**FIRST EMAIL**/Announcing the 2nd Annual FIRST Robotics Conference

[Rich Wong]

Greetings Teams:

The second annual FIRST Robotics Conference will take place April 21-23, 2005 at the Georgia Dome and Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta in conjunction with the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) World Festival and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Championship.

We're gearing up for a great conference that will provide current and prospective FRC and FLL teams, coaches, students, and mentors with the technical and non-technical information and advice they need to be the best they can be.

Some conference topics include:

Use of Collaborative Problem Solving to Design FIRST Robots
Overall Robot Design
Writing Killer Autonomous Programs
Advanced LEGO Robotics: Control and Communication Using RoboLabTM
Animation of Practical Robot Mechanisms
Using Conflict Resolution on an FLL Team

Register yourself or a team of five (5) for one day or for all three.

Individual Team of 5

Thursday $20 $75
Friday $25 $100
Saturday $15 $50
Thurs-Sat $50 $175

To see a full listing of topics or to register click on http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/2005/cmp_conference.htm. Registration is from March 1, 2005 to Friday, April 15 or when slots fill, whichever comes first.

For more info about the Championship and accommodations, visit www.usfirst.org/robotics/2005/chevents.htm.

Questions? Send an email to firstplace@usfirst.org or call Karen Sullivan at 1-800-871-8326 x427.

We hope to see you at the conference!

[RoboMom]

They truncated our conference title. We are not showing the movie "Finding NEMO" but rather hoping to have a lively discussion and to let all the NEM's (non-engineering mentors) know wherethey can go for help and ideas. Pass the word to the NEM's on your team.

[Matt Leese]

So I'm curious, what exactly are the fees being charged going to? I know for a fact that they aren't paying the presenters. I doubt renting the rooms would cost that much (or perhaps it does). The fees just don't seem to be inline with what I would expect.

Matt

[KathieK]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

We are not showing the movie "Finding NEMO"

We're not??? I was all set to bring the popcorn!

I guess I'll have to settle for meeting the other NEM's, then!
Looking forward to meeting all of you. Check out the conference, there are a lot of great workshops being offered.

[Erin Rapacki]

Originally Posted by Matt Leese

So I'm curious, what exactly are the fees being charged going to? I know for a fact that they aren't paying the presenters. I doubt renting the rooms would cost that much (or perhaps it does). The fees just don't seem to be inline with what I would expect.

Matt

Rooms, janitors, venue staff, chairs, microphones, projectors, screens, other misc costs, printed material, tickets, web developers, etc... You name it, we have to pay for it.

Also, the funds will help build up a budget that we could use for continuously increasing the quality of the conferences, and having them occur more frequently at various different locations.

[Stephen Kowski]

when we pay for this will we have access to presentation materials for further review later??

[KathieK]

Registration for the conference ends in a little over two weeks (April 14). I urge all teams to look at the schedule and register representatives to attend these sessions. I and a student from RAGE attended last year's Chairman's Award presentation and learned a lot. It's also a great place to network with other teams. The spirit of FIRST doesn't end with the end of the 6-week build cycle; there is a lot to learn at the conference in Atlanta!