your name(s)
* Team number(s), if applicable
* Affiliation (school, company, agency, etc)
* Are you a coach? Mentor? Professional? HS student? College student? Faculty? Teacher? Team of the above?
* Email address(es), phone number(s), address(es) of presenter(s)
* Have you given this presentation before?
* Program this presentation is geared toward (FRC, FTC, FLL)
* Technical presentation or non-technical (gears versus team dynamics, for example)
* Special equipment FIRST would need to provide (laptop, extra power, table for demonstrations, etc)
* Preferred day (Wed, Thurs, or Fri) and time (morning, afternoon,evening), if applicable:
* Title of presentation proposed
* A short abstract outlining your presentation (no more than 250 words, please)

In order to respect the schedule and time constraints of our planning committee, proposals significantly longer than 250 words cannot be considered. Please adhere to the above guidelines.

Selected proposals will presented at the conference in Atlanta on April 17-19, 2008. Travel and accommodations will not be provided by FIRST.

All this information plus the link to our submission form can be found at http://www.usfirst.org/community/fir...t.aspx?id=7520

2008 FIRST Robotics Conference
April 17-19, 2008
FIRST Championship
Deadline for proposals: December 23rd, 2007

Recordings and slides from the 2007 Robotics Conference are available at http://first.wpi.edu/Workshops/index.html thanks to the generous sponsorship of Rolls-Royce!

FIRST Conference Planning Committee
firstconferences@usfirst.org

[KathieK]

Please note the deadline for submissions - December 23!

[Ken Patton]

For those of you who have done some project that might be interesting to others in the robotics community, you should consider sending in a proposal for a presentation.

Perhaps you are a high school or college student, and you have a class project that requires a report and a presentation. What about choosing a good FIRST topic? You could put together a presentation that, if accepted, could be seen by many people at the Championships conference.

Imagine having the experience of putting together your presentation, organizing it clearly, checking all of your information to make sure it is correct, practicing it in front of people who are familiar with the topic, then presenting to a large group of interested people in Atlanta. It would be a great experience. It would look fantastic on a college application or job resume.

Don't worry if you think someone else might already be covering a similar topic. There often are simple adjustments that can be made to make the topics from multiple presenters fit together.

If you have any questions, post 'em here. Other people probably have the same question.....

Ken

[Madison]

The FIRST form doesn't allow for multiple presenters of differing t-shirt sizes. Just sayin'

I've listened to the presentation audio and reviewed the materials that are available through FIRST and through WPI, but I'm curious if anyone has video of any of the presentations? I'd like to get an idea of what I should be expecting if I'm able to do this in 2008.

Thanks

[Ken Patton]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

I'm curious if anyone has video of any of the presentations? I'd like to get an idea of what I should be expecting if I'm able to do this in 2008.

I know they (FIRST - Karen in the past and now Colleen) have videotaped some presentations in the past, but I have never seen or heard one of 'em. You could ask Colleen, maybe she would provide one?

Ken

[KathieK]

An effort to provide training materials and conference presentations (and kickoff workshop presentations) has been made by FIRST Place. Go to the FIRST website (www.usfirst.org) > Already Involved > FIRST Place. There is navigation on the left and a link currently on the right to bring you to some of this material.
Or, click here! http://first.wpi.edu/Workshops/index.html

[Rosiebotboss]

Also......some of the workshops that are being presented live in Manchester on the Friday workshops were videotaped at WPI a week or so ago. They will be posted soon, before Kick Off. I know ours on "Deans Homeworks: Charting a Political Course" and a re-done video of our last years module on "Community Managment", along with one from Team 190/Ken Stafford on Pneumatics and Team 40/Dan on EasyC Pro.