Start of Build Season

The 2007 FIRST season is here! Kickoff was last Saturday, with the 2007 game, Rack and Roll, being revealed worldwide through a live NASA broadcast from New Hampshire. For more details about the games, visit the official FIRST website.

Saturday was Kickoff. The South Florida Kickoff was located at DeVry University, but our team held our own Kickoff event at our sponsor Sonny's headquarters. After starting at 9:30 and mingling with everyone, including parents, alumni, and hopefully future TechTigers, the webcast started at 10:00.



After 1.5 hours of the usual speeches, updates, and rules/kit addendums, the game was announced at 11:30, with the typical Havabanana animation showing the game in a simplistic, but thorough manner.



After a few other announcements, the webcast ended and we were free to eat, drink, breathe, and exist robotics for the next 6 weeks :)



We then took a tour of Sonny's, ate lunch, then broke into 4 brainstorm groups, through which we presented our initial ideas to each other, than to the group as a whole. Once concluded, the 1251 Kickoff session was officially over at 3:00, everyone told to think of ideas over the weekend and get ready to work for the season. Thanks Sonny's for making Kickoff 2007 an amazing experience!



Since Saturday, our team has met everyday so far: Sunday for the quarterly Town Crier [we help deliver the city of Wilton Manors' newsletter to help raise funds], Monday to build a 1:1 scale model of "The Rack" [the main gamepiece in this year's game] and brainstorm ideas, and today [Tuesday] to construct prototypes and test the ideas we've been discussing since Saturday. We're primed and ready to rack and roll!



Robot Ship deadline: February 20, 2007
Time Left: 6 weeks