We would like to get your input on a new date for the Silicon Valley FLL Championship.   Our first choice would be Saturday March 10th to get adequate time to recruit new volunteers AND enough time to select, confirm and adapt to a new site.     The only weekend over the next month that we can not have the tournament is the first weekend of March  (3/3 – 3/4)  since that is the NorCal FTC championship tournament.

I have set up a POLL on the right side – please vote only once and based on your “role”  :   Coaches,  Team Parents,  Volunteers and other interested people like visitors.

8:45pm PST 2/21:  Not sure why but the poll was closed.  The closed date was set to  2/22 but looks like it  ended today.  odd.  Have just added one more day.

1:50pm PST 2/21:  I am receiving emails that suggest that every date has at least one team that just can’t make the date.  Also,  looks like I am not able to look at the Coach-only poll as meaning anything since there are more votes than competing teams – so at this point i can only look at aggregate numbers.     At this point, we need to look at “scale” of the conflict.   We will need to figure this out – so please be specific.  How many team members of the team and how long in the day is your team’s conflict.     Generally Saturdays seems to have the most conflict based on emails sent to me.  What about Sundays –  what about 3/11 or 3/18 –  what are the conflicts on those dates?

7:05pm PST  2/20:     March 10th is still the leading date  but since there is at least 1 team that can not attend….  What about the 2nd highest ranked date of 3/17 or the third rank date of 2/26?     Are there teams that CAN NOT attend either of those dates?   Again,  please add a comment below with which date(s) won’t work and please include your team number.

2:50pm PST  2/20:     March 10th is current the leading date.   If your team CAN NOT attend March 10th at all, please add a comment to this post – please include your team number.

Thanks,  Jill

There will NOT be a tournament on Saturday the 18th of February!

We are very disappointed to inform the teams scheduled to attend the Silicon Valley Championship on Saturday February 18th, 2012 that as of 6:30PM on Friday the Tournament scheduled for Del Mar High School has been cancelled for the day.

The Campbell High School District have withdrawn the final approvals for the tournament this afternoon, after working very hard to adjust schedules and change locations on Thursday.

We are extraordinarily disappointed in this turn of events (we actually had to meet delivery vehicles at the venue in order to cancel them — it was that late of notice).

We are working to get this event re-scheduled, but won’t have additional information until later this weekend at earliest (likely not until the beginning of the week.)

Stay tuned

Mark, Jill, Heidi, and Tiffany

Trying something new for teams to help their invited guests keep track of the team’s “public” schedule for game rounds,  I have borrowed an idea from our friends at ORTOP for a  “Cheer on Our Team“   schedule card that your team can customize and hand out to families and friends.  If you are of a certain generation, you might call these your Robot’s dance card  

Let me know if you use these and/or how to improve on the idea to make it easier for your team’s supporters to track your team’s robot game matches.

Due to critical circumstances outside of our control,  we will need to postpone the Silicon Valley FLL Championship tournament to 2/18, now a confirmed date.  The event will still be at Independence HS in San Jose.    We are trying to confirm a date just as soon as possible and    We appreciate everyone’s flexibility.

Important deadlines and similar information is emailed out on the norcalfll-announce googlegroup.   If you are not receiving those,  JOIN the group or ask one of the team parents to do so.

A recent email was about upcoming deadlines [ Monday 1/9 for Silicon Valley!] to submit your team’s information including any updated team name, size, affiliation, home city and team photo and robot photo that are used in the tournament program book and in copies of the schedules, etc.

In addition,  I mentioned (too briefly) about receiving nomination letters for two of the Special Recognition awards:  Adult Coach/Mentor and Youth Mentor awards.   We would like to receive written input _ahead of time_ from team members about their coach and/or mentor so that this can be evaluated at the championship tournament itself.

On a related awards note,  it is important to recognize the  Championship award list will NOT be the same as for the qualifiers.    We will be handing out a total of 22 FLL Core awards and 2 Judges awards and 3 Special Recognition awards and 6 Kids Choice awards.

The FLL Core awards will include 1st and 2nd place for each of the following core awards:

Champion’s Award,    Robot Performance,  plus the individual awards from each of the 3 elements of  FLL:
Robot Awards {Mechanical Design,  Programming,  Strategy & Innovation}
Project Awards {Research,  Innovation Solution, Presentation}
Core Values Awards {Inspiration, Teamwork,  Gracious Professionalism}

Plus the special recognition awards:  one each of Outstanding Volunteer and Adult Coach/Mentor and Youth Mentor.

Finally,  since this is confusing people.  Yes, all 4 Northern California championships received an invitation to this year’s World Festival.  This invitation goes to the first place Champion’s Award winning team.  If the team declines their invite (it is expensive, multiple days, etc),  it will automatically go to the 2nd place Champion’s Award winning team.  If the second place team declines, then it goes to a lottery for any award-winning team at that tournament.  Note that we have not seen any team decline any opportunity unless they were also invited to one of the Open Championships and had to make a choice  – this year there are 3  (scroll to bottom) but note that we have not heard if we have received any invitations!  I hope so as I know that we have teams that love to participate in these opportunities.

I am pleased to let everyone know that the NorCal Championship tables will be brand new this season and are almost ready for action.   Our previous ones were getting a little “long in the tooth” as they say.    We are likely to be looking for new homes for the old ones as our storage facility is stuffed to the rafters already.

IMPORTANT:  These tables will be built to the new “side wall” standard with 2x3s and not 2x4s.   This means that if the team’s robot uses the side walls in navigation,  they need to make sure that they are not relying on the higher side wall.

As we introduced the last few years, we will be holding a separate “Kid’s Choice Awards”  as part of each of the Nor Cal FLL Championship tournaments.   These are awards where the team members themselves vote on who will win – note that teams can not vote for themselves in any category.  These optional, fun awards are completely outside of the standard FLL awards.

. Favorite robot or attachment
. Coolest project
. Favorite team chant / song / cheer
. Favorite pit design
. Favorite team costume
. Best team “giveaway”