All,

A handful of items for everyone today!

• Sunday 10/30 – Scrimmage/Workday
• Robot Inspection at Qualifying Tournaments
• Qualifying Tournament Preparations
• December Tournament Registration Opening 10/30 @ 7pm
• Team Demographics Survey

Sunday 10/30 Scrimmage/Workday

There are currently only a couple of teams that have expressed interest in a scrimmage.  We will be at The Play Space from 10am to at least 4pm for teams to come and practice. We will have a full field setup, tables for teams to work at, and an inspection table for teams to go through a mock inspection.

There is plenty of space for up to 16 teams.  If your team is interested, bring your robot, try it out on the field, get an inspection done, or just come to ask questions or get help with your robot!

Robot Inspection at Qualifying Tournaments

In the past couple of years, the biggest hurdle for all qualifying tournaments has been getting robot inspections done in a manner that allowed the tournaments to run smoothly and on schedule.

Teams should expect that the inspection process needs to be completed according to the schedule published for the tournaments they attend.  The top priorities for the team during the morning are attending judging and getting their robot inspected.

Plan on arriving on time, with a robot that has been through a team self-inspection and is ready for a full-blown inspection.  The morning of a tournament is NOT the time to finish building your team’s robot.  It should arrive ready to play!

Teams should expect that if they have not made efforts to get their robot through inspection in a timely way, that they may end up not being able to compete in the matches at the tournament.

Use the self-inspection worksheet. Come to the workday/scrimmage on 10/30. Make robot inspection an easy process, painless!

Qualifying Tournament Preparations

All teams should start to think about being ready for qualifying tournaments. Things to have ready:

• Team Roster
• Spare parts
• Team notebook
• Extension cord & power strips
• Spare batteries & charger(s)

Your team should receive a welcome email from the tournament hosts for the tournaments you are attending shortly before the tournament.  It is important to pay attention to that email! There are critical pieces of info that may be included, such as:

• Team Bio/Picture needs for tournament program
• special constraints on what is allowed in the pits (i.e. power tools … or not)
• information about food options for the tournament
• information about directions and parking for the venue

Don’t ignore the email and don’t put off responding to any requests for information!

December Tournament Registration

First play registration for December tournaments will open on Sunday 10/30 at 7pm. If you are not familiar with the NorCal FTC registration process, please read through the article on the NorCalFTC.org website:

http://www.norcalftc.org/2016-velocity-vortex-qualifying-tournament-registration/

The list of December (and January) tournaments can be seen now at:

http://www.norcalftc.org/2016-norcal-ftc-qualifying-tournaments/

There is a slight possibility of one or two more additional December tournaments being added.  They will be added to the list if/when they are confirmed.

Team Demographics Survey

We are working on developing a team demographics survey to help us provide the information that potential NorCal FTC Sponsors are looking for about our teams and our community.

When the survey is announced, please take the time to completely fill out the survey for your team.  The information we collect will be aggregate statistics for the team and will allow us to increase the current level of sponsor support and help the NorCal FTC program continue to grow and potentially reduce the costs to teams.

Thanks for reading this far and hope to see everyone at a tournament soon!

– Mark Edelman