Yes way! If you want us there, The FIRSTcast crew will be there. We’d like to do something for our listeners in person, but we need to know what you want us to do.
Competition List:
Me: SBPLI & UTC, Atlanta
Conor: Boston, NJ, Atlanta
Adam: UCF, Boston, Atlanta
We’re open to ideas and suggestions, and if any of the regional coordinators would like to help us out we’d love it! Looking forward to seeing our fans in person!
We want to do a live show, but given our multiple locations, we’re going to need a lot of help from our fans and the regional committees to make that happen.
As usual we can reached in this thread, via PM, or email at [email protected]
OK… heres one, random interviews with FIRSTers, just pull someone aside and be like HEY! WANNA BE ON FIRSTcast? I think it would be cool, get people more excited about it to, give them a chance to be involved.
Sounds like a really cool idea. Maybe interview some of the drivers from the top ranked teams during lunch, give predictions for the playoffs after the alliance picks, stuff like that. I would be interested in helping out at the UCF regional in any way.
I’m starting to think you all like Adam more than me…
Anyways, we’re talking a live segment during the regional thats recorded and later released, any ideas how we can sweet talk the coordinators in to helping us out with that?
You could do a bit of a buch of interviews with the the winners or the seeded members or a variety of everything from rookies to oldies to little kids to mentors.
you could get really cute with some of these things (or wait, cute is a forbidden word among guys, right? i guess “creative” would be used instead…)
i have more ideas if you are actually interested in the madness.
and i’m w/ michelle, if you need something that is do-able on my part, let me know. i’ll be at UCF
Well to elaborate a little bit on what I was planning:
NJ is the first week and one of the first regionals, and what happens about all of the first week regionals? Everyone wants to know whats going on, how the games being played, what are the effective strategies, what types of robots are the ones to beat, what kind of problems are the pits handling. So hopefully on the second half of Thursday I’ll get some interviewing in (contact me if your intrested) and some observations in.
As for Boston we’ll give you guys an update on what robots are look good and what ones are looking awesome. Interviews will occur also (again contact myself if your intrested), Boston probably would record sessions Friday or maybe even Saturday sometime. All of the live sessions are designed to be under 15 minutes, so we’ll keep all of these short and sweet and coming back for more. We are also going to try to get these to you guys as fast as possible so audio quality will be lower than FIRSTcast standards.
Too bad it can’t be extended to other regionals, or can it???
I was thinking you should get some people (For example) teams that are doing FSN can make like a 15-20 minute or so wrapup of the regional. I know our team (at least our FSN sub-team) is planning to do something like this for FSN.
I would reccomend assigning FIRST people to give daily podcast reports from every regional from start to finish so the informaton will be available to all.
Well it seems like theres enough interest here to try something new for FIRSTcast.
So, do you want to be a regional correspondent for FIRSTcast? Heres how:
Do you have the hardware? Half of FIRSTcast is having the equipment, your going to need some way to record sound, get it onto a hard drive, and then encode it. A basic set up here would require a Microphone, Laptop running Audacity, and then the LAMEmp3 to export. Record using audacity, then export it using LAME, its pretty simple. You may release your audition in .ogg format, and save a step but you’ll need LAME if you get the job. Contact me if you run into issues with this stage of the game.
Ok so you passed the hardware test, your half way there!!!
How to get on to the show: Well your gonna have to audition, but we have some basic requirements for you and a bit of a challenge. Each audition piece should meet all of the following:
Have a show outline, its always a good idea to note what your going to talk about. It helps keep you on topic too, this doesn’t have to be elaborate just a brief note of order.
Introduce yourself(s)
Your Team(s)
Tell us about the regional your covering, what teams are going what week it is, some of your expectations. This is the research stage, we expect that if your corresponding you know something about what your corresponding.
Heres the real challenge:
Pick 3-5 robots/videos that have posted full pictures here on ChiefDelphi and give us your thoughts on them. If you were to be a regional correspondent, this is exactly what you’d do. Get creative with it.
All Auditions MUST be kept under 15 minutes. Your allowed to edit it if you’d like but its not mandatory.
All entries must be emailed to [email protected] the deadline is March 1 at 5:00pm EST.
Side note: as an experienced podcaster I do have a few tips for anyone thats interested (like record a practice audition first), so contact me or any of the FIRSTcast hosts.
This can be a lot of fun, and its not too hard. We want you to try it!
-Wire up some kind drivers with a mic while they are on the field?
-Do a button track to see which team gives away the most buttons and the percentage they gave out.
-Surveys for which awards should be given to which team and see if they are right.
-Place bets between 'Casters on a team you think will go all the way and fight for your own team.
-Upload pictures with the podcasts (big one!), perhaps showing the field at key moments or guest speakers.
-Announce interviews and accept questions for them a la slashdot. Moving with that idea, use a system similar to Digg to rate the most popular/intresting questions.
-Do a live stream (technically possible?).
-Interview teams after matches and see what they think they did wrong.
-Pull pranks on teams (dress up like FIRST officials - legalities?) and do random spot checks on team’s bots; make up rules to test knowledge.
-Quiz random spectators and team members with a time-limited rules quiz (almost like cash cab or that silly thing on nikolodian… forget what it is called, but they had someone in the studio and they would ask stupid questions within a limited time - rank with who gets the most right within time). Quiz officials & high ranking people ie: Woodie Flowers (ask about Woodie Flowers award rules?)
-Video podcast (again, technically possible?).
Just a few I have come up with in the last 5 minutes. Team 1523 and I will be at UCF - intresting to see what goes down .
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