Week 3 In Review And The Flu

Bill teaching Lexi and Krisztina how to use the CNC mill

This week has been like a zombie apocalypse. The flu virus attacked several of our team members, taking them out for the week. There are a few lucky ones and we must stay clear of those infected, we don’t want a recurrence of the ‘Solidworks Sweatshop Day’ where all of the victims in the room became sick after spending the day CADing in an infected zone. There are only a few of us who haven’t gotten sick, we survivors must stick together to survive. We must carry the future of The Holy Cows.

We non-sick people have gotten several things done, PR especially (because we were not in the infected room). With so few days left until the submission deadline we have been combining all of our energy to finish the Woodie Flowers Awards. We have a good drafts of most of our awards, all that’s left to do is go through revising and editing everything to make it worthy of our standards. PR is also putting together a contact list for teams in San Diego to see if any teams would like help with their Chairman’s Submission or presentation.

Engineering has started fabricating parts for our robot for this season. After spending the previous weeks prototyping, we feel fairly happy with the design that we have come up with. Some of the kids got to go to the machine shop to fabricate the earlier mentioned parts. We can’t wait to see what the future weeks bring us because once the parts are complete, possibly Wednesday, the craziness begins. Bring it on Build Season, we are ready to finish strong.

Fundraising and Sponsorship

Fundraising and Sponsorship

There are many options for teams to raise/acquire money, materials and supplies to support their teams mission and goals, such as sponsorship, grants,  fundraisers and in-kind donations. Begin your fundraising efforts well before the extremely busy build season starts in January. It is a good idea to schedule fundraising activities throughout the year.

The Prospects:
1. Look for companies that:

   • Produce innovative products and have a reputation for creativity.

   • Have a high profile in your area related to engineering, architecture, computers, hardware or
     software, advertising, and/or community involvement. Also look to industrial or medical suppliers, 
     pharmaceuticals, patent/copyright offices, technical development, information technology, 
     manufacturing, or youth focused corporations.
   • Ask the parents of team members if they have any connections. Perhaps one or more can help 
     make contact with companies in your area through the Corporate Giving Department for
     a donation.

2. Talk to the principal of your students’ schools and find out if the education department already
    has partnerships with local businesses. One of them might be interested in helping you
    start/maintain team.

3. Find out who the largest employers in your area are by calling your state representative's office for 
    information. Web search engines having custom sorting capabilities may provide leads about 
    technical companies in your area. Many of these local companies may be interested in helping 
    because they have a stake in your community.

4. Contact the Chamber of Commerce and request the names of companies that might be interested 
    in partnering with schools on a project to help develop a pool of future employees qualified in 
    science and technical fields.

5. Research association web sites, especially those involved with engineering.

6. Submit an article to a local newspaper about your team and indicate the need for funding.

7. Visit the web to find out whether setting up a non profit organization for your team fits your needs. 
    If so, there are numerous sites offering suggestions to implement, and run a non profit.

8. Call your local college/university and ask for a meeting. Very often these schools welcome 
    inclusion because they can use the program as part of their curriculum.

The Approach:
Potential sponsors will be interested in the positive publicity team sponsorship will provide and the long term appreciation of a future workforce on the team. Many smaller companies and individuals make great FIRST sponsors/partners. For instance, ask a sign company to donate a team banner...and include their name on it. Be sure to tell them, their banner will travel with your team to your event(s) and you will proudly display it in your Pit station.

The Preparation:
Before you speak with a potential partner, donor, or sponsor, do some research. Ask around to find the best contact person at each business or corporation. Does anyone on the team know someone who works there? It is best to try for a contact in senior management, such as the head of Engineering or Human Resources. Make sure you have dates and times in mind before you call to ask for and set up a face to face meeting. Be sure to bring all potential sponsors some information sheets from the FRC Communications Resource Center located on www.usfirst.org. You may also want to create some handouts specific to your team. Know what you need and prepare a list in advance. THINK BIG!! Ask for the full registration amount when you petition for funding, but be prepared to graciously accept any offer of help. If a company can’t or won’t donate money, ask for services such as machining, mentoring, or the loan of meeting/facility space. Other in kind donations could include tools, supplies/materials, food, printing, copying, or team T shirts.

