We’re currently on our second day of brainstorming and by the end of the day we’ll be finalizing a basic robot design/concept.
Watch us here:
http://www.livestream.com/1511
Interested in what we did each day?
http://penfieldrobotics.com/blog/
Check it out & good luck this season!
If you missed our webcast today, you can catch the archived videos that are replaying at: livestream.com/1511!!!
the videos titled “Group __” are our presentations on different robot concept designs, so if you’re team is looking for ideas, feel free to check it out! All the design paper work is also posted on our smugmug gallery here: http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com/2010-2011-FIRST-Robotics/Build-Season/Day-2-Brainstorm-session-1-9/15389730_RVicE#1151745098_GN5Jx
I tried my best to take good pictures… >.< I sorry!
I will be trying to webcast as many of our buildsessions as possible so the times to tune in are:
Tuesdays-Thursdays: 5~9pm
Weekends: 10am~9pm or later
Thanks to those who watched us today and asked questions about the presentations! You definitely helped us throughout the day too!
Its great that you guys are doing it, but honestly now that I think about it: no one will watch it. You do realize all our build times coincide with each others and I think people want to invest their time designing and fabricating the robot than watching another team do the process. Just very very small chance that some one would watch it more than a few minutes. But its great that you guys are doing it. May be I might watch it on Wednesdays, which is off day for our team.
Reasons why people will watch
We have an extensive network of students, alumni, mentors, parents, as well as other teams that we try to help as much as possible. This allows people to participate in our build season process from other states and potentially other countries. I think that this tool will be helpful especially for rookies.
Lets say you want to bounce ideas off of another team or have a question that needs to be answered immediately well just type it in and we will discuss it live!
It is not something you need to sit down in front of for 9 hours. Teams may find that they keep it up on a computer during build season and check in from time to time much like we use this website.
Most importantly it is a ton of fun!
FYI David between 10 - 15 people were watching live during the day. Also being archived means that even if they conflict you can watch key parts later. At first some people (me included) didn’t know how it would work or how successful it would be, but now I am a believer. Hopefully David you will keep an open mind and see for yourself that this is pretty cool. Let me say that this is HUGE! A big thanks to “Waffles” for making this happen!
Hey hey! I watched it almost the entire time yesterday. For those of us who are lacking a team this year nothing can be more interesting.
I also enjoy providing feedback about the rules, and doing tedious calculations for them.
Although you do have to draw the line between providing useful feedback and being a distraction to the team. Once you have that balance down it can be very useful for the team, and interesting/entertaining for the viewers.
Unfortunately the stream is blocked on our school-supplied macs…wish I could watch it though.
Reasons why people will watch
We have an extensive network of students, alumni, mentors, parents, as well as other teams that we try to help as much as possible. This allows people to participate in our build season process from other states and potentially other countries. I think that this tool will be helpful especially for rookies.
Lets say you want to bounce ideas off of another team or have a question that needs to be answered immediately well just type it in and we will discuss it live!
It is not something you need to sit down in front of for 9 hours. Teams may find that they keep it up on a computer during build season and check in from time to time much like we use this website.
Most importantly it is a ton of fun!
FYI David between 10 - 15 people were watching live during the day. Also being archived means that even if they conflict you can watch key parts later. At first some people (me included) didn’t know how it would work or how successful it would be, but now I am a believer. Hopefully David you will keep an open mind and see for yourself that this is pretty cool. Let me say that this is HUGE! A big thanks to “Waffles” for making this happen!
“All our build times”? Whose? Their team and yours? You can’t possibly be speaking on behalf of all the other teams in FRC, could you? Our team meets Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. So as far as I know, OUR build times didn’t coincide with theirs. And even if you are talking about any future casts this team may do, have you considered time zones?
Just an FYI, when I was watching the stream yesterday, a good 10-15 people were viewing it. While that’s no CES viewership, it is quite a bit, considering “all our build times coincide with each other”.
You might want to check out FRSee, too. It’s a network of teams on Skype. It may prove to be very useful.
http://chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87994
While its true that many teams were running at several times, I think this is the best reason above!! OK Im biased… I used to lead the team and now live 368 miles away - Yet I was able to see what was going on and even help review the final designs! WAY fun 
It was especially cool that they monitored the chat so that we could interact with the team!
And even better is that since they meet at least 5 days a week, if this works well & continues, mentors or other team members that may not be able to make it can “tune in” during some of the sessions or watch past sessions to catch up on what they missed.
It would be awesome if more teams would do this! Mentors from all teams could virtually help out rookies or teams that needed assistance. Co-opertition at its finest
See the second part of my post above yours. 
I watched on and off for most of the day, it was pretty cool to see all the things they were talking about. I also liked how the webcast moved from group to group.
It was especially cool that they monitored the chat so that we could interact with the team!
I answered a question that was asked, and I think they used the answer.
I could see this becoming popular. I will definitely have it running in the evenings while i’m working/helping our kids out.
Well I for one think it’s an excellent idea. A great way to expand upon the generosity and kindness of teams during the actual competition. If everyone shares their ideas we can refine and innovate as a universal group, which is what FIRST is all about in the first place.
If we could distribute ideas and resources each team would have equal opportunity to innovate and would have less restrictions based on the lack of members or funding.
So thank you for being kind enough to share things like this, although I cannot watch it at school.
Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to connect with any outsourcing programs like Skype, so an online source like livestream or USstream were the only options.
Also, even if people don’t watch because our times coincide it’s ok! We have a constant time schedule, so our broadcasts will always be up at the same time and people can work around that, and the videos are always archived if people are still interested.
I’m glad so many of you are enjoying our new communication method 
This also helps us let family members know what we’re doing right up to the minute.
Wow, that’s a pretty weird setup. Most schools I know that block Skype, also block live video streaming, as it’s pretty much the same thing. I guess it makes sense that you’d use streaming, then.
Our Buildseason Session for 1-12-11 has been Canceled!
FIRST UPDATE #1 for 2011 LOGOMOTION
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=450
We’ll be back on
Thursday 1-13 | 6-9pm or later
Friday, 6pm-midnight
(as long as we’re not snowed in!)
Rochester weather… =\
Sorry if you were looking to our broadcast!
This is pretty snazzy if you ask me!