Starting our own off-season event?

[Racer26]

Teams often dont hold summer offseasons as many schools are totally shut down during the summer.

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

Teams often dont hold summer offseasons as many schools are totally shut down during the summer.

If teams know far enough in advance that there will be an off-season event occurring during the summer, they might be able to store the bot in someone's garage. IRI has been mentioned numerous times already in this thread. Clearly there is a market for summer off-seasons out there.

[OZ_341]

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

If teams know far enough in advance that there will be an off-season event occurring during the summer, they might be able to store the bot in someone's garage. IRI has been mentioned numerous times already in this thread. Clearly there is a market for summer off-seasons out there.

The old Maryland State Fair, run by Mike Wade was another great summer event. There is a market.

[MarcD79]

There are a lot of variables to consider; where to host the event, are you going to feed people, do you have enough parking. The location for the event does matter. Is it easy to get to. If it is a gym floor, you will have to cover any area where there will be robots. This includes areas outside the field. This usually means covering the floor with tarps, then carpet equal to the playing field requirements. If you plan on feeding people & not allowing outside food on-site, you will probably need to make friends with a few high output pizza joints, plus a membership at either Costco, Sam's, B.J.'s or any other food warehouse.

I help run the Suffield Shakedown & it isn't an easy task. It takes weeks before the event to coordinate for the field arrival, set-up the night before, food prep, volunteers, etc. It takes our whole team, plus many volunteers to run the event on a Saturday. We typically spend over $2000 on food alone so we can sell it for fund-raising.

It can be done, just make sure you have checked with more than one event to see how they do it. I could go on & on, but space requirements & any more would tend to be boring. Just follow the advice from previous replies & do your homework before you commit.

[MissDaisyGirl]

Originally Posted by OZ_341

The old Maryland State Fair, run by Mike Wade was another great summer event. There is a market.

I would love to see a summer event close to home. The Maryland State Fair was one of the best and one of my fondest memories as a student on the team when I attended. If you locate it strategically next to a cool activity it could be a huge magnet. Yes, schools are "shut down" but why would that matter? Carpools and trailers, yeah!