pic: Lone Star Winners

[ngreen]

The Lone Star regional had the winning chairman's team give their presentation again, but with an audience of other teams.

This lets the other teams learn what the winners are doing that let them win and get some ideas for things to do with their teams to continue their pursuit of increasing recognition of science and technology in society.

I didn't attend but I guess the it was in a more open forum format where team could ask questions also.

I think this may be unique to the Lone Star regional, but from the feedback I've heard on it, it would be positive to do at other regionals. The only downside is that it requires additional time after the finish of competition and awards so if a winning team was on a non-flexible time line (ie need to make a flight saturday night) this would be tough to add-on.

[jayjaywalker3]

I agree that it should be at other regionals. Did anyone record it or does anyone have a transcript of the presentation?

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by jayjaywalker3

What is the Chairman's recap meeting?

Probably the most useful piece of non-documentation you will EVER get regarding the Chairman's Award in FIRST. It is a meeting after the closing ceremonies involving the Chairman's Award Judges, the winning Chairman's team, and other teams who want to learn more about becoming stronger for the Chairman's Award. The Lone Star Regional started doing this a couple years ago, and it's basically a way to see what won - where the current bar is set - and discuss what worked, what didn't, what the judges saw went well, what the judges think need the most work, and so on. It was an open forum for teams to discuss with the Judges anything about the Chairman's Award, and for them to tell you why they felt the winners were, well, winners.

Lucien Junkin, one of the lead mentors for 118, is the director for the Houston area (I hope I got his title right) and he asked the judges to walk us through the entire judging process from Chairman's entry all the way through the presentation to after the presentation - what the judges read, what they look at, what they expect you to leave behind (or not), and every aspect of the competition that we were clueless we even needed to consider. I really REALLY appreciated the candor in the meeting, from the judges as well as from the winning team, it was something that will certainly allow the teams who attend to be more competitive in the Chairman's Award and certainly allow the judges to be more efficient in judging.

Once again, thanks 1108 for attending the meeting. You guys have helped to teach us a lot about winning the Chairman's Award.

-Danny

[Kris Verdeyen]

That is a fantastic record of achievement from team 1108. Finding such generous grants for so many teams is surely a chairman's-worthy task. I've had a great deal of respect for team 1108 ever since I came across the team at Lone Star in 2003, and their first regional chairman's award in 2004.

Why would a team with such an impressive record, though, not choose to submit at their local regional, one that they were instrumental in founding?

They aren't the only team that doesn't submit at their "home" regional - the CA winners at KC were a Houston team - from the Galena Park district - 1429, another very worthy choice, at least from what I know their program.

This is less a criticism of the practice than a sincere question.
What makes a team choose one regional over another to submit?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Danny Diaz

Lucien Junkin, one of the lead mentors for 118, is the director for the Houston area (I hope I got his title right) and he asked the judges to walk us through the entire judging process from Chairman's entry all the way through the presentation to after the presentation - what the judges read, what they look at, what they expect you to leave behind (or not), and every aspect of the competition that we were clueless we even needed to consider.

Danny,

Lucien Junkin serves on the Lone Star planning committee as the lead recruiter for local teams. Lucia Sevcik is, in fact, the director for the Lone Star Regional and the Texas region in general for the moment. They are often confused, what with the similarity of the names, but they have very different roles.

Additionally, the Chairman's Recap at the Lone Star Regional was the brainchild of the judge coordinator, Kymber Nagar, and the judge advisor, Allan Nagar. Lucien may have been in the room leading the discussion (I wouldn't know, as I wasn't present) but I'd like to make sure credit's given where due.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by lynca

Panther Robotics obtained a 2.5 Million Grant to help setup those 40 teams at the KC Regional , you can see the list of teams sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Not replying to you Andrew, but that's definitely a huge accomplishment by 1108. If other teams were able to pull off similar funding feats, it'd be outstanding for FIRST in general. I'm wondering if anyone from 1108 could relate how they secured this grant for these teams. Did they write a proposal to the foundation? How did they find out the foundation would be interested in this project? A white paper or some good pointers on how they pulled this off would surely greatly benefit the community. Are there any 1108 members around here willing to let us in on their fundraising secrets?

