Deadlines and Discounts for FRC teams

Good Morning Teams,

Second event registration opens tomorrow, Thursday, October 28 at noon ET. Veteran teams who competed at the 2010 Championship may register for the 2011 Championship at this time.   Just a reminder, when second event registration opens, if an event has already reached the open capacity, you will be put on a wait list with the teams already wait listed for that event.

If you plan to register for a Regional event in Texas, you should know there are a large number of Texas grants this season requiring Texas teams compete at Texas events.  In order to accommodate this requirement, Texas Regional events will be closed at second registration (i.e., all teams that register will be put on a wait list.)  We will move teams from the wait lists into the events once we determine there are spots available.  Priority will go to Texas teams with no other events. If we find there is significant interest, Dallas may go to a second event regional.

The NASA grant deadline to apply is this Saturday, October 30.  Get your applications in. 

I had a good time at the Science and Technology Festival in DC.  I spoke with a number of FRC team members that were visiting the event, I was there for Dean’s speech and Jon Dudas and I visited with current and potential sponsors during the weekend before flying home with an advance copy of The New Cool by Neal Bascomb.

I want to thank the following teams who helped out in the FIRST booth by demonstrating their robots on our mini field, making announcements over the microphone to the crowd, explaining FRC to interested students and parents, handing out literature and distributing stickers to everyone who walked by.  I appreciate all your efforts to spread the message about FRC.

• 111 Wildstang Schaumburg, IL
• 116 Epsilon Delta Herndon, VA
• 612 Chantilly Robotics Chantilly, VA
• 768 TechnoWarriors Baltimore, MD
• 1418 Vae Victus Falls Church, VA
• 1727 Rex Timonium, MD
• 2377 C Company Pasadena, MD
• 2914 Wilson TYBORGS Washington, DC

Last week I promised you information about travel discounts FIRST is negotiating with Avis, Delta Airlines and American Airlines.  Here it is. 

The Beta Test Teams (announced in the September 15th blog) are already hard at work.  You can see their results to date here.    The following 12 teams have been chosen to test the classmate hardware.

166    Chopshop    Merrimack    NH    USA
294    Beach Cities Robotics    Redondo Beach    CA    USA
1577    SteamPunk    Raanana    Israel    Israel
1718    The Fighting Pi    Romeo    MI     USA
1746    Forsyth    Cumming    GA    USA
1912    Combustion    Slidell    LA    USA
2261    CasaMESA Robotics    Longmont    CO     USA
2477    Rascals    Waipahu    HI    USA
2809    K-Botics    Kingston    Ontario    Canada
2846    FireBears    Roseville    MN    USA
2969    Cane - Anators    San Antonio    TX    USA
3017    The Patriots    Fresh Meadows    NY    USA

If you are (or know) a high school girl residing in the US (and territories), check out the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing.  The deadline to apply is this Sunday, October 31.

There is still time to vote for FIRST in the AMEX Take Part Social networking contest. 

73 days to Kickoff
See you then!