What a cool day.. I’m down in Boston visiting with my folks. always a nice thing to do.. I timed this trip to allow me to attend the annual FIRST Robotics Northeast Quarter Finals. at the Agganis Arena at Boston University. My friend John has been involved with FIRST from the start and had invited me for the past 3 years.. This is the first time I could make it and I’m so glad I did. FIRST is the brainchild of inventor Dean Kamen. Kamen and his colleagues recognized that one way to interest more kids in math , engineering and science was to create an activity that captured the excitement of a school sports team. FIRST gets teams of high school kids to build very sophisticated robots that compete.. and sometimes cooperate.. in a very specific and challenging set of problems. This year the challenge was shooting light weight basketballs into regulation hoops across a quarter size (about) court. Pretty tough when you think about it..  The whole thing is set up as an elimination sweepstakes.. Each team begins by cooperating in small groups of three teams.. that get mixed for each round.. In that way each team gets to work with.. and against nearly all others..  In keeping with the sports analogy, the stands were full of screaming fans.. some with face paint.. there were loud and goofy announcers and striped shirt wearing refs.   The cool thing is that the team were full of all kinds of kids.. nit just nerdy guys.. there were artists, programers, electrical kids, mechanical kids.. and even business leaning kids that helped with the sizable fundraising it takes to field a team.

I believe that there were 53 teams there today.. mostly from the northeast.. but one team from Brazil and one from Turkey.

Here I am on the floor with my host John.. He was the Exec VP and energetic spirit behind FIRST for the past 10 years.. Hes a passionate advocate for science literacy and the leader of our merry band who will be putting on the Champlain Maker Fair in the Fall of 2012. A very cool and inspiring guy..

This being Boston, there were tons of MIT folks around. I managed to crash a meeting of the MIT Club and got to hear Mitch Resnick , the father of the Scratch kids videogame/programming environment.

Throughout the day I kept running into folks I know.. Here’s my old dormmate Henry  M. and his kid Harry.. Henry’s dad Marvin is one of my heroes.. many folks consider him the father of artificial intelligence.. I don’t know about that.. but he’s the father of Henry that has lots of real intelligence.. no small feat !

 

Here’s Prof Woody Flowers. He’s one of the founders of FIRST.. . FIRST is sort of based on his 2.70 design challenge from MIT.. Every year he gets everyone to sign his shirt.. I signed.. who could miss an opportunity like that ?

I also ran into my old friend Kim.. He’s also a prof at MIT.. and a real inspiration. He runs the Edgerton Lab and the DLAB at MIT. DLAB gets folks from all over the world to come to MIT to develop technology solutions for folks in challenged parts of the world. Kim told me about a project they’re just launching for building hand cranked wheelchairs with a novel gearing system to be used in rough terrain.. very cool. Kim’s wife Cathy wasn’t there today, but she’s also quite an amazing inventor.. she created a Lego kit that demonstrated DNA synthesis.. I’ve played with  it and it finally made the whole process make sense to me. There’s something about doing things with your hands.

I happened to catch a reflection of my lights in the elevator door..  nice..

I spent the bulk of the day touring the floor, talking to teams and watching the competition. To be honest.. the robots were cool.. but the people were the thing I really liked watching..  Here are some excerpts..

The day ended with a great final round.. tons of cheering and an awards ceremony.. It really felt more like a basketball game.. the crowd was wild..

My nephew Vincent was working next door teaching an EMT class.. Just as FIRST was ending he had a 10 minute break just before 4 so we got to at least meet for a picture..

On the way home I called my freind Seth and found out that he and his girlfriend Hanna  and two of their freinds (whos pictures didnt come out.. but were very very nice) .. were just 1.5 miles away.. we all met for coffee..  It was a great bonus getting to see them

Then I headed back to my folks.. There yard was already full of flowers.. it’s definitely spring here already !

Ma made a great finger food dinner (eel sushi, squid salad, hummus, olives, cheese , eggplant goop, fish and veggies.. your typical grandmotherly meal.. yum !

 

Now we’re all sitting here looking through family albums.. nice way to end the day..

OK .. that’s all for today.. more tomorrow. Nite all, nite sam (many pictures of you in this house.. I like it)

-me