Talking with BCS Vikings about pit design and tournament structure

BCS Vikings, a rookie FTC team from Norway, posted on social media that they needed general help from other teams, so we reached out and offered to help them. First, we introduced ourselves and what we do on the team and then they went through their introductions. After that, we helped them with some of their software issues. We explained why C++ doesn’t work well for FTC and why they would be better off using Java for programming. We also helped them figure out how to track joystick movements correctly as they didn’t know that the y-joystick values are reversed (up is negative, down is positive). We talked with them about how tournaments are run and the general outline of tournaments. They asked about pit design and we described how we design our pit and what is required for a pit. During the meeting, they mentioned that they were low on money because they are the only Norwegian FTC team in the last 15 years. We talked about how we contact companies for sponsorship by cold-calling and they described how cold-calling isn’t a thing in Norway so they have been emailing companies instead. They were also curious about 3D printed custom parts and asked if there were any restrictions on 3D printing. We talked about how we use a lot of 3D printed parts and how there aren’t strict restrictions on 3D printing. It was exciting to mentor an international team and we are going to stay in contact with them.