We’ll have a quick meeting on Thursday, August 5th at 6pm in the robotics lab, room 2483. You can enter through the metal shop at Entrance B. Topics of discussion:

• Cortland Street Fair
• Jen + Tonic Polo Event
• Upcoming off season events
• etc….

We’re also continuing our summer shop day until school starts on August 23rd. We meet Mondays 3-5pm and Tuesdays and Thursdays 4-8pm. By the time school starts, we hope to have all of our new equipment setup and most of the mechanical work on our “2” robots complete.

Don’t forget about the Jen + Tonic Fundraiser and Demo on August 21st. Please sell some tickets to that event. More information on that here.

The Powers Family of East Palestine is holding a memorial Polo event called Jen + Tonic to support the Jenifer R Powers Fruit Memorial Fund. The memorial fund and this event promote STEM Education in Northeast Ohio and Western PA.

The Jen and Tonic Event is a Community Event with tailgating, polo, music, and camaraderie. Pack your own tailgate, cooler, or picnic, OR take part in the great drinks and food that will be provided. Including a signature Jen + Tonic Cocktail!!

How can we participate? We will be demonstrating our robot at the event alongside other area teams. We can also sell tickets to the event. Proceeds from ticket sales where our promo code is used will come back to the team. So we’re helping promote the event and raising funds for ourselves. Attached is a flyer that you can print and pass along to family members. Please make sure to remind anyone who wants to buy a ticket to use promo code WARREN when they purchase their ticket on jenandtonicpoloevent.com

I also have printed copies already made in the shop. Just pick some up next time you’re in the shop or message Frank Bosak and he can drop some off to you.

This summer has been a terrific start to our 25th season. It’s been great to meet so many new students. It’s also been wonderful seeing some of our veteran members for the first time in a while. Here are couple of photos of the fun we’ve been having learning 3d modeling and setting up our new 3d printers.

We won’t be meeting on Monday, July 5th in observance of Independence Day. Otherwise, the schedule for July is Monday 3pm-5pm and Wednesdays and Thursdays 4pm-8pm. We will be setting up and learning new equipment as well as starting to prepare our robot for off season competitions this fall. Join us when you can.

Winner*, INFINITE RECHARGE @ Home, Skills Competition, Phosphorus Group

2021 Imagery Award, Game Design Challenge, Niobium Group

2021 Quality Award, INFINITE RECHARGE @ Home, Phosphorus Group

Finalist, RAMBOTICS Invitational, May 8th, 2021

• Pre-tweet Deadline

This year we plan on competing in the following challenges from FIRST:

The typical Judged Awards (Mrs. Pace is leading the charge on these tasks)

1. Chairman’s Award
   • Anyone can help
2. Woodie Flowers Award
   • Seniors will select and write the essay
3. Dean’s List Award
   • The adults will choose our nominees.

INFINITE RECHARGE at Home (Travis, Adam will be leading this group)

• Judged Awards
  • Images of Robot
  • Video of Autonomous mode
  • Flyer describing the robot
  • Interview with Judges
• Skills Competition (The Judged Awards^ must be completed to be eligible to compete)
  • 2 Autonomous Challenges
  • 3 Teleoperated Challenges

Innovation Challenge (Mr. Mach and Mrs. Angelo are leading this group)

• Identify a problem or opportunity and design a solution to help people (or a community of people) keep,
  regain, or achieve optimum physical and/or mental health and fitness through active play or movement.
  • Identify and define a problem or opportunity.
  • Brainstorm and design an innovation to seize the opportunity or solve the problem
    • The innovation can be entirely new and novel or may significantly improve an existing
      invention
  • Create a business model
  • Show and be evaluated on the soundness of the design
  • Develop and present a pitch for the innovation
    • Each team develops a two (2) minute business pitch, to be presented live
  • Use technology in either the solution development process and/or design
    • The use of technology in either the solution itself or the development of the solution
      will fulfill this requirement.

Game Design Challenge

• The Game Design Challenge is an opportunity for teams to design a FIRST Robotics Competition game
  and compete against other teams for a chance to pitch their game to the FIRST Robotics Competition
  Game Design Team.

We will also be pushing forward with moving the Spear-It Shop online. (Ms. Burns will be leading this group)

• There’s a lot to think about and do before we can start.
  • What supplies do we need to buy
  • How will we ship/deliver items
  • Improving collection of photos
  • Adding inventory to website

Now for your homework. Sign up for slack if you haven’t already. (http://invite.teamelite48.com/) Log in to slack and click on the + next to channels. Join the following channels according to your interests. If you want to be a part of the Game Design Challenge, add that channel. If you want to participate in the Innovation Challenge, add that channel, etc…..

NEXT!!! Make sure that you read the manual for the tasks that you’re participating in. (https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/frc/competition-manual-qa-system) The leader(s) of each of these challenges will communicate to the team in that channel and set up remote meetings.
Theses are the channels you’ll want to join:

• 2021-innovation-challenge
• 2021-at-home-challenges
• 2021-game-design-challenge
• 2021-chairmans-award
• 2021-spear-it_shop

FINALLY Give these challenges 100% Maximum Effort. This season will be what you make of it.

2020 was……different. What will 2021 bring? We will soon find out.

The 2021 FRC Kickoff is next on the calendar. January 9th, 12pm. Team 48 will have a virtual kickoff, as will many others. We’ll start our kickoff at 11:30am and then watch the live stream together at noon. We can discuss what we learned for a little while after the webcast ends, but this year’s event will not be long. The team leaders will meet in the days following the kickoff and then we’ll have another virtual team meeting to discuss what the rest of our season will look like.

FIRST has already released:

• The Game Design Challenge
  • Registered teams will design their own FIRST Robotics Competition game using real-world, virtual, or hybrid design elements, and compete for judged awards. Winning concepts will be considered for use in future official games. More information during Kickoff.
• The Innovation Challenge presented by Qualcomm
  • Registered teams will identify a real-world problem related to this season’s theme, FIRST® GAME CHANGERS powered by Star Wars: Force for Change, design a solution, build a business model, and deliver a pitch to compete with other FIRST Robotics Competition teams for judged awards. More information during Kickoff.
• Infinite Recharge @ Home
  • Teams show off what their robots and drivers can do in a skills challenge based on the 2020 INFINITE RECHARGE game. Scores are posted, and teams virtually compete against each other for the Skills Challenge Awards.
  • Teams illustrate their robot’s technical qualities by sharing information with judges remotely in competition for traditional robot-based awards. Teams can participate with or without access to their robot.
• Chairman’s Award, Woodie Flowers Finalist Award, Dean’s List Award
  • Our region (The region formerly known as WOW, Now the Upper Ohio River Region) will compete for 1 Woodie Flowers Finalist Award, 3 Chariman’s Awards, and 6 Dean’s List Finalist Awards.

Please check Slack, Remind, and Teams on Saturday for a link to join our virtual kickoff.

Hi Everyone! We’re back…..sorta.

I’m holding a virtual full team meeting on Monday, November 16, 2020 @ 8pm on Microsoft Teams. Check Teams, Slack, or remind for the link.

Here’s the meeting agenda