By: Billfred
New: 10-03-2011 20:41
Updated: 10-03-2011 20:41
Views: 2018 times

This is the design of 2815's 2011 team T-shirt, featuring the gripper of our newest creation, Cockasaurus Rex. (A note: the mascot of the University of South Carolina, our primary sponsor, is the gamecock.) Trying to convert an photo of our robot into a vector file gave it a rather rough look, so we ran with it. (The skyline is actually Columbia's, as viewed from Finlay Park. Not quite to scale, of course.)

This is also a shameless opportunity for me to call out some folks we deemed worthy of recognition:

Dean Anthony Ambler is the dean of USC's College of Engineering and Computing, in his first semester in the position. His backing of our program has been absolutely critical to our ability to compete this year.

The USC Machine Shop has been our home for the past two months, and has provided us all the machining resources we found ourselves in need of at a next-day pace. You can't ask for better help than that.

Donn Griffith has been a driving force behind 2815 for the past few seasons from his position as outreach director for the college. His FIRST resumé is long (from 281 to 343 to director of FVC to serving for many years on the Palmetto Regional committee), and even though he's passed the torch on a lot of of his team duties, he's still a very important part of how we got to where we are.

Jennifer Illian has been the other staff member whose help has been immeasurable since our beginning. Working as the coordinator for outreach programs alongside Donn, she has worked admirably at handling the business and money end of 2815's operations. Whether it was ensuring reimbursement checks were going out properly or making a sandwich run at competitions, Jennifer has been a huge asset. I say that in the past tense, as she's left the University to go back to school. We miss her help, but she's set the bar high.

Dr. Herbert Ginn is the new faculty advisor of the Gamecock FIRSTers, picking up the ball from Donn Griffith and also absorbing many of Jennifer's duties after her mid-build-season departure. Pesky things like buying and moving into a home kept him from being more actively involved with us during the build, but his willingness to step up to the plate saved our bacon on several fronts (including, but not limited to, the creation of this shirt).

Woodie Flowers and Dave Lavery, both departing from the FRC Game Design Committee after a combined 30 years of service, receive our thanks for making our brains hurt for so long. It takes a certain type of person to wear that bullseye, let alone for so long, and we appreciate it. We hope the continuing members of the GDC have been taking notes.

John V-Neun has been about as helpful as a person can be from 976 miles away. The resources he's shared with the FIRST community, from spreadsheets to CAD drawings to blog posts to track the pace of their build, have allowed a guy with a marketing degree and a sophomore computer engineering student to lead a half-decent robot build.

Stephen Kowski was another one of the driving forces that birthed 2815 and led us to our early successes. Even though he graduated with his masters degree last year and has gone back to Florida, his guidance in the early part of build season was a huge help in getting us on the right track after a snow-induced slow start. (Not that he knows what that white stuff is, being a Floridian and all....)

(Y'know, I actually haven't even posted this image to our team email list yet....let's see who's been watching ChiefDelphi!)

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