Event Partners Meeting 2018

Fifteen event partners met with Jim Crane our regional RECF representative and Director of Strategic Initiatives on July 9th. The purpose of the meeting was to go over the 2018-19 season talking about the changes and key things Event Partners should know about.

In 2018 we are running the following types of events.

  • Scrimmages
  • League
  • Tournaments without Judging
  • Tournaments with Limited Judging
  • Tournaments with Full Judging
  • Invitational Events
  • Regional Championships

There are also:

  • Signature Events
  • World Championship

A Invitational Event is one that is not open to all teams. Event partners can run a “by invitation” event for every public event they run. Signature events are large event that rivals the Worlds event. For example Cape Henlpoen runs the well known “Slam Dunk to the Beach” that brings top teams from all over the East Coast. So a robotics signature event would be similar to that.

Like 2017-18 Registration $150 for the first robot and $100 per robot after that. Each event will pay $5 per attending robot to RECF for official events. There was discussion around the group, we will all keep our prices very low for events this year.

The preliminary World Championship slots have been released for Delmarva.

  • VIQ Elementary School – 3 teams
  • VIQ Middle School – 1 team
  • VRC Middle School – 1 team
  • VRC High School – 3 teams

For the single team, it’s the Excellence Award Winner. For the three teams it’s the Excellence Award winner and the Two Tournament Champions. As a change this year, we are playing two robot alliances (was three robot alliances in 2017-18) and the eliminations are a Best of One (vs the prior Best of Three). In past years we’ve played the top 8 alliances in the eliminations. With the Best of One, Event Partners can run more alliance in the eliminations if they want.

Because of the growth of VRC robots in Delaware (yay!) teams must go to a qualification event to go to States. There are presently four events planned: Salisbury MD (TEC Tigers), Princess Anne MD (University of Maryland Eastern Shore), Lewes DE (Cape Henlopen High School) and Wilmington DE (Mt Pleasant High School). Each event will send 8 teams to the Delmarva Championship in Dover. Extra slots will be filled via Skills points teams, so it’s important that every robot does a skills run at their event. There may also be an additional event in Dover, keep checking our event calendar.

For the VIQ championship, robots will go on a first come first serve basis. for teams this year the STEM project is not required for the Excellence Award. But, like last year, an engineering notebook is required. So you VIQ teams brush up on your notebook skills.

University of Maryland Eastern Shore is planning to start at least one Vex University Team. If you attend a community college or four year college or university in Delmarva and may be interested in starting a team please contact Foster to get more information.

Discussion was around event dates, see the Competition link in the right menu to see what events have been planned.

A reminder that RECF has grants to help schools and organizations get started. They also have girl powered grants for existing teams who are successful in getting more girls involved.

Both of these grants require the host organization to pay the team registration, but RECF provides them with a robot kit. For the new team grant, the organization needs to match it and start a second team, but for the Girl Powered, there is no second team requirement. They just have to start a team that has at least 50% girls.

They also have Event Partner grants to help new partners start events.

Thanks to Mike Fitzgerald from the Delaware Department of Education for hosting us and providing lunch.

Looking a little empty

I did some cleanup of the site, we are just down to the minimum of organizations and teams. While the central core of mentors are the same from year to year, there is lots of changes since teacher swap schools, jobs and districts. It was easier to do a full clear, when the mentors come back it will be easy to put them back in. It was also a good test of the “forget me” feature of the site.

I also pulled last years team info off. With the changes in privacy policies, it was simpler to pull the team detail information off. I’ll start fresh with the new privacy policy and then won’t have to worry about it.

Speaking of privacy, one of my big things is protecting emails and phone numbers. When ever I post an email address it’s set up so that unless the scraping robot is running JavaScript the email address is hidden away. This should help with keeping the SPAM down for our users.

As schools go back in session in August / September, we should see our organizations get contact people. Around October team lists will start to fill out. We’ve already got events on the calendar and it’s looking like a full season ahead.

And speaking of events, a reminder that on July 9 there is a partner’s meeting in Dover DE. If you are thinking about holding an event or want to start a new team, here is your chance to meet with the other Event Partners in Delmarva.

Summer activities

While most of the robotics activity happens during the school year there are a lot of activities going on.

The three largest Library programs are still meeting. Brandywine Hundred is in their 4th week of programming their IQ robots using Modkit. The Rt 9 Library and Innovation Center starts their programming sessions on 23 July at 6PM.

The Bear Library is playing some new games to get driver skills up. They have grown, they have about 15 roboteers each week. I’m going to go on Monday 9 June to teach a small group that already knows Scratch, so teaching Modkit will go pretty easy.

For those at the northern border, the Claymont Library is holding an interest lesson on the 14th of August. If you are looking for a place to build VEXIQ robots, Claymont is a good place to start.

If you are an event partner, or thinking about starting a new team and want to hold an event, the Event Partners Meeting is the place to be. Meeting times are 10AM – 2PM on 9 July. We are excited about new events and looking forward to having an event at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore Campus.

The STEM Robotics team is working on pulling materials together for fall. There are some exciting new components for both VRC and VEXIQ teams. We’ll be posting about them in the coming weeks.

And has you can see the site is pretty plain, so if you have robot pictures you’d like to share let Foster know.

Hello roboteers and robots!

Welcome to Delmarva Robotics!!

This site is a collection point for robotics in the Delmarva region (New Castle, Kent and Sussex counties in Delaware; Somerset, Wicomico, Somerset and Worcester counties in Maryland; and Accomack county in Virginia.

Look here for team, robot information and the calendar of all events.

Contact Foster to get your information added.