The Presentation:
Know what you are talking about when you call or visit, and smile while you are there. Understand what FIRST is about, and be sure you can articulate it to others. Be brief, but describe your team’s makeup FIRST is about, and be sure you can articulate it to others. Be brief, but describe your team’s makeup including the number of kids and their ages, team goals, and accomplishments to date. Show enthusiasm!

Provide budget information and the amount you have already raised. Consider bringing a PowerPoint presentation about your team’s plans for using the potential sponsor’s donation. Whenever possible, bring students to do some of the talking and convincing. Bright, enthusiastic young people are hard to resist!

In your presentation or letter, include some of the donation benefits to the potential partner, such as:
• Promotes Community Visibility
• Presents Networking And Marketing Opportunities With Other Sponsors
• Provides A Pool For Interns And Future Employees
• Re-Energizes And Renews The Team Involved Engineers’ Love For Engineering

An excellent way to reel in recruits is to bring them to an event. If the official competition season is over, find a listing of “Community Events” on the FRC “Events” portion of the usfirst.org web site. These off season competitions run through the summer and fall. Once potential sponsors see the creativity, action, fun, and excitement, there’s no holding them back! If you don’t feel comfortable in this role, find (or recruit) someone else who does. The school principal or the science, math, or physics department head might be a good representative. If you already have corporate support, a well informed representative from manufacturing, operations, IT, or a technical discipline would be an excellent choice for this role.

The Close:
Don’t forget to come right out and ask for the money. Ask high; they may be willing and able to support your team. If there is silence after your request, don’t talk at all. Wait until the prospect

responds, even if the silence is uncomfortable. If they are unable to provide full funding, ask for a specific amount for a specific line item. If asking for financial support doesn’t work, ask for specific items (meeting space, access to machines, technical support). If nothing works, ask direct questions to identify their objections and listen to what they are NOT saying.

The Follow Up:
Whether or not the prospective partner agreed to help the team, be sure to follow up with a thank you letter within a week. Include a couple of the information sheets from the usfirst.org web site and a team brochure if you have one. Reiterate your budget needs, and write a sentence or two on how their support will positively impact the future workforce of the area. Thank the prospect for the meeting.

If there was a promise of funding, machining, or mentoring support, send a letter of thanks and detail what you understand the agreement to be or what you hope the partner will provide as support. Mention what the direct impact of the donation will do for your team. For a promise of engineering or technical support, include a list of your needs, the above mentioned printouts, and a sample teamwork schedule. Provide a synopsis of how you will use their support as well as your team’s approach to the design and build phase. If you send the letter and there still is no commitment, but you saw a glimmering of interest, ask someone on your team with persuasive writing skills to keep the “prospects” in the loop by sending notes about the team’s progress during the build phase. Include a picture or two. Generate curiosity. Invite them to an event to see your team compete.
When the season is over, send a picture of your team and robot at an event. Detail some of the experiences, accomplishments, and excitement of the team. If there were newspaper articles, send copies. Schedule a visit to partners, donors, sponsors and potential partners, donors and sponsors for early next season.

Grants:
Grants are a good way for teams, especially rookies, to get a leg up on funding. Grant availability varies from year to year, but grants are usually offered right around registration time, so be sure to check usfirst.org often. Read all the details of a grant before applying as some grants
require of participation at a specific event, or the involvement of mentors from a specific company. 

2nd Week Of 2014 Build Season

The second week of Build Season has had a steady progression of work completed. PR continued to work on the award submissions such as the Media and Technology Award, the Hall of Fame Essay and the Woodie Flowers submissions. Currently, PR has less than a month to finish all the award submissions and everyone is determined to finish them as soon as possible.

In the Engineering department, we have finished prototyping and started on the SolidWorks designs. In addition we have been making progress on the scoring mechanism of our robot. Everyone has been spending most of their time at the end of the week prototyping the intake, and informing the CAD team on any changes.

