FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

Bark Growl Bark Growl Bark Bark

We’ve got a monster* weekend on tap. It’s chockers. Here’s a list of what’s going to happen Thursday through Saturday this week:

• Festival of Champions
• Supporter Summit
• Strategic Partner and Founding Sponsor meeting
• Executive Advisory Board meeting
• Woodie Flowers Award Winner meeting
• FIRST Robotics Competition Chief Volunteer meeting
• Dean’s List Award Winners visit
• Bart Kamen Memorial FIRST Scholarship Winners visit
• And Dean having the ribbon cutting for the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute’s (ARMI) BiofabUSA, right up the street from DEKA and FIRST

That’s a jam-packed couple of days!

The competition portion of the Festival, which is being held on Saturday, July 29, is open to all, just like all other official FIRST competitions. If you are in the area, come check it out! The best of Houston will be going head to head against the best of St Louis in an epic showdown. These alliances have had weeks to ready their machines and strategize about how best to defeat their opponents, with advance knowledge, for the first time ever in FRC, of exactly which teams comprise the opposition. Will we see the results of this extended prep time on the field? Does one alliance, or both, have a little surprise strategy ready to unveil to the world? I don’t know, but If they do, you won’t want to be sitting at home, you’re going to want to be here!

Doors to the SNHU Arena in downtown Manchester, where the event is being held, will open at 9 AM Eastern Time. You can find parking info here. Please note – the venue does not allow bags larger than 14” x 16” in their largest dimensions in the building, so leave those big bags in the car! The event is scheduled to end by about 12:45 PM Eastern Time.

Even if you can’t join us in person, you can still check out the streams of the event. These will start at 10:30 AM Eastern Time. Check out the main Twitch FIRST channel here or the alternate channel here. The main channel will be cutting between various camera shots while matches are actively being played. The alternate channel will have a static set of four shots being displayed simultaneously while matches are being played. When matches are not being actively played, both channels will be showing the same content – commentary from the sports desks, team interviews, team videos, etc. Choose your own adventure!

Hope you can join us!

Frank

*Monster in a good way. Speaking of monster in a good way, the photo above is a still from the classic horror movie Curse of the Demon. It’s worth a watch if classic British horror is your thing. It’s probably even worth a watch if classic British horror is not your thing.