[CRUSH-all] great kick-off to our FIRST competition

[Bill Bennett]

Hi team

The team trip to the FIRST workshops and kickoff was fun and hopefully 
we all learned some things. I appreciate that the students found a 
balance between wild fun and reasonable behavior for our overnight at 
SSA Phoenix. I got a few hours sleep without worrying about what would 
happen while I wasn't watching.
The game this year is pretty different than recent years, and looks like 
a very fun challenge. The competition manuals are now online without 
encryption, so my suggestion is to download and study them, do some 
brainstorming, and be ready to bring your ideas to the meeting after 
school Monday. You can get the pdf files here: 
http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=452. We'll spend 
the first few days this week understanding the details and implications 
of the game, proposing and debating some design ideas, and maybe 
prototyping the best of them. By the end of the week, we should be ready 
to start designing and building our competition robot.

If you missed the live kickoff this morning, or want to see any part of 
it again, it's all available at http://robotics.nasa.gov.

Starting Monday, we meet 7 days a week. I realize that not all students 
will come to every meeting, but I do expect that during the short 6 week 
build period everyone will make robotics their highest extra-curricular 
priority and come to as many meetings as possible.

We have the makings of a great team this year, and this weekend 
stimulated a lot of good energy. Let's run with it!

Bill Bennett