[ngreen]

I will try to answer a couple question about 1108 although I can't be 100 percent sure because of my absence over the last two years (finishing ChE senior level course, and starting into the PhD at Georgia Tech).

Kris,

The Lone Star Regional coincided with the schools spring break. This means that many of the mentors (mostly teachers) can attend the event without having to take leave. Because of this they decided to make LSR their "main" event. They still attended the Kansas City Regional but with a slimmer team, mostly consisting of the drive team. This at least was the plan as I heard it.

Just to be complete I'll try to address some of the possible criticism from submitting the CA to a non-"home" regional.

i)The home regional is harder/The away regional is easier

The thoughts may be that either that less "quality" submission at different regional or that judges are unlikely to award the same team two years in a row.

I think both of these are false. From what I've seen the competition for the RCA's is tough regardless of the regional. There are several teams at LSR that I've admired since 03 convinced me how cool FIRST is. The second part may have some slight truth (118 has been RCA in odd years 03, 05, 07), but reading the list of current RCA winner with multiple awards shows teams with 2,3,4, and 5 awards at a single regional in a row. While writing this I realized the second part doesn't apply to 1108 since they competed at the Wisconsin regional in 06 (also during spring break).

ii)By competing away you are hurting the local teams

Since the RCA let a team qualify for championships, in the short run, an "outside" team may take a spot away from a local team. In the long run, competition is good (as long as it is even). This is a good point to congrats 1429 on there RCA in KC (so we had a trade this year). It is fun to see the rise of a quality team and nice robot.

Point is, we all like to compete (and win) so we all have these thoughts but I don't have reason to believe competing outside of a "home" regional is too devious, if you have other thoughts PM me, and our unlikely submission in Texas is due to school schedules and that fact we've enjoyed LSR.

Kevin,

Someone with more knowledge than me would need to write the whitepage but I will tell you what I know. First I want to say that many people were involved with this outside our team. The team itself was involved in convincing Kauffman boards to fund this project through student presentation and interactions.

We first connected with the Kauffman Foundation in 2003. I'm unsure of how it exactly occurred but a Kauffman representative was at the Championships in Houston and visited our pit area. My memory is blurry but I think he may have had a nephew/niece competing on a team. I also think he had seen an article on our team in one of the local papers (maybe about our successes at LSR in 2003). I don't think any big ideas happened then but it got a dialogue going. It help us get a 5,000 grant from the Young Advisory Board to help fund our team for the following year. The students did a presentation to the YAB (a board of local KC area high school student which allocate smaller grants for Kauffman) as part of this grant proposal.

This is my recall for how the partnership with our team was started. After this point I was more absent to the off-season working of the team so my recall is very poor so I will stop. I'll have to try to find another person to continue the story.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Originally Posted by lynca

922 has also done a fantastic job outlining their community impact on their website. 922 also posted their Chairman's submission.

I hope 418, 499, 2158, 118, also post their Chairman's work so all the other teams can grasp the impact on their community.

Just read through to the end of your post. The Toltechs posted their CA entry here in the white papers before the competition. It was very cool to win the Engineering Inspirations Award in the Bayou Regional. The CA team spend both Fri and Sat morning in the pit to give a thorough explanation of what we have been doing for two plus years to increase the number of schools doing something type of robotics activities.

[Pjohn1959]

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

Why would a team with such an impressive record, though, not choose to submit at their local regional, one that they were instrumental in founding?

They aren't the only team that doesn't submit at their "home" regional - the CA winners at KC were a Houston team - from the Galena Park district - 1429, another very worthy choice, at least from what I know their program.

