AndyMark sent out an email today with the subject “FIRST Choice Tease”
Greetings!
Things are VERY busy here at AndyMark this fall. Staff has traveled to several off-season events in recent weeks - Panther Prowl, SCRIW, CAGE, Houston Robot Remix and are on their way to Cow Town ThrowDown this weekend. We are also receiving parts almost daily for FIRST Choice, so our warehouse seems to be shrinking. We thought we would use this e-mail blast to talk about the growth we are seeing.
FIRST Robotics is growing! The registration for teams is progressing very well. According to FRC team 358 mentor, WFFA winner and stat tracking guru Mark McLeod, here are FRC team registration numbers as of noon today:
2298 Registered FRC teams, compared to 1943 on this date last year
This is a 18.3% growth rate. FIRST hopes to get as many as 2800 teams for the 2013 season. Here is a snapshot of the number of registered events for FRC teams:
Teams attending 3 Events: 1%
Teams attending 2 Events: 29%
Teams attending 1 Event: 70%
Key dates are coming up soon for FRC teams. FIRST Choice parts will be available to be viewed on the AndyMark site beginning Nov. 12th. Then, teams will be able to order their FIRST Choice parts BEFORE kickoff this year, on Dec. 10th. There were 689 teams who chose an AndyMark PDV instead of the Kit Drive System, and those teams will be able to start using their $450 PDV for AndyMark parts also on Dec. 10th. Check out FIRST’s official Blog announcement here.
No wait I got it… The FIRST Choice items this year are boxes and blue tarps Robots have to build a shelter to protect themselves from rain… Water game!
You are incorrect, dear sir. The arrows clearly indicate that the concrete floor is a FIRST Choice material. My calculations indicate that the game will involve pouring large areas of concrete and waiting for it to dry. Field reset should be interesting.
The arrows are pointing towards the blue tarps. Now, why might there be tarps there, one may ask? To protect what it is covering from water! Therefore, the arrows are pointing to the water droplets on the tarps, thus indicating a water game!
They are point towards a pallet and what do you do to stuff on pallets you stack stuff and so it will be some to do with stacking boxes and when was the last event we did that?
Maybe we are allowed to use parts to build the robot. That would be new.
But I think the game will involve us building cardboard boats, putting robots in to paddle them, and then race around the pool.
In all seriousness, being able to select our FIRST choice items before kickoff is awesome. The KOP engineers in Manchester are doing an awesome job responding to feedback and streamlining the process for everyone.
