what we really need, no matter what we’re going to do, is someone to be in charge ( i CAN’T do it!! ). We’re not going to be able to get anything done without someone/some people being in charge.
Why not get a handful of people from seperate regions and they can select one person to get in touch with the national group who totally decide what to do. Then it splits down to regions, and ultimately one person on each team be responsible for their “piece” of the puzzle/mosaic/machine whatever is decided. I’d start taking people now who are interested in doing this. Could be fun.
Laurel Noel
In response to Lng, there’s a computer program out there that will digitally arrange all the pictures to make one giant mosaic of another picture. dunno what it’s called or where you can get it, but it’s out there…
here’s a list of the regional events. I guess I could be the rep. for the Long Island Regional, I need a rep. from each of the other regionals to help me though. And then, we need to ALL decide something to do. Can someone start a poll? ( i don’t know how…)
REGIONALS:
Kennedy Space Center Southeast- FL
UTC New England- CT
Long Island- NY
NASA Langley- VA
West Michigan- MI
Mid Atlantic- NJ
Lone Star- TX
New York City- NY
Southern California- CA
Great Lakes- MI
Midwest- IL
Philadelphia- PA
Silicon Valley- CA
If anyone wants to volunteer, post a reply!!
I’ll take the Great Lakes unless someone out there is absolutely dying to have it. But I think we still need to decide on what exactly is going to be done.
Laurel Noel
I really like the idea of a mosaic first. But I thinking the first logo would be made up of all the team logos and at the end it would look like from the distance the first logo but when close up it would be every single logo of the first teams. Cool huh? And I kind of like Stacey’s idea where of giving something to Dean even though he might not be at a regional. Next year I hear that there might be like 15-17 regionals. So why don’t we slice it up in like 18 pieces and give a piece to Dean at every regional, and the final piece would be given to him at Nationals. I remember someone did something like this, but not of FIRST, and the mosaic came out to be a 2 gig PhotoShop file, I heard.
2 gigabytes? How big was the thing?
Remember a PhotoShop file or .psd file is an uncompressed image with Million + colors, that supports layers, transpancys, and other PhotoShop features. And when you have a high resolution logo with over 500 teams and this mosaic is mostly likely going to be very big. The guy I know who did this printed out on a plotter the size as a mural. So the image of this would be measure in feet instead of inches.
If we take pics from every one’s robot we can arrange them to make another pic when you back up and look at the whole thing. I think I read someone suggesting that but I don’t know if that’s just because I was thinking it. I don’t mind being the contact for the Kennedy Space Center Regional in Florida but I would like someone else’s help too. My other idea for a gift was a sculpture. Everyone puts a part on and either make it abstract (thid would be much easier) or actually make into a shape. It’s not as hard as you might think, the pieces don’t have to fit together like on a robot they just have to get stuck together. That would mean it would be a good idea for a welder to work with the design team.
Well it seems like a lot of people have awesome ideas for a gift for Dean. In Ken’s first post about this, he mentioned writing stories about how FIRST has affected our lives and how we are thankful for it. This year on my team, all of the students wrote personal stories to each adult mentor, and we made them into individual books so each adult had a book made just for them with personal stories about how they influenced our FIRST experience. Then at our end-of-the-season banquet we gave them out. It was very time consuming, but definitely worth it in the end and I think the adults really appreciated the effort.
I’m not saying we should do this for Dean…but I think that would be a way to really show him the impact of how FIRST has really changed our lives. But that would be also difficult to organize.
In response to someone who wrote about a possible wall of buttons…When I went to FIRST place in NH last year, there was some kind of display of buttons that I remember, but maybe someone else can clarify it.
You also have to remember, getting pictures of robots from 2002 or even getting buttons for 2002 to make some kind of display might be difficult to obtain because many buttons aren’t made until after shipping and many robots aren’t completely put together until the actual day of shipping, which doesn’t leave much time for something to be done between the shipping date and nationals, even if they are spread out more.
And no matter what we do, if anything, I think we need to do something where all teams have the chance to be included. So whether that is doing something w/ the Logos which most teams already have and can send in or whatever even before Kickoff, or maybe some sort of book w/ stories that can also be done before Kickoff; I think it should be started before January because as you all know, between kickoff and nationals is usually a crazy time of year for everyone and most people won’t have time to think about a present for Dean while trying to get a robot built.