Kris,

Good question. Our answer is that it was purely a matter of logistics. Last year we ventured out to attend multiple regionals for our first time. Our 1st one was at the Bayou, so we presented there. This year our 1st regional was in Kansas City, so we presented there. This left the second regional for us to focus mainly on the robot competition. We feel that by doing this, not only does it give our presentors a more diverse environment, but also allows us to concentrate on both parts of the competition a different times.

Paul

[lynca]

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

What makes a team choose one regional over another to submit?

This year's chairman's Award winners,

Originally Posted by RoboMadi

Six RCAs Winners: 236
Five RCAs Winners: None
Four RCAs Winner: 842, 234, 1108, 159, 341
Three RCAs Winner: 71, 340, 812, 612, 27
Two RCAs Winner: 604, 399, 476, 1114, 359, 1398, 126
First RCA Winners: 1676, 1318, 932, 1429, 1086, 768, 1523, 291, 1714, 1860, 488, 692, 226, 1577, 364, 839, 68, 1547, 987, 1816, 329, 116

The winners from out of state are,
1108 from Kansas won LSR (texas)
1429 from Texas won KC (kansas)
116 from Virginia won NYC
612 from Virginia won OH
126 from MA won NH
1318 from WA won OR
932 from OK won MO
364 from MS won LA

[Kris Verdeyen]

Thanks for your responses, Paul and Nelson. That sheds some light on the subject. I knew that 1108 wasn't shopping around for weak Chairman's competition at regionals, and if they were, they were doing a bad job - LSR has some excellent teams in this area - especially and most recently 922 from Laredo which won in 2006 and 2007, and was recognized for their efforts at the Championship with a Judge's award.

It also counters what I would consider the biggest immediate benefit in having a "home" regional and competing there for chairmans, which is the ability of family and friends of the team to make it out to see your team win the highest award in FIRST.

My greater question, I guess, is this:

Is there any long-term benefit to having a "home" regional? Does the term even mean anything? And if there is a benefit, how do we maximize it?

I know that personally, after having gone to the LSR for 8 years now, I know people on most of the veteran teams, and it feels a little bit like a family reunion every year. What do you all think? Is there more to a home regional than this feeling or not?

[Pjohn1959]

I do believe in a 'home' regional. We look forward to LSR each and every year, and will continue to do so. We make sure that IT is the final regional that we attend. I'm like you, I too look forward to seeing the other teams that I have come to know and their members.

I guess our view might be slightly different than some, in that our 'home' regional is the one where we want to make the most impact in the robot competition. Since there are three days of robotic competition, this is where our main focus will be.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Hopefully FIRST and the NCAA don't move things around too much year to year as I consider LSR as our home regional. It was an interesting less connected regional experience to attend a second regional for the first time this year. It was cool to see and compete again with teams from the LSR at the Bayou event but the entire three days was more like staying over at a friends house for the first time. ... Until the primary elections and STATE testing process got crossed, we had intended to compete in a week two event so that we could have a stronger showing at the LSR. I was also considering shopping for a weaker CA event in Kansas City thinking that with the number of new teams that a veteran team might have an edge with more years of outreach...Seeming to have broken through a bit in New Orleans maybe I don't need to think in those terms.

[Kris Verdeyen]

Originally Posted by Pjohn1959

I guess our view might be slightly different than some, in that our 'home' regional is the one where we want to make the most impact in the robot competition.

Interesting - I hadn't considered that. But I think I see where it's coming from. The idea that FIRST has national goals in changing the culture, and that is a goal for every team, especially those that compete in the CA competition.

The CA, however, is not really a head-to-head competition, in the sense that you don't really get to see who it is precisely that you're competing with. Since there's an opportunity cost associated with competing effectively in CA, especially for small teams, you'd rather compete face-to-face with the people you know (home regional teams) in the robot competition than compete behind closed doors in the CA.

[RoXmySoX]

The Lone Star Regional was great!
For our first year, we did pretty good.
It was definetly not what we expected.
thanx guys.
team 2582 PantherBots