Nice long day here. A walk to -12°F… Considerably warmer than it might’ve been but still friggin cold. I noticed before coming to bed but it was about 27° above zero Fahrenheit… That’s almost a 40° swing the day. That would be like having it 50° in the morning and 90° at night. Guess that’s like the desert or something.
I spent the entire day at the Vermont first tech challenge ( FTC) event at CVU high school. I got there around 7:15 am but the judges had been there since 6 AM. I headed towards home around 6 PM… So about 11 hours. It was an amazing event. We had 31 teams… 13 of which were from Vermont and the balance from neighboring states. I haven’t been to a first event in at least five years… It’s a very well run exercise in chaos. The teams are generally between five and seven high school students. They all collaborate on a single robot about 20 inches on a side. The robot is operating wirelessly and has to perform some pretty amazing tasks… It needs to grab these blocks move them under some obstacles and then stack them. Some parts of the competition our one on one and some of them are co-opetition’s with other teams. The whole thing is underscored Buy a concept called “gracious professionalism”… We’re teams help each other even as they compete. It was an incredible display of good sportsmanship all Through the day. It was amazing to see the technical achievements of some of these teams. I have to say the Vermont teams need to become more sophisticated… And that’s what I’m hoping to help on. Do you like
I was there to gather information… And show a little nerd pride… I had every blinking gadget on me that I don’t. I think for this crowd it worked well
We had Miss Vermont and miss Jr Vermont there… Both are pursuing stem careers. They were really fun to hang out with. There’s been a few hours going around talking to the teams. Miss Vermont saying the national anthem beautifully. To kick off the competition
In the end… Most of the big prizes went to out of state teams… But that was fine. Vermont crew had a pretty good showing. And we learned a lot more about what we’re going to need to up our game here in the state. I’m really looking forward to working on that.
Right now I’m just really looking forward to getting some sleep.
More tomorrow!
Nite all, nite sam
--me