Bill's Blog

[JohnBoucher]

There is a new Bill's Blog out. More info about Bag and Tag.

http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/

[Brandon Holley]

Can someone repost the message here? Blogspot is blocked.

-Brando

[JohnBoucher]

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Things you should know before you register for your first event


Good Afternoon Teams,

Registration for Regional and District events opens this Thursday, September 30th. Are you ready?

If you haven’t yet, go to TIMS to pre-register your team. It will save a lot of time on Thursday when you register for your first choice event.

If you have pre-registered in TIMS, please go back in and check your account. Operations tells me a surprising number of teams have started, but not completed the pre-registration process. Incomplete pre-registration will slow you down on Thursday when you register for your first choice event.

I’ve had a few questions from teams about shipping to a bag & tag event under special circumstances.

Let me start by explaining how shipping to a regular Regional Event works. When a team hands their robot crate over to FedEx, that crate DOES NOT go directly to the event venue Instead, FedEx delivers robot crates to secure Shepard Exposition drayage warehouses. The night before the event, when FRC has access to the venue and can take delivery of the robot crates, Shepard trucks the robot crates to the event venue.

At the conclusion of a regular Regional Event, Shepard picks up all the robot crates, takes them back to their warehouses and then connects with FedEx during the week to send your robot on the next leg of its journey. FedEx doesn’t deliver robots to FRC event venues and doesn’t pick up robots at venues. Event venues don’t have the facilities to store robot crates as they arrive in the days leading up to the event.

At a Bag & Tag event teams take care of delivering their robot to the venue when FRC has access. If we decide a team has a good reason to ship their robot to a Bag & Tag event, we will have to find someone or some place near the event that can accept delivery of that robot and store it securely until FRC has access to the venue. Then we’ll have to arrange for the stored robot to be delivered to the event. As you can imagine, this is going to take some time to set up so please, only ask for special delivery to a Bag & Tag event if you really, really need it.

If you plan to attend two or more competition events and aren’t sure how attending both Bag & Tag events and traditional events will affect your team, I’ve provided a chart below to help you navigate.

If your team plans to register for either of the Seattle Regional events, be aware, ALL teams will automatically be placed on the wait list. There’s a reason for this. Many of the Washington state teams are funded with grants that require the team to participate in a Washington state regional. We have two events scheduled for Seattle in week three to make sure there are enough spaces to accommodate all of these teams and still leave room for more, but we don’t want all the spaces to fill before all the teams that have to play in WA are registered. We will move teams off the Seattle Regional wait lists as soon as possible.

Talking about Seattle’s double event, you should know that FRC reserves the right to ‘balance’ teams at any of the double event competitions. For instance: if every rookie team interested in playing in Minnesota registers for the 10,000 Lakes and there are no rookies at North Star, or if all the teams interested in playing in Toronto register for Toronto West leaving only four teams registered at Toronto east. We haven’t had to ‘balance’ double events in the past, and won’t if things work out on their own, but be aware, we still reserve the right to level the playing field if need be.

If you’ve heard any rumors about changing the start and end dates of the New Jersey Regional, they’re not true. I understand that weekend overlaps with a major NJ school test, but we can’t change the days due to other activities already scheduled at the venue.

If you’ve heard any rumors about the Colorado Regional they might be true. The venue might change due to unforeseen circumstances, the date might change to week 6 and it might grow to a double event, but at least the city is expected to remain the same. We’re working hard to get this event wrapped up before registration starts.

The Dallas Regional is still TBD which means there’s a chance it might change to a different week and it might grow into a double event. We’re working hard to get this event wrapped up before registration starts.

VIMS has a new look and a more user friendly few interface. If you volunteer for FRC events, be sure to check it out. You can sign up to volunteer at 2011 FRC events now.

You may have heard that FIRST received a $3 million grant from Google to develop and implement student driven fundraising programs. That’s true.

FIRST is currently in first place in the AMEX online competition

FIRST is last in all four categories in the JCPenney competition

102 days to Kickoff
See you then!

[MrForbes]

ooops someone beat me to it. But my version of the image is still betterer

[Brandon Holley]

Thanks guys.

-Brando

[Jessica Boucher]

And now I know what Berth means. Thanks, FIRST!