I am posting this to get everyone’s thoughts on the first FIRST robotics conference… I personally think it is a cool idea especially for teams and members who are unable to attend workshops at kick off events. I also am looking forward to seeing what the “big boys” have in store for us getting ideas from the people I really respect like Andy baker and Joe Johnson. As well as this all sounds I wonder how successful it will be because of the timing (during the day of nationals)
Either way I am looking forward to some of these seminars and I encourage you all to attend if you can.
I agree, I think FIRST has done a great job with planning this out. They have organized some of FIRST’s finest… and I know that the seminars will be WELL worth my time. I’m very excited about getting to attend them, plus the fact that since this is the championship… you have people from all over the country/world attending so you get input from a very diverse group of people, instead of kickoff workshops which are mostly people from a general area… I think this will be great for just getting people together to talk afterwards and share ideas.
i would hope that they would be available to the public after a resource like this will be a priceless resorce for years to come. I wonder if we could get soap to tape and post them on their site.
the problem i think i share with John is balancing my time at nationals between this and the competition
like several have said I hope that there will be a video or something to show those of us that are coaching what exactly is being shown there…I would love to attend, but I believe we will participating in matches…
I’m hoping to catch some of them, too. My sugestion for next year: Plan it for Wednesday and let teams know way in advance so they can decide if some team members want to travel a day ahead. RAGE will be arriving on Tuesday night this year and we have all day Wednesday free so it would have been a great time to atttend workshops.
I personally think the CD webhug should be part of the official schedule, but hey, that’s just me.
And could someone please tape them? We all know how FIRST is with distributing video, it’s just easier if we setup a shift schedule now or if someone does them all.
They are charging admission.
Is taping them even allowed?
Reviewing the schedule… there are a few I’d REALLY love to hit up.
(I’m especially interested in the “surviving as a college FIRSTer” one… sounds intriguing ;)) Unfortunately… I have serious team obligations.
If I can get there…(looking for funding for airfare/donated ticket) and it is allowed, I can find a camera and tripod and tape them and then digitize them. Or even better, Kenny Ardizzone will be hosting one. SOAP has the experiance to do this.
Admission is $5 adults, $2 students (college and high school)
Is the registration just for they can get approximate numbers? Can you attend a session you didn’t register for?
Like many of us i suspect, I have no clue what my schedule will be a nationals. I would like to attend several of the sessions but cannot gurantee anything. I would probably attend all of them given the time but would like to attend a few of them depending on how much time I have. I don’t know which sessions will fall into do able time slots and don’t know which session I should register for. I’m confused.
I love this idea. While we are a 5th year team, many of our future team leadership will be attending a workshop or two.
Along with the other people who have already posted, I think these workshops will be a great resource for not only rookie but also veteran teams and if they were recorded, it would great.
The great thing is that they cover so many diverse topics that most anyone involved in some part of FIRST should be able to pick up new knowledge.
Participants may bring their own video camera and film a specific conference, as long as the presenter is OK with it. Because this is our first year, we will not be producing a ‘master’ video.
I think that the FIRST conference is a great idea, and will allow many teams to access information on great variety of topics. Once again great idea. But, I dont like the way that it was set up. I know that there are many of these that I would like to see, but I dont think that I will be able to due to the scheduling: I am the driver on team 365, and can’t leave on in the middle of the event for an hour to go see a presentation. I think that many other people would be in the same boat. As a result, attendence may not be as high as it would be if these were scheduled for an off-hour time. Just something to consider for next year.
116 will have a small contingant down there, and have a video camera and tridop. We are looking into getting mics for the speakers. If anyone else is looking into doing video coverage of presentations, send me a PM. Lets coordinate this so as much as possible can be taped.
