**FIRST EMAIL**/Reminder- Proposals for the 2009 FIRST Robotics Conference Due 1/19

[Mark McLeod]

Greetings Teams:

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

2009 FIRST Robotics Conference
April 15-16, 2009
FIRST Championship
Atlanta, GA
Deadline for proposals: January 19, 2009

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 2009, 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 training materials and 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 January 19th, 2009 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 or Thu) 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 15-16, 2009. Travel and accommodations will not be provided by FIRST.

All this information plus the link to our submission form can be found through our Conferences page at http://usfirst.org/community/firstpl....aspx?id=11300.

Recordings and slides from the past Robotics Conferences 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