Volunteers & Team Info!

Posted on January 18, 2012 by jill

We still need many volunteers for the upcoming tournaments and would appreciate your help even for a few hours! Also, a reminder that every team is expected to provide an adult volunteer. We also have many roles available for mature high school students - know anyone that needs community service hours?

Volunteer Signups are available from the main FLL Volunteer page.

Tournament program book deadline reminder!

If you have not submitted your “jotform” items 2-8, your team will not have their picture or any information in the commemorative tournament program book. The East Bay and Peninsula and Capital tournament books are done:

~~Capital championship, deadline is Friday 1/27 night! (deadline is already past! Will be sent to printer Tuesday 1/31 and there are still some blank places!)~~

Silicon Valley championship, deadline is NOW!

Bay area championship team list updated

Posted on January 13, 2012 by jill

I am done moving Silicon Valley championship teams with teams that were going to either the East Bay or Peninsula championship. We understand that 2/18 is a holiday weekend and the start for a number of south bay school “ski week” vacations. Thanks everyone for the can-do flexible attitudes – what a great community! We had 8 [UPDATE 1/16] 9 teams with date conflicts that we swapped.

Team Schedule Cards

Posted on January 12, 2012 by jill

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.

Silicon Valley Championship postponed to 2/18

Posted on January 10, 2012 by jill

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.

Deadlines, Awards & other info

Posted on January 9, 2012 by jill

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.

New Championship tables!

Posted on January 7, 2012 by jill

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.

2011 Kids Choice Award Categories

Posted on January 4, 2012 by jill

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 Kids Choice Award
. Coolest project
. Favorite team chant / song / cheer
. Favorite pit design
. Favorite team costume
. Best team “giveaway”

Team Volunteer Pages now live

Posted on January 3, 2012 by jill

Sunday 1/22 East Bay Championship - Team Volunteer Sign Up
Saturday 1/28 Peninsula Championship - Team Volunteer Sign Up

Saturday 2/11 Capital Championship - Team Volunteer Sign Up
Saturday 2/18 Silicon Valley Championship – Team Volunteer Sign Up

FAQ: Team Profile: What is meant by the Supporting Materials?

Posted on December 23, 2011 by jill

[Tried to reword this post to be clearer (again) -

1. Please do not bring a hard copy of the Team Profile Form with you.

2. Do not send any supporting materials in soft copy - anything that the team wants to give to any judge beyond the Team Profile form must be physically handed to judges at the time of your judging session.

3. Also do not hand judges a CD/DVD/thumb drive or anything similar.

]

Several teams have asked about the 3 check boxes at the bottom of the Team Profile form.

_ We have provided Robot Design supporting materials
_ We have provided Research Project supporting materials
_ We would like our presentation materials returned to us

The “default” PDF version of the team profile form makes the assumption that you are handing it directly to judges on the day of the tournament. At NorCal, we do not want you handing these to the judges but instead, we give them access to a soft copy version. The soft copy version is much easier for the judges to look at, easier to reference and doesn’t end up with 48 (or worse 3 * 48) pieces of wasted paper that we just need to throw away.

The checkboxes on the original PDF form are a way to try to note that the team has handed some “extra” items to the judges that the team wants to get back. You can safely ignore these checkboxes in Northern California!

If the team does end up handing any additional/supporting items to any of the judges at the tournament that you want back, it is the team’s responsibility to make sure that it is clearly identified that you want it back and how to contact you in case it doesn’t happen before the end of the tournament day. And recognize that whatever you hand to the judges may not come back at all – there is no way to 100% track these types of things.

Examples of these types of additional materials that teams have handed to judges includes a 1 page summary of their robot design mechanical and software features, a summary of the team’s project presentation and sometimes include additional items including pictures from field trips, feedback received from professionals and others that the team shared their project ideas with and similar. There is no requirement for these materials and we don’t recommend that the team just hand a bunch of items or stacks of raw data to the judges – the judges have limited bandwidth and will not read / look at everything (or sometimes even most things) that you hand them.

Some teams hand judges items like candy / buttons and other “team giveaways” that are not intended to be returned.

Also remember, there is no way to have judges view any videos or similar “online” content or play your CD/DVD or load your thumb drive or anything else like that. Please do not email or provide links to any additional items as there will not be any way to get them to the judges or have anything done with them.