*Originally posted by whsrt_lilguppy *
“There is no I in team.”
But you can’t spell team without “me”
The more I think about this the more I think that when we finally decide on what to do it should include or invole some of the major sponsors of FIRST, like Disney. For instance make a statue of Mickey Mouse out of parts ( just an example not an idea).
And Jeff, at least me has 2 letters.
I have to disagree with you there Carolyn. I personally think if we are going to think of some kind of gift for Dean, it should be something that shows him how much FIRST has changed our lives and influenced us in a positive way. Disney has sponsered the Nationals, but hasn’t really affected me in the way that FIRST itself has. It should be personalized to some degree, but I think a statue of Mickey Mouse would be kind of inappropriate. Just my thoughts…
*Originally posted by Carolyn Duncan *
**For instance make a statue of Mickey Mouse out of parts ( just an example not an idea). **
I agree with you, like I said the Mickey thing was an example not a suggestion. But I think it would be a good gesture to incorperate something about our sponsors into the gift. See what I mean?
I think it might be a nice gesture to incorporate our sponsers into our gift…but which sponsers? team ones…general FIRST ones? My point was to make it personalized for Dean or even the FIRST community in general. Because most of the time, the corporate sponsers, like Disney, have little or nothing to do w/ the mentoring and teaching and engineering aspect that FIRST is trying to get across to the students.
In my team’s case, Nypro does almost everything for our team, and is a big factor in sponsering as well as mentoring our team. But I think the sponsers you are talking about probably aren’t involved on the student level. We still need their $ and participation in whatever way they want to give it…but I think any type of gift should be for Dean or actual FIRST people who would probably appreciate it more and realize the affect of their hard work more than a company just giving money and having no personal affiliation with actual teams. Therefore, it may be hard to incorporate them into the gift, depending on what the gift would be.
I think the best way to incorporate sponsors is to have team sponsors represented by the team through their contribution to the overall piece and the FIRST sponsors through the larger scale item. Does that make sense? I’m not saying that’s the way it should be I just thought it might be nice if it could be done along with having things that showed how FIRST affected our lives. Make the gift multi dimentional.
Keep Dean’s gift simple, but yet interesting. Yeah you can buy him a statue, but he will be like, “Oh, thats nice” I mean if a lot of people are going to spend time or money, make it worth it. I mean, all of your ideas are very good ideas. But if we are going to do this, we have to find an idea that will really make Dean appreciate FIRST and all the work he put into it. That is really why I like the Mosaic idea, it is simple but he will really but wowed when it all comes together and it spells first, or maybe it would be a picture of him and Woody. But hey that is just me.
So maybe we make a mosaic out of ceramic tiles. Have different pieces that are made at each of the regionals and one made at nationals. Then we can put them all together. Maybe they can be like a story board.
here’s an idea: how about the rep. at each regional take for example a piece of oak tag, and have everyone who wants to participate put their signiture on it, and that’s it. Then, all the reps. can get together, or whoever wants to do this, and make another piece of oak tag kinda like a cover to a book. Next we can staple them all together or make a binding, again like a book, and give it to dean. On the cover it could say something about how many people’s lives he’s effected in a positive way, and how we can fill up a whole book with just our names. Also, if we want to get creative, we could make the pages fancier, or through some inspirational stories in there, and a bunch of other fun stuff like that.
Does anyone like that idea??
Ok, I love the book idea… but lot of problems I think of with it. I remember at nationals all the Visteon teams tried to do a similar thing but only with Visteon. And our team just didn’t have the time to do it in the short notice that was given. What we finished wasn’t that great, but it was enough. If you go with just the signatures of each team signing the book. Wow, that would take a while. I know how long it took me just going around and getting a picture of each of the robots at the regionals I went to. The problems I’m noticing with any idea, and shoot me down cause that’s what i’m here for, but time issues. The time to complete whatever is chosen to do, and the time to collect each item. Also, if we choose to go with pieces to make a sculpture/statue thing, think about how would you transport those pieces? I’m honestly not sure what the best thing is, but whatever chosen has to be positive that it can be completed in the few days everyone is in florida. And if there is a problem and they decide this year to make it only those who qualify go to nationals, what if the rep who has whatever it is that would be put together gasp doesn’t qualify. I hate sounding really negative (but i’m told it’s what i do best) but how is everything going to be foolproof? And when will a final decision of what we do be made?
Laurel Noel