FIRST Robotics Magazine

FIRST General Forum
21

Thanks everyone for the replies. It looks like we need to take the next step. I am willing to help get this thing kick started. I have been thinking about what the columns might be, but in order to let everyone have a say let’s start an email brain storm. Please email your suggestions to me at [email protected] or post them here. I will begin looking into the logistical issues of getting space on the web, what legal issues are involved, what tools are available, etc. Keep the excitement I love it!

Gene

22

We should definatly post things up here about the columns you want to see here and other things.

Here are some ideas for columns…

Letters to the Editor
Technology Today- What’s new in technology in general. I’d like to do this one.
What’s Your Sponsor Doing?- A look at some of FIRST’s Sponsors and teams sponsors.
How Does It Work?- A detaled look at how something works that is used in FIRST.
Your Robot- A look at peoples robots
Q&A- A questions and answers section
Other Speciatly Columns- Columns on things to do around competitons, kick-offs, plays, and other things.

Mike, could we make a Website for FIRST Webzine? Have a small section for ideas, letters to the editor, and other things.

Joseph Matt
[email protected]

23

This is great to hear soo many ideas about a FIRST webZine and i think that we can do it. like one of my coaches say “KIS” keep it simple. we make it more complex as we go along. i have some great ideas some may work some may not. i also can get us some web space that has no limit of storage. well here it goes some of my ideas:

  1. i think that people are right on how we think that we should not have a certain deadline but it should be good time before nationals
  2. i also think that when we are at nationals that we should do daily updates on what happens the days that it happens. the only problem that i would see is that i dont know how many people or any people at all will have an iternet connection
  3. i think that it would be great if each time gives a report about their team, just a short little summary
  4. i think that we should have editorials and something like a question and answer part
  5. i think that we should also include, im sure if ive already said this, but the voice of the people, what other people’s opinion is

thats some of the ideas for now. hope to hear from yall and hope that this will work out, i know it can. i also think that we should start thinking about next season if we decide to do this next year. it think that it would be great to have this from the start. well here are my two cents. well thats all for now. later .

Mike O’Brien
Team 384
AIM- tennismike7
email- [email protected]
web page- http://jrtrobotics.homeip.net:33

24

We should start with the columns, and who’s doing wich ones. I’d like to do a today’s technology news section, and possibly something on stuff to do at WDW and VCU.

Joseph Matt
[email protected]

25

This is exactly what I was talking about. We have tons and tons of ideas, but we can’t possibly fit all of them on the magazine/webzine.

I think before we get more ideas, we should decide what we want this webzine/magazine to do.

Are we just reporting what’s happening at competition? To recognize teams? Show people the really cool robots out there?

Or are we using this webzine to say things to people? To teach others things we learn from this competition? To show off how much we know about this competition?

If we are showing people about different teams, how do we fit all 600 teams together? If we are doing discussions we have about this competition, do we quote other people or do we just express our own opinion?

So… How is it going to be?

26

It should be a magazine about FIRST and Technology.
It should feature letters, Q&A, How To columns, PR for teams, and other things.
Keep the first issue down to size. A few letters and 5 or 6 columns. We should also create a general layout and graphic design for the webzine.

We also need an offical name!
We should also put our position under our posts in our signature along with a link the webzine site.

Joseph Matt
[email protected]

27

Actually, I think the first order of business is to pick an editor/head honcho. while democracy is a wonderful thing, it doesn’t get anything done very fast.

perhaps ken could fill that role? He seems like he’s head honcho material.

28

Since I started this Idea I’d be willing to take on the role of Editor and Chief. I was hoping that Ken would handle a commentary column or something like that. The name that came to me on that night of inspiration was “FIRST Place”, what do you think? As a beginning I’d like to hear what articles people are willing to write within the next week. As far as choosing columns right now I think we should see what contributions we get and as time progresses develop them into recuring columns.

Gene

29

*Originally posted by Gene F *
**Since I started this Idea I’d be willing to take on the role of Editor and Chief. I was hoping that Ken would handle a commentary column or something like that. The name that came to me on that night of inspiration was “FIRST Place”, what do you think? As a beginning I’d like to hear what articles people are willing to write within the next week. As far as choosing columns right now I think we should see what contributions we get and as time progresses develop them into recuring columns.

Gene **

Go right ahead if you want to do it. :wink: I didn’t want to sound so controlling and annoying with my comments… Just that I know this is a good thing to do in FIRST, and I want to make sure we organize this, think through the details, and make it great.

