GeorgiaFIRST and Kennesaw State University will be conducting the next Mentor Advisory Conference November 15th. Each year this conference has been conducted in August for the benefit of mentors in Georgia. By popular demand, a new date is being added and it will be webcast in order to reach a broader audience.
Topics will cross a wide range of issues of interest, with the intent of helping mentors improve team performance and execution.
KSU Television will be broadcasting the event with a multi-camera 720p HD live stream via the internet. Mentors from all over the country that participate in FRC and FTC are encouraged to view and participate in the proceedings. While oriented toward mentors, students are encouraged to view the event.
Schedule: November 15th, all times are Eastern Standard Time
9:00 am to 12:00 noon - broadcast event
12:00 noon to 1:30 pm - lunch break
1:30 pm to 3:30 pm - broadcast event
Off campus participants can view the event by going to http://www.gafirst.org The main page of this website will be the place to go on the day of the event.
It is highly recommended that you attend if you are in the Georgia region. The event will be in the Burruss Building, room 151. Attendees will have an opportunity to eat lunch at one of the highest rated university cafeterias in existence, The Commons but you get to pay for your own lunch. About 10 bucks roughly, all you can eat. Use a debit or credit card only, no cash.
Free parking is available on that date in the East Lot Parking Deck, Lot B, Lot C, Lod D, and the Visitors Lot. Campus maps are here
This event will be conducted by your hosts, Connie Haynes, Regional Director for Georgia, and Ed Barker, Kennesaw State University.
Yes. It will be posted online sometime after the event. Some slight editing will be done to slice it into segments so that you can get straight to a topic.
This past MAC meeting was interesting, especially the bits about the manufacturing resources that are going to be coming out of KSU/SPSU. I was wondering, what kind of turn around times can teams expect on these jobs/tasks? When can teams expect to see some details on this?
The growth of GA’s FRC base was an interesting topic as well. A couple of points:
I think that there’s danger in overextending the available resources, especially if you guys try to force 40 new teams. I seem to recall that one of the Canadian regions even limits the number of rookies so as not to over burden their support structure.
In regards to the “task force” that’s going to be creating a roadmap for political and educational support throughout the state, I hope that task force and its activities will be relatively transparent to FIRST participants in GA.
With regards to the MAC meetings, I can’t help but think that as far as format is concerned, the past three MAC meetings I’ve been to, the formats have been relatively similar. The hosts walk through the season and the various technical and non-technical aspects and sort of dictate what the teams should be doing with the occasional discussion happening.
It may be more interesting to focus the MAC meetings a little more. If you assume that there are two MAC meetings, perhaps hold one that’s geared more towards existing teams and then hold one that’s geared more towards rookie teams. Existing teams will enjoy round tables, deeper dives, etc. while rookies will find the overviews and instructions very helpful.
A lot of great comments and concerns you have made.
As I said, this is a pilot year and I’m expect a bumpy ride regarding manufacturing. Hopefully soon we can nail down some answers. This came together late in the fall and we are still working things out.
Growing this system is going to be challenging for many reasons. We will have to add something the equivalent of a regional a year, ultimately converting to a district system to accommodate any kind of growth at all. Getting all the mentor/teacher/student support systems into place is a big challenge. The money is a big challenge. If all this was easy it would already be done.
We don’t want to ‘force’ anything but respond to growth in a way that increases quality and sustainability.
Every student should have the opportunity to participate in FIRST. Building a system that gives students this opportunity, while increasing quality and sustainability is HUGE challenge.
10-4 on transparency. That will be coming but will take a while.
We are ALL EARS on the MAC. It would be nice to a a fully developed committee to help do this thing.
This effort is being driven out of Kennesaw State University, the ‘New U’ = KSU + SPSU. The FIRST threads are part of a much larger initiative. Stay tuned, we will get the info out there for public comments and criticisms as soon as we can, which will be a while. Gotta get these pesky holidays out of the way.