I'm back and ready to go

Good Morning Teams,

I’ve been so busy this past week at Championship reviewing our options for the future with the board of directors, brainstorming with the Game Design Committee (perhaps a water game?), meeting with our major donors, and ensuring everything happening on the fields and in the pits ran smoothly, that I didn’t have any time left over to let you know what I was up to. But the entire event went smoothly, I have found time to get a full night’s sleep and now I’m back and already excited about 2010.

For those of you who didn’t attend Championship, or see the press announcements, WPI and Sun Microsystems will make Java available as an additional programming language option for FRC teams in 2010. This collaboration is in the early stages, so I’ll post more information as it becomes available.

For those of you who left Championship after the final match, you might be interested to know that the staff and many dedicated volunteers spent the rest of the night breaking down all seven fields, packing up the left over supplies and loading everything onto six tractor trailer trucks. The last truck left the Georgia Dome just after 11:30PM Saturday night and the staff flew home exhausted Sunday morning.

Everything has been unloaded into our warehouse in Merrimack, NH, and the real work is about to begin. Each of the 14 onsite FRC fields will be unpacked, repaired where necessary and refurbished. Then, once the game design reaches the final stages, each field will be updated to include new elements. We’ll also inventory parts, repair and update the road cases used to transport the fields, and set up one full field in the basement at 200 Bedford Street for Game Design.

If you haven’t had enough of Lunacy, check out the community events page on our website. Lots of team hold invitational events over the summer. Some borrow the official FRC fields (contact Nberinger@usfirst.org for more details), some use the fields owned by NASA, and some use their own fields, but all invitational events provide teams with another chance to compete. If you’re holding an Invitational event, please give Nberinger@usfirst.org a heads up. We’d like to know what you’re up to, even if you don’t have room for any more teams and it would be great if we could get potential mentors, future team members and possible sponsors, to visit an invitational event in their area. FRC is something you have to see to believe.

260 days until the 2010 Kickoff
See you there!