It would be really bad if it come out half done and not really good. It would be even worse if we happens to mess this up and make people lose interest in doing this.

And, I kinda like a small group effort in making this happen, because it will mean a lot less work load on just one person, and it will make sure we do this with different angle of view points… With more people, we can show people how we think of FIRST, coming from different people’s eyes.

Anyway, I will keep posting ideas, and help do part of the magazine/webzine.

30

Sounds like a plan… however…

I’m wary about reports from each team because, lets face it - we have waaaaay too many teams in FIRST now. We’re not talking about just covering one regional, one area of things ect. Unless you want to do something like a Featured Team.

I’m the editor of a truck enthusiast website, and we have a Dakota of the Week that people can submit for, and they are placed in a queue for inclusion. If you want to spotlight a team, I’d suggest somthing like that. Just an idea.

Anywho, I’m up for working on whatever I’m needed for. :cool:

31

Um, people…love the idea, but…

Before this gets too far ahead, I think we need to notify Robby that this is being talked about again. He’s worked more on this topic than you would believe, and I think he needs to put in his 2 cents before we decide anything major.

32

As Ken mentioned earlier- this is something Robby and I have talked about in great depth and detail; Robby even has a copy of the potential cover to the first issue that we had on hand at Nationals last year to show to some of the FIRST staff. We talked to some of the major players (engineer-wise) in FIRST about contributing columns, etc. We have some basic drawing of the layout for a webzine portion, etc, etc

We have a lot of foot work done on this, I personally have just gotten a bit caught up in school work & robots & stuff lately… given this great interest, it seems like it’s time to wake this idea back up again.

We basically wanted this to be done with the support of FIRST and more under their jurisdiction than any one team. We didn’t want to step on the toes of what any great teams like Chief Delphi have done for FIRST with this website. Afterall, there are white papers here that if you guys can formalize your ideas can be posted up here.

Personally, after all this talk, I’m going to go back to my notes and see where we left off, along with talking to Robby on the topic.

33

I knew you two got a lot of thinking done a while ago… I remember Robby telling me about it at kickoff. We were even going to do a report on kickoff itself, but I ended up couldn’t do it at the time because I wasn’t prepared enough for the necessary material and got caught up with the rest of FIRST stuff after I got back home.

I know the magazine involve doing reports of competition, and doing someone on Dean, but I really can’t remember anymore. From what I heard from robby, sounds like you are on the right track, and just need to make things happen.

I am really eager to find out what you two have planned, but I understand it if you want to work this out between yourself before announcing anything. Why don’t you e-mail me @ [email protected] and tell me what I can do for you. Frankly, I think you need a west coast reporter :wink: to show you guys what’s going on over here…

And I would love to do a report on Nationals this year, now that I have all these time to plan it out before hand. I’ve got a long list of people I want to talk to, so might as well do little interviews with them while I ask them about their robot.

Like I said before, I really thought this magazine/webzine idea need a lot of thinking through if it is to be really good… Seems like you twos’ hard work into this maybe our first step to making it happen!

Thanks everyone for being so exciting about this and won’t give up!

34

Coleen, Robby, and others,
If you two had some ideas I’d like to help put them into action. Please forward any information on your previous planning to [email protected]. I’m worried that trying to get FIRST to get behind this without demonstrating that we can make it happen will be difficult. Let’s try to get something started and then see if FIRST wants to adopt us. :slight_smile:

Gene

35

1.) Concept…

Lalalalalalalalalalal

2.) Feasiblity

Coin Toss

3.) Reality

Holy C$@P! This is going to cost a lot!

4.) De-Scoping

Chainsaw: VVVVRRUUUMMM, ZZZZZZZZZRRRRRRR, BBBBBBUUUUUUUZZZZZ

5.) Construction:

It’s a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be…

6.) Opeining Day

Hip-Hip-Ho-RA!

7.) The Homecoming

HEY I’M BACK! Helo? Anybody remember me??

8.) Concept

Lalalalalalalalalalal…

We just hit the reality whap ow that hurt!

36

I personally would be willing to write articles and do graphic design etc. on a regular basis for this. Furthermore, Im certain our SOAP scouting/strategey database (2x johnson+johnson Sportsman Award winning) would be useful, especially in a featured robot/strategy segment.

37

HTML or AOL Text- Should we do the trusty dusty text only version, an HTML version, or forget it all and do a PDF file or something like that.

