Today was amazing. I woke up early and drove to Heritage air. My freind John had kindly offered to fly a few of us down to the FIRST World Championship in Houston to see the Vermont teams compete. I was the last oen onboard… in addition to John were my friends Zach, Christina and Alex, the new president of Champlain College. I’d not met him yet, but was looking forward to.. this was a great chance to get to know him.
The flight down was fun and full of good ideas. John is an amazing mentor. I always love spending time with him. He’s passionate about innovation and education.. He was one of the first Executive Directors of. FIRST robotics and through the Argosy fund is helping us grow FIRST in Vermont. It was also great getting some quality time with Zach and Christina. Zach is the founder of http://hackclub.org, an organization that helps kids in high school create self organized software and making teams. Its’ an amazing organization and Zach and his growing team including Christina moved to Vermont during covid. Christina is a war correspondent turned development lead and is full of stories from her travels.. super nice and interesting. I’ve been watching them grow for the last 3 years and have always wanted to do a project with them. Zach and I started to shape a plan I have for getting more students to see the fun and beauty of electronics. … that turned out to be a theme of this trip.
The flight passed quickly with a quick refuel in Missouri we did to avoid a storm on the way down.
Meanwhile my Boss Kyle flew down with 5 more beta freinds.. So Beta was goign to be represented in force !
We got to IAH then drove to the Championship venue. It was amazing. I heard that there were 43,000 kids there competing along with their coaches, mentors, refereees etc. It was a massive geek fest.. everyone was weraing team costumes, robots were everywhere.
We got there just in time to see the “Dean’s List” lunch, where FIRSt’s leader My friend (and BETA board member) Dean Kamon announces ten winners of the Dean’s List award. for exceptional leadership.. The ballroom was packed with kids nominate for the Deans List . 1 by 1 we heard form the sponsors of FIRST, The FIRST Execs and Dean Kamon then we met the 10 winners.
It was great to see Dean in his element.. he’s a rock star here for sure !
From there we dove into the pits.. we found our team, watched some matches and met a gazillion excited kids and coaches. This is the first world event I’ve been to in nearly 20 years. I was amazed at the energy of the teams and the sophistication of the robots they built !
First stop was to see our new FRC team 9101 .. “Team Toast”… (named because it looks like a piece of toast). They are doing really well for a rookie team. They ended up ebing the top Rokie Team in their Division (Archemedis)
Thats where we met up with all our BETA friends.. we went and watched Team Toast compete..
I said goodbye to my friends and headed off to a VIP dinner.. .super fun talking to other sponsors and the FIRST leaders.. Later on I met up with my friend Michael from FIRST NE
Long and super fun day. I’m so excited to be working with FIRST !
nite all, nite sam
-me