No Teams in Idaho or Utah

Competition Starting New Teams
#10

This just came to mind. What if teams were to write letters to certain districts describing all the goodness of FIRST, maybe even including video presentations from the season?

Although a lot of teams were founded by people who had been on a robotics team before, many other teams were started by schools that had even the slightest interest in the idea of a program inspiring young and old alike and recognizing science and technology. If we showed this to them, the districts might just take the initiative on their own to start teams.

I think it’s worth a try :o

#11

This could be an excellent tool. I think there are a lot of schools and groups that would be interested if they just had a clear picture of what FIRST was and what it was really all about.
My experience has been that people out here simply don’t know that FIRST exists. Once they get a look at it, they get pretty excited about it.

(Oh …BTW I meant to say in my last post that I was southeast of BYU, not southwest.)

#12

Who’s all willing to help in the letter-writing/video-sending efforts? Once I have enough response, I’ll try to get a list of the districts in Idaho and Utah and post them so that an individual/team/group of teams may have the opportunity to select one and focus its efforts on that district :).

#13

If you guys need any help at all, i could lend a hand…
i used to live in Utah (Roy/Ogden area) and have some information that could be useful…

I really think they would be interested…they only don’t participate because FIRST lacks marketing!!! I, for one, had never known such a thing existed until i moved out of there…It’s a bit sad, really, because FIRST has already reached other countries and there are some U.S. states that still are unaware of what FIRST is!!

#14

It’s official, there is now a Utah FIRST Team. The original founders of Team 1110 have now founded Team 1505 (Roy High School) in Roy, Utah. Team 1110 will also hopefully be mentoring them long-distance.

Congrats 1505!

PS: There are still no teams in Idaho, lets get moving people! :wink:

#15

There will be. Look for 10 new teams from Idaho to be registered before December 1.

-dave

#16

Wow! Does that mean we can count on there being green jello at the regional parties now?!? :eek (I shutter at the though of green jello salad)

I am so glad to hear about Idaho getting some teams, I got family out there and depending on where the teams are I might just need to pay a visit to some family memebers, and who knows maybe drop in at a few high schools to see whats up! :smiley:

#17

Hi! I’m Pattie. My son Tyler has founded team 1110 in California and 1505 in Utah - Josh mentioned him in earlier posts. Actually I have been seriously involved myself. We tried starting a FIRST team last year but it just didn’t happen - so this spring we dragged the welding instructor to LA with us to see team 1110 compete in their second year. He was absolutely sold on it!

ANYHOW - wanted to jump in here and say ‘HI’ :slight_smile:

If there are any teams start up in the Utah or Idaho area, we’d be very happy to mentor as we’re close enough and have experience starting up new teams.

Team 1110 will be mentoring us to get us back up to speed on details because we took a year off - but I think we’ve got solid enough basics to help someone in the area. Josh told us about this website - see he’s already helping us out! Thanks Josh!

You all take care and I’ll pop in again to say hi.

Pattie

#18

That’s awesome to hear!! Kudos to you, and your son.

And welcome to the forums! :slight_smile:

#19

I am on one of the two teams that will be competing this year from Idaho. Our team is from Pocatello and the other is from Idaho Falls. Our team is planing on traveling to Portland. I’m not sure where the other team is planing on going. Next year there should be two teams from Pocatello. Currently our team is made up by kids from two of our high schools and next year they both will have separate teams.

#20

Hi ENordseth - I sent you a message with my phone and e-mail. We’d be very happy to help you guys out - you’re close enough that a few of us could drive up a few weekends if you’d like. We have experience starting up two teams and probably have some information that would be useful to share with you to avoid some of the holes we fell into. Even if we might not be going to the same regional, we’d be very happy to help you out in any way that we can. Even though our team is a rookie team, we have a few veterans with a little experience.

Do you have funding other than NASA yet?

Did you by chance see the FIRST Robotics documentary on the Science Channel? I taped it to help me talk to potential sponsors - let me know if you need a copy. The story of Team #1396 was SO IMPRESSIVE!!! I have new heroes!

Pattie

#21

This is awesome to hear that new teams have been started in these locations. I hope everyone’s efforts thus far to establish more teams are successful - I’ll be willing to help (as much as one can from all the way from Michigan) where needed.

#22

Wow this is great news!! Finally a team from Utah…! What’s even more exciting for me is that Roy High School is the school I would have attended had I not moved back here to Brazil…(I studied at Sandridge Jr. High, Roy, UT)…
I would like to contact this team (it’s 1505, right?), so if anyone has any details on them (website, e-mail, etc) I would really appreciate it… it would be awesome to know that my old friends back in Utah are also on a FIRST team!!!
My e-mail’s soccersim88@yahoo.com , i’m from team #1382, Brazil, and any information at all on this rookie team would really mean a lot to me…
…YAYYY for 1505!!!..sorry, i’m just excited and i can’t get over it!! hope to hear from you soon…

#23

Hi!

Team #1566 from Idaho Falls is now official! It looks like they’ll be competing in Portland. I think this is FANTASTIC!!

Pattie

#24

WOW - Today Pocatello became official - Way to go Team #1569!!

#25

Hmm, all these teams from ID and UT, esp Idaho Falls and Pocatello means there will be more Mormons floating around… wooooooord :smiley: XPLittleSki, we’re not alone anymore!

MrToast

#26

Yeah mormons!! You know utah gonna have a crazy team, they wont be afrad to do all kinds of stuff.

#27

Hey i’m also on the pocatello team, same as ENordseth, and we need some advice. as of right now, we are doing this stuff:

-Making t-shirts for the team
-Building a cart to put our bot on
-learning some circuitry stuff, like diodes and transistors, etc.
-some of us are learning the programming but I really have no clue, so maybe ask nordseth about it.
-building a little programmed car (boe-bot?)

Any suggestions about anything else we could be doing? I’m more of the “business-end” guy, but if you have any suggestions let me know.

Thanks everyone,
Pat

#28

Hi Skiwreck! Welcome to FIRST.

Is your team planning to submit an animation entry? If so, do you have anyone who’s up to speed on 3ds Max? We found a very inexpensive way to enable us to learn some of the basics in November and December instead of waiting until January to learn it during the build period. At Barnes and Noble they have a book called 3ds max 5 for dummies that includes a 30 day trial CD for $25. I love the dummy books - they are SOOOOOO much easier to stomach than 25 lbs of manuals. My 13 year old daughter is now making animations - after one day of reading (she got halfway through the book) - blows my socks off! I don’t think it is the version you’ll get in January (I heard they will be sending us version 7) - but its probably close enough to get the basics for how animations work and get practice at modeling and movement. Just a thought…

Boebot is an excellent choice to get the basics down - it includes SO MANY things - most inexpensive learning experience I’ve ever loved! I actually made my kids sit with me at the kitchen table to go through the modules. Crazy mom huh? Did you get the line-follower module? Do you have more than one Boebot? We’ve almost got enough parts for a second one and could possibly have little games with the Boebots. I must be easily entertained :smiley: We’re anxious to get the Robovation robot though to start using C and joysticks.

Are you guys going to do a website?

Keep in touch - write me if you want pattie63@msn.com.

Pattie

#29

umm idk if we are gonna do an animation. We are working on our website right now, and i really couldn’t tell you about the boebot. I’m not even sure if that is what it is, but i’m making a guess. I am more the business end and i really don’t know much about the building and programming part. I don’t think we have anyone who knows 3ds Max, and would you even recommend it to a first year team? We are doing our best, but I don’t know if we are gonna have the time to do the animation and stuff. We basically want to build a solid bot, and do well for our first time.