With ⅓ of build season finished, we are very excited for this season to bring us fun challenges. We are trying to savor the mellow atmosphere right now as a small group of our team work on SolidWorks. We are preparing to build the robot after the SolidWorks process, so we are cleaning and organizing our Engineering Lab to prepare for it.

Award Submission Timeline

There are several awards that are judged and need to be submitted online by mid February.
The Chairman’s Award, the Woodie Flowers Award, and the Entrepreneurship Award must be submitted through the FIRST Student Team Information Members System (STIMS) https://my.usfirst.org/stims/site.lasso
The FIRST Dean’s List Award must be submitted by the team’s main or alternate contact through TIMS, https://my.usfirst.org/frc/tims/site.lasso
The Safety Animation Video Animations must be submitted by your team’s student award submitter in STIMS, https://my.usfirst.org/stims/site.lasso by mid December
Below is a sample of how we setup our timeline

October:
Have an awards submission meeting Assign Job:

• ○  Submissions ­ writers, editors
  
  • Chairman’s
    
  • Woodie Flowers
    
  • Dean’s List
    
• ○  Executive Summary ­ writers, editors
  
• ○  Videos ­ editors, filmographers, interviewers
  
• ○  Business plan ­ writers, editors
  

■ Set up deadlines for :

• ○  Chairman’s Outline
  
• ○  First Draft of Chairman’s
  
• ○  Second Draft of Chairman’s
  
• ○  Third Draft of Chairman’s
  
• ○  Final Draft of Chairman’s
  
• ○  Woodie Flowers Outline
  
• ○  First Draft of Woodie Flower’s
  
• ○  Second Draft of Woodie Flower’s
  
• ○  Third Draft of Woodie Flower’s
  
• ○  Final Draft of Woodie Flower’s
  
• ○  Dean’s List Outline
  
• ○  Dean’s List First Draft
  
• ○  Dean’s List Second Draft
  
• ○  Dean’s List Third Draft
  
• ○  Dean’s List Final Draft
  
• ○  Presentation Outline
  
• ○  Presentation First Draft
  
• ○  Presentation Second Draft
  
• ○  Presentation Final Draft
  
  
  Work on Storyboard for Safety Animation Video ­ Be sure to check the FIRST site for the “Theme” of the video it changes annually
  
  November:
  Week 1­ Chairman’s outline, Presenters picked, Chairman’s video idea
  brainstorming, begin creating Safety Animation Award
  Week 2 ­ 1st draft of Chairman’s submission, Choose Woodie Flowers and
  Dean’s List nominee, begin gathering information for Business Plan, Finalize Safety Animation Award
  
  December:
  Safety Animation Video due early in the month
  Week 1 ­ 2nd draft of Chairman’s submission, Outline for Chairman’s
  Presentation, Woodie Flowers, Video storyboard, 1st draft of Executive Summary and Essay, Submit the Safety Animation Award
  Week 2 ­ 1st draft of Chairman’s Presentation Dean’s List and Woodie Flowers nomination, begin, Chairman’s video recording, draft of Business Plan
  
  January:
  Week 2 ­ 3rd draft of Chairman’s submission, 2nd draft of Chairman’s
  presentation, Dean’s List & Woodie Flowers, begin editing the Chairman’s video. Pick pictures for Chairman’s submission, Woodie Flowers and Deans List submission.
  Week 3 ­ Edit Chairman’s submission as a group, 3rd draft of Chairman’s
  presentation Dean’s list & Woodie Flowers nominees, continue Chairman’s video, check facts and edit Business Plan
  Week 4 ­ Go over Woodie Flowers as a group, Finalize Dean’s List nominee, get input on video from team members, make final edits to submission and presentation
  
  February:
  Week 1 ­ Work on the final drafts of Chairman’s submission, Dean’s List and
  Woodie Flowers nominees and Business Plan
  Week 2 ­ Submit all awards, Chairman’s Submission and pictures, Woodie Flowers nominee and pictures and Dean’s List nominee and pictures
  Mid February usually around Stop Build Day Awards must be submitted online. Don’t forget that FIRST uses east coast time so if you are on the west coast 12:00pm means 9:00 am on the west coast.
   