Just to offer another option: XML. With XML, you can use XSLT to transform the XML into HTML (web sites), PDF (print), and text. You can convert to other formats as well (e.g. voice), but I don’t think there’d be a large audience for listening to a magazine article. :wink:

38

Id love to help out on this thing. I would be willing to write a few articles, or maybe a column for it. Let me know what you need. I was thinking more along hte lines of How To articles and whatnot. Off the top of my head i get things like: “How to fundraise”, “How to put your robot on a diet (lightening it up :slight_smile: )”, “How to better your pit”, etc. But whatever column you need me to do is fine. I personalyl dont like the whole spotlight on team thing. I think this zine should help others, have nifty interviews (ie, w/ dean, woodie, special engineers, etc), competition coverage, and tech/FIRST news bits. email me at [email protected].

-Nick Gauthier
Strategery Liason First Matey (SLFM - pronounced SLaFuM)
Team 365
The Miracle Workerz

39

::Yawn::Stretch::Scratch::

I know I should probably jump right onto topic, but I just wanna let everyone know that things are okay with me, as I’ve done everything but drop off the face of the earth recently. FIRST took me away from the arts for 4 years of my life, and I’ve had a sudden and powerful reintroduction, with all kinds of performance opportunities and doors opened for me. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do with my life and now it’s happening, so I’ve done everything in the past couple of months to deeply immerse myself back into that community. That includes dropping art school, quitting work, and, unfortunately, ignoring FIRST.

But this topic (and Colleen ::thankyou::slight_smile: snapped my attention back to a community I owe more than I can ever return. So now that you know where my weird head has been the past few months, lemme start with the concept of FIRSTmagazine as it originally began.

I love silly responses to questions, and have been known to be a quite the goofball at times, with all sorts of ideas running amok. However, about a year and a half ago, a newbie to the world of FIRST asked a simple question on the forums and I smarmily replied “Oh, I take it you didn’t read about that in the latest issue of FIRSTmagazine”. Hence that quest began.

It’s been an idea bouncing around in my skull and between others I hold close in the FIRST community. Last year we even gave a mockup of the first cover to Laura London. The biggest problem we had with the magazine has always been “So, okay, what’s it going to contain?”. I see that running across this thread now. And that’s a hard thing to decide. There’s so much involved with FIRST, what do we include? Merely tutorials, or articles, news on technology?

The conclusion that we finally came to was based on a quote from the founder himself:

“Scientists as Superheroes”

That’s the direction, in my (and a few others’) opinion, that FIRSTmagazine should take. Each issue has a featured scientist. There will be an in-depth interview/biography of that scientist, then there will be a pullout poster of that scientist, with a portrait of the scientist on one side, and an artists rendering of the scientist in superhero style a-la popular comic books. Then of course you have the latest news on science happenings. Reports of FIRST and science/technology events.

There will be a section for mechanical, electrical, and software tutorials. Reports on and interviews with kids who have made an impact in their community with FIRST. Papers on how to start projects and follow through with them. Listings of grants and funding for these projects. Internship and scholarship opportunity listings. Contests with science/technology-related prizes. And games and comics around the FIRST community.

It’s a blending of the Arts and Sciences, two true cultural cultivators, to make each other really appeal to a younger generation. FIRSTmagazine is the Newsstand supplement to FIRST – it’s about the inspiring of and helping to launch the careers of young adults. Something to make them all forget TV and just hanging out with friends, but start encouraging them to have an impact on society, even if it’s as small as only their town – that’s still an impact and more than most young people do ever.

There’s so much more detail I can’t even describe right now. And I can only thank everyone who pointed out that I’ve actually put work into this with others before everyone ran off doing their own thing, as has happened in the past. This has been kept on the downlow for that very reason – too much division of the FIRST community due to a lot of “Look at my team, we want an award for this”.

But enough of my nagging. I have a list of people I will be contacting already to get this done, and if anyone is interested, please, let me know. We most definitely do need web developers and maintainers, specifically I’ve been looking at PHP, but I am only one person and perhaps something would suit better. I really wish that I had brought it to the community sooner. If I had known there would have been this much interest and offered commitment, I could have accomplished so much more up to now with everyone’s help.

Also, enjoy the sneak peeks at the original cover design, and check out the clip of some dean artwork I’m coloring for the first issue.

-Robby O
[email protected]
FIRSTanimators Moderator
“If I had it in me to stop these random thoughts and non-stop dreams, I could deal with this non-stop spinning world” – Less Than Jake

40

Icky design, but it was the first of many to come…

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