Following Kick Off and the start of planning, the week was spent on teaching rookies more about building a robot, and starting to plan out a robot. We had ran over a basic robot building video with the new members. Additionally, we had scoped out a wide variety of videos to watch for research about potential robot designs and concepts.
Unfortunately, our team had experienced some losses in leadership, with a few of our members having to leave. The week also brought the process of establishing new sub team leaders, in order to continue to maintain our team’s structure. Regardless of the sad goodbyes, our team continued their work at a steadfast pace, working even harder with the fuel that Kick Off gave them.
At the end of the week, our field had actually arrived. Our business team had recorded footage of our field setup, with the intent of drafting a long form video about our process with field setup. The field setup served as a nice opportunity for members to get hands on with objects related to the game, and helped with planning. Seeing the field in-person created a new perspective in the planning process.
The end of the week brought a new spark of innovation for the team. The week of brainstorming, and the excitement of the field arriving birthed the transition to the creation part of the engineering process. With excitement for the robot that was to come, the team continued to press on and prepare, even outside of meetings. No brakes on innovation, Till The Wheels Fall Off!
In anticipation of the Kick Off event on Saturday, the team began preparing for their presentations. We had two presentations to be made: one about constructing beautiful portfolios, and another about software, proper programming paradigms.
For our portfolio presentation, we actually collaborated with two other teams, Quantum Quacks and Sisters of the Motherboard. The week was spent working remotely with the two to create a visually stunning presentation, containing the some award-winning tips on portfolio creation. For our paradigms presentation, it was exclusively designed by us. Those who were not working on presentations were fixing up our previous robots in order to teach the rookies about them.
On Friday, we began the rehearsal of our Kick Off presentations. Following this, group members gave presenters their feedback, both on contact and public speaking abilities. Our non-presenters also worked on disassembling our old robot, which served as a great opportunity to our hardware rookies.
With Kick Off on the horizon, the team was incredibly excited for the game that is to come. We had many guesses, including a game related to elevation, a water based game, and even a diving-based game. Our presenters were hyped to deliver the presentations they worked so hard on, and looking forward to an incredible Kick Off. No brakes on innovation, Till The Wheels Fall Off!
Every journey starts somewhere. Our wild First Tech Journey began on the week of week of August 27th, with our first official meeting of the season. For the meeting, we ran over team introductions, and established some broad goals for the season. Additionally, we began working on training for our rookie members, all done by the veterans.
For the first week, we covered training with hand and power tools. All members of the team, even those who weren’t interested in a more hardware related role, were given the basic training in these tools. In order to keep track of the trainings, we used Google Sheets to keep track of the level of experience everyone has with certain tools. The training was done in a fairly organized manner, with veteran members each teaching groups of rookies a certain tool, and the rookies rotating around in groups for training.
Following the days of basic training, rookie members chose the roles they wanted to take on for the upcoming season. They found their sub teams, and the new members began their more specialized training in tools their roles would use, such as hardware oriented people using CAD, software people learning to code in Java, and the business team learning about various skills, such as photography and portfolio design.
The first week allowed for a really solid foundation to be laid for the season to come. We are really anticipating the game reveal, and looking forward to the great memories that will be made throughout the season. The upcoming week brings continuation to our training, and to prepare for the Kick Off event. No brakes on innovation, Till The Wheels Fall Off!
