FTC Poster Boys

It was a great three days of acronyms, fun and learning! Team Duct Tape spent June 7-9 at the PTC/USERS 2009 World Event, running exhibition games with teams Exploding Bacon, Hydra, Rogue Robotics, Domino Effect , Minotaur, and Mechancial Flightless Waterfowl, attending hands on workshops about Pro/ENGINEER, and informing lots and lots of people about FIRST robotics.

We especially enjoyed hearing keynote speaker, and FIRST chairmen John Abele share his reflections and experiences on everything from the value of disruptive innovation to the power of self-organizing groups to drive discovery and achievement, as in his story about the exploration of the USS Grunion.

We met people with great energy and enthusiasm, like Christina Carter of EMS-USA in

PTC Program Manager Dmitry Orlov Gives our Robot a Spin

Tampa, and Jon Dickinson of Enser Corporation in Orlando, who showed not only interest in FIRST students’ work but deep appreciation for it, as well.

Team Duct Tape, along with Exploding Bacon,  also gave a short presentation about their FIRST experiences the morning of June 9 at an

PTC Presentation

Informational Breakfast. It was a great opportunity to showcase student efforts to make the most of