Dear FLL community,

Congratulations to the Folsom Gatorobytes, our First Place Champion's
Award winning team and all of the teams - we had an amazing day! All
award winners and performance scores are now posted at:
http://www.playingatlearning.org/NCaFLL/2008/results_2008.html .


We held the 2008 Climate Connections Northern California FLL
Championship tournament last Sunday, January 25th at Newark Memorial HS.
We had the use of the Event Center, Cougar Commons (cafeteria),
library, building 700 lobby and "min-gym" on campus - it was the 2nd
time that we used this campus. This is the 9th year of the Northern
California Championship and the 5th year that Playing At Learning has
been the FIRST LEGO League operational partner. We are pleased that
Google has returned as a sponsor and also to welcome SAP as a new
sponsor for Northern California FLL Championship tournament.


A big thank you goes to 4 folks who handled all of the tournament
copying/printing. Tiffany Strickland with the Girls Scouts of Northern
California did all of the commemorative program books. We will post a
PDF file of the program if you did not receive one as they were very
popular. Annette Lane from Valley Christian made the poster-sized
judging signs and overview of this year's challenge. Glenn Trewitt
from Google made all of the name badges and Craig Eldershaw from PARC
did all of the tournament judging materials, schedules, maps, and other
tournament info.

Thank you!


We had 64 teams registered with all teams participating. The tournament
was structured so that 28 teams had morning performance rounds and an
afternoon of judging and 36 teams with morning judging rounds and
afternoon performance rounds. We successfully got the robot rounds
started on time, for the first time - yeah! The judging rounds started
just a bit late in the morning. This is significantly better than in
years' past but our goal is to be on schedule the whole day.


For robot performance, each competing team had 3 tries with the high
score as the criteria for the performance award. The high score of the
day was a 370 from team Etamilc! Wow!
For the judging track, we had 6 judging panels (versus 5 last year) but
only used 4 "rooms" per judged area. Each team was judged in 3 areas:
robot design (which included programming as well as mechanical design),
teamwork, and the Climate project. We allocated 10 minutes with the
judges and 5 minutes for the judges to discuss the team and write
notes. Additionally, we had roving judges wandering around watching the
team interactions. The judges completed their deliberations with no
callbacks. A particular thank you to Carter Brooks from The Climate
Project (www.theclimateproject.org) for being one of our project judges.


The alliance round went okay - our ref crew was not too happy with all
of the "holes" in the rules that teams were asking about - we either
need to fix this for next year or do something else. We would like
your input on how to improve interactions among the teams - which is a
major aspect of the alliance round.


We handed out trophies and the closing ceremony was completed nearly on
time.


Several new elements were introduced this year at the championship
tournament - we had a hip-hop artist "V" from Oakland rap about
climate, we had a FTC scrimmage, a networked server for viewing
robot game scores throughout the event center and a presentation area
for teams to give their project presentations. As we have mentioned
previously, we are always looking for how to get more visibility on the
project presentations. This year, we had limited choices on where to
hold a public viewing of the projects, but we found an "open quiet
space" - a lobby area within one of the buildings. Unfortunately, for
most of the day, audiences and teams were like "ships passing in the
night" - we had people wander over, but no teams there. And then when
a team was there, no audience. I have heard of only 1 to 2
"successful" presentations. The 20 minute cycle time was too long in
between teams and the location was a bit too far away. Suggestions
are welcome on how to improve but having team presentations in the event
center itself is just not going to work.


We had a design company (Ad Special Ts from Vacaville) offer a custom
championship shirt. We had a separate medallion / team photo setup area
in the Cougar commons and both a roving videographer and an
"interviewer" capture highlights that we will be processing over the
next few months. A couple of key changes this year helped with
getting the day started on time - most importantly was no team
check-in. Teams could directly go to their pit area and since we
already had the waivers from the teams, all that we had to do was do a
verification step - this worked reasonably well. We will have better
instructions / preparation for it, but we plan to do something similar
next year.