  

Week One Of 2014 Build Season Review

The first week of build season has been a bit overwhelming and exciting at the same time. After kickoff, we met back at school to look over the rules and all the different ways of scoring. We then played the game using team members to represent robots to see what strategies would be the most effective during the game this season. It was an interesting first day of build season and we can't wait to see what the rest of build season will look like.

Everyday this past week we have been busy prototyping and designing robot parts using CAD. We had to rethink some priorities from last weeks brainstorming session, but so far we are on track. PR has been working non-stop on writing up a lot of awards that are due in February. We have been critiquing all of the work that we have created; Hall of Fame Essay, Media and Technology Award, and Woodie Flowers. We have also been working on some new CowTips that are going to be released soon. In the spirit of the NFL, we took a hour off on Saturday to play a game of football and give all of our tired team members a breath of fresh air.

San Diego Kickoff Review

Just like all other teams in FIRST we were very excited to wake up early on the morning of January 4, 2014 to find out what the new game for the season would be, watching all the ideas fly around the social medial sited were so much fun. The Holy Cows and 45 teams from San Diego County showed up at 6:30am excited for this years game, it was so nice to catch up with our friends from the other team and meet several rookie teams.

Once the live feed began most of the team members didn’t know that FIRST would be showing our Chairman’s video during the kickoff, it was such an honor to see our team members up on the giant screen. As soon as the animation began teams were on pins and needles.  .  . AERIAL ASSIST!!  What an interesting concept for a game with no endgame but lot of Coopertition.

It was exciting to get down to the field elements and hear other teams talking about the game, their ideas and watching them measure everything.

After we had our Kit Of Parts we all ate and met back our school for some brainstorming, reading over the manual and talking. Our Director of Engineering, Daniella Patriarca says: “It is an interesting concept because of the corporation involved with the alliance partners. It will be a fun outcome”.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Now that we are back home and we have let it all sink in we are ready to post about this once in a lifetime opportunity that we were given. FIRST gives us all so many opportunities and experiences but none like the one that five teams got to experience on that cold Thursday, November 28, 2013.

Back in September we were invited to participate in the 87th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, we had a lot to do to get Daisy Thunder ready for the 2.5 mile parade. We needed to figure out a confetti shooter and our wheels, since they are meant to drive on carpet indoors not on the rough, pot hole streets of Manhattan, New York. 

Connor recalls his thoughts about being invited to the parade "When I first heard the news that our team was selected I was thrilled, but the team quickly realized that we would need to make some modifications to the robot before Thanksgiving.  We decided to use three batteries connected in parallel, and were satisfied after some testing.  To shoot confetti, we purchased a confetti launcher, mounted it to the robot, and rewired it to use our robot’s power distribution system rather than an internal battery.  After more testing we were ready to crate up the robot for New York."

Daisy Thunder about to be shipped off to The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Thanks to the generosity of FedEx our crate was shipped on Monday, November 18th and we would leave on Southwest Airlines the following Tuesday, November 22. 

Once we arrived in New York our plan was to check into the hotel, have a meeting and dinner with Texas Torque then head to the Empire State Building. After walking over to the Empire State Building in the rain we were told that we could use our tickets and head up to the top of the building but the visibility was ZERO. We all decided to take our chances and wait until Thursday to go to the top. 

Getting ready to be interviewed at Fox News & Friends with Texas Torque

Wednesday morning our team and the Texas Torque teams had to be in the hotel lobby at 4:00am EST to catch a ride over to Fox Studios to do interview on Fox News and Friends at 7:30am. None of us minded the early morning, we were in NYC "The City That Never Sleeps" and we were going to soak us all the energy. FIRST had sent a field down from New Hampshire to set up outside the Fox Studio but due to the heavy rain we were unable to have our robots outside. While sitting in the green room we were asked if our robot could shoot confetti in the studio, after looking at the low ceilings and the number of studio lights it was determined that we could not shoot in the studio. A short while later the producers came and said that we would be filming in the hallway. Due to the amount of people coming to work and the things hanging on the walls we were not able to shoot frisbees, which disappointed Maria Molina, the reporter interviewing us, she had been hoping for days to try to catch one of the frisbees as they were shot out of the robots. It was probably a good thing it was raining and we couldn't shoot them.

Once we finished the Fox interview and the box truck arrived to take our crates back to the warehouse the girls from our team raced back to our hotel for an interview with she knows.com . Once they finished their interview the guys were back and we were ready for our first subway ride to the Bronx to tour Yankee Stadium.  It was a great tour and only rained a little while we were outside. 

Danielle, Torstein, Kaithlyn, Jon, Connor and Cathy on the Yankees  field

The North Tower Pool

Once we left Yankee Stadium we took the subway towards Ground Zero. The rain and wind had picked up but we didn't mind after all we were in an amazing city only our mentors had been to before. We arrive at the memorial a little early but they let us start our tour then which we were appreciative of. After we went through all the security we came out near the South Tower, it was so calm and quiet in there, even amongst the noisy city. The water falls in this pool were falling nicely and it was such an amazing place to be. We walked over to the North Tower pool where the water was being blown out of the pool due to the strong winds, it was really just as amazing as the tranquil South Tower pool. Once we left we all decided we were hungry and really wanted to have some New York cheesecake. We found a restaurant near our hotel and ate then headed back to the hotel because we had to be in the lobby again at 4:00am to head to the beginning of the parade route to uncrate our robot.

Leading the parade with our banner

At 4:30am EST Texas Torque, Bomb Squad, Raider Robotix, SPAM Robotics, and our team had to  load the bus and headed up to 77th Street, the temp was a FREEZING 27 degrees, pretty cold for us thin blooded San Diegans.  Once the robot was uncrated we had several hours to enjoy the cold weather and tried to stay warm. "

Jackie (Bomb Squad), Kaithlyn, Danielle, Connor, Torstein
 and Cathy trying to stay warm before the parade began

Before we began we realized that the cold was making us leak all of the air our of our pneumatics and we had to have it in order to drive. We decided that it would be best to use a few zip-ties in order to hold the gearboxes in gear. So right before the parade started we locked the gearboxes in low gear," Torstein recalls  "As soon as the parade started we realized there was a problem. We couldn’t keep up with the parade because we were driving to slow.  We quickly threw the robot back up on our cart and ran to catch up with the other teams. After we caught up we decided that the best thing to do would be to try to fix the robot while walking.  We flipped the robot on its back and for the next quarter mile I walked backwards cutting the zip-ties off the gearboxes and putting new ones on to hold the drivetrain in high gear. A quick test to make sure it worked and we threw it back on the ground and began driving again.  From there on it was smooth sailing, handing out buttons and waving to the ecstatic crowds."

Once the parade was over, the crate was packed and loaded back on the box truck we headed back to our hotel to do several Skype interviews and phone interviews back in San Diego. In between interviews with San Diego 6 News, the San Diego Union Tribune, and News 8 here in San Diego many of us slept but we were excited to share our stories with all the people who have supported us along this amazing

journey. After the interviews we had about an hour until the bus left and took all the parade participants off to PJ Clarks for Thanksgiving dinner, what a wonderful way to spend Thanksgiving, with our FIRST family.

Dinner menu

 After dinner we knew it was our last chance to get to the top of the Empire State Building, so we walked from the hotel and this time it was clear and we made it to the top of the most amazing building, with the best views of Manhattan.

The top of the Empire State Building

 Danielle sums up the trip by saying "I know I've said this many times before, but I feel so honored to be one of the representatives of FIRST for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was such an incredible experience and although I felt as if I were freezing nearly the entire time, I loved every second of it. My favorite part of being in New York was walking around and experiencing the atmosphere. The ambiance of New York was a bit different from San Diego, and I tried to soak up as much as I could. I'd love to go back again during another widely celebrated event like New Years." 

Even though we didn't have time to do most of the things we wanted to do and even though we saw more rain in two days than we see here in San Diego in four years it was the most amazing trip and we hope that this inaugural experience for FIRST turns into an annual event that many for teams will get to experience. To see more photos of all the the FIRST teams at the parade check out the link here.