2010 Season!

Hello!

I hope you're all excited about the upcoming season -- this email (sorry for the length...) will outline some important dates/general information about the team.

-Anne sent all team members a spreadsheet earlier tonight asking for contact information for you and your parents. Please do fill it out whenever you have a minute.

-Kickoff is Saturday, January 9th, 12-4. A few team members will be going to receive the Kit of Parts and the challenge information early that morning, and then we will all meet at noon in the Choral Room to share the challenge and begin brainstorming. As we start to design, brainstorm, and unpack all the good gadgets and gizmos, there will be a parents meeting, so please encourage your parents to come.

-We'll meet Sunday the 10th and Monday the 11th from 11-3. The juniors arrive back on Sunday.

-The team will work daily in the evenings after school, and weekends, to design, prototype and build the robot/cart, develop the programming that controls it, and other various roboticsy activities. Find the project that interests you most, work hard and HAVE FUN!

-Some people have asked about choosing between build v programming -- the choice is entirely up to you. You can certainly wander between both for a few weeks, and you will probably naturally gravitate to one subteam or the other.

-As it is a school rule that we have chaperones at all times, we do ask that parents help provide supervision and meals.

-Ship date/final deadline is February 23 2010. This is the week after February break, unlike previous years. In my experience, the days leading up to ship, this year throughout Break, have been the most involved and most exciting. If your family has not already made plans, I definitely encourage you to stay through break -- it's amazingly fun.

-March 4-6 is Portland Regional Competition. About fourteen team members will go. In previous years, we've been in the seventh seeded alliance.
-March 18-20 is the Silicon Valley Regional at San Jose State. All team members participate in this exciting competition. Last year we won the Xerox Creativity Award and were, once again, the seventh seeded alliance.

-Should we qualify to go onto Nationals at either Portland or SVR, we will get to go to Atlanta for the Nationals, April 15-17 2010. We obviously don't know if we'll qualify, but those are the dates. Once again, about fourteen team members will be going.
-We'd love for the whole team to go to the out-of-town competitions, but unfortunately that is not financially or organizationally feasible. Team members will qualify to attend the out-of-state tournaments by hard work and dedication to meeting the goals of the team and through their "gracious professionalism."

Oof! Thanks for making it through to the end of this email.

To summarize: Fill out the spreadsheet. Kickoff January 9th, noon. Working in the weeknights from roughly 5:30 onwards, weekends tba. Drills. Programming. Designing. Food. Much goofiness. Fun.Thanks so much! We're so excited for this season.

Our website is gatorbotics.com and picasa site with pictures is http://picasaweb.google.com/castilleja.robotics

Sherri Billimoria

Team Lead

650-464-8746

Caroline Abbott

Technical Lead

650-804-4403