We thank the 4 FRC teams that sent help our way during their own busy
"build" season - in particular, the Apes of Wrath that canceled their
own work day and had their team show up with a full set of
parents/mentors/coaches to help out. An incredibly big thank you for
Varsha who coordinated the over 300 volunteers for setup, event day and
clean up.


Thank you to Jon Perkins for being the head referee (again) and Scott
Adamson, Albert Bodenhamer and Ian Gilmore for leading the discussions
for their respective judged areas to get 6 panels of judges to generate
their top teams. A huge thank you to all of the over 40 total judges and
referees that helped make the day a success.


Also thank you to Pat Liu for stepping up as the scorekeeper, Suds Jain
as timekeeper, Glenn Trewitt as floor manager, Carey Rasmus as queue
manager, Matthew Flickner as primary DJ, Ken Mitchell, Flick, Peter
Schwarz and crew for all of the A/V and to Barry Hayes, Glenn Inn, Rohan
Kandlur and Bill Nott for being our wonderful emcees and game announcers.


Thank you to Jackie Crook, who not only brought down a challenge table
from Santa Rosa but also made a hardware store run for us on the way to
replace a broken challenge table light fixture and some bolts that
turned up missing. Thank you to Jim Mori for the 4 FLL challenge
tables used in the judging rooms, Karen Mahoney for bringing all of the
SJ flag poles, Rosa Lee, Ken Brownlee, Annette Lane, Diego Fonstad, Tim
Herr, Bhavesh Patel, Grace Wright, and Tom Sartor for all of the
borrowed and donated items including challenge tables, coolers, drinks,
and TV trays.


Thank you to the force of folks that helped with setup - we started
just after 3pm and we drove away, completely done with everything
including all of the pipe/drape to make 12 judging rooms sometime close
to 7:30/8pm (we think). In particular, thank you to Arrow Packaging
that donated the work force and materials to generate 300+ squares of
cardboard that we used to protect the "non-covered" gym areas (pits and
judging rooms) from scratches (metal table legs, etc).


Thank you, thank you, thank you!


We finished cleanup on Sunday close to 7:15pm - a new record time -
shaving 30 minutes off of last year. Thank you to everyone that helped
tear down the pits, the competition floors, the judging rooms and load
the truck.


It was an extremely rewarding event and we love to see and hear about
the impacts that FLL has had on the kids. If you post video on YouTube,
or blog or post photos or get any media coverage, please let us know
about it. A downside is that neither Mark nor I ended up being able to
watch any of the robot games, nor did we make it to the pit areas.
:-( So, please share highlights and lowlights.


If you have heard Dean Kamen (founder of FIRST) speak, you know that he
truly believes that society gets what it celebrates - and hopefully
everyone felt that the kids' contributions and achievements were celebrated.


We invite your feedback on all aspects of this year's FLL season
including the qualifying and championship tournament - what worked well,
what didn't. What we can do better or different?


Don't forget that you can still order the commemorative Northern
California FLL pin and a tournament "Best Of" DVD through our website.


We want to thank all of qualifying tournament organizers and their
efforts in having tournament space to all of this year's Northern
California FLL teams.

We would like to schedule a season debrief session sometime in late
February. Let us know if you are interested in hosting and/or
attending. We would like to start monthly planning sessions for next
year FLL events but we need a host site for these meetings.


For those that asked, if you want to send a thank you including thanking
Manuel, our facilities person who supported us wonderfully throughout
the setup, the event day and cleanup, a note can be sent to Principal
Spinnato at Newark HS [ 39375 Cedar Blvd. Newark, CA 94560] and/or to
our district contact, Laurie Marshall [5715 Musick Avenue Newark,
California 94560].



Thanks again to everyone having a positive outlook and attitude. We
look forward to May 4th when registration opens for Smart Move, the 2009
Challenge theme! Kickoff is September 3rd (only 219 days).


Cheers,


Jill Wilker & Mark Edelman
Northern California FLL Partner
Playing At Learning, a 501(c)(3) public charity




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