American Folklife Festival and FIRST

[dlavery]

The 2008 American Folklife Festival will be held on the National Mall in Washington DC June 25-29 and July 2-6. The Festival, run by the Smithsonian Institution, attracts over 1.2 million visitors each year and is the centerpiece of summer activities in downtown Washington. This year's festival will feature three distinct cultural areas: the state of Texas, the country of Bhutan, and the 50th anniversary of NASA.

Part of the NASA exhibit will be set aside to showcase NASA's involvement with the FIRST program, as well as other developments in space robotics technologies. The robotics area (as well as several others) has been designed to have all the Festival visitors get "up close and personal" with the robots and the people that developed them. FIRST robots and other space robotic systems will be there to draw people in, but the real focus will be on the engineers and students that created the systems. This will be a great opportunity to hear directly from them about their experiences.

Team 116 (Herndon, VA) has organized the program, and they are being supported with great participation by Team 34 (Huntsville, AL), Team 399 (Lancaster, CA), Team 585 (Tehachapi, CA), Team 768 (Woodlawn, MD), Team 1714 (Milwaukee, WI), and Team 1868 (Mountain View, CA). If you are in the Washington area over the next two weeks, we would urge you to come down to the National Mall and stop by!

-dave


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