Coding the Cosmics, a rookie FTC team, came to our HQ to join our season brainstorming session. We showed them how we use Planning Poker to determine the difficulty of tasks and how we discuss each mission. We were happy that we could help a rookie team develop strategies for the season and learn methods of planning to use in future seasons.
We demoed our robot at the Minnesota State Fair in a High Tech Kids booth with other FTC teams. We talked to people passing by and told them about FIRST, then let them drive our robot and handed out robot drivers licenses. We were able to show off the challenges from two different seasons, Ultimate Goal and Skystone, and had a chance to see how the robot interacted with others on the field. It was a fun event and we hope to do it again next year.
High Tech Kids, the organization that runs our tournaments, gave our team the opportunity to present to other teams on Twitch. We discussed the various methods our team uses to get work done when we are not working in person. Our team really enjoyed putting together the presentation then presenting it, and we were glad that we could help out other teams by giving them advice. This was a lot of fun and we hope that we can present again at kickoff next season!
Our team brought our two robots with us. We allowed kids to try driving our robots and talked to the parents about FIRST and the programs that come after FLL Jr. We handed out robot drivers licenses and stickers to the kids after they drove the robot. It was a ton of fun to talk to the kids as they were all excited to see the big robots, and we would love to volunteer at more of these events in the future.
Four members of our team went to help at the FLL Jr exhibition during the FLL tournament. There were stations set up where the kids could do crafts and we helped them with the crafts as well as talked to them about the next levels of FIRST. It was really cool to see how the FLL Jr level of competition worked and how creative all of the teams were with making their models. Also, many of the kids we talked to seemed to be enjoying the program and said that they wanted to continue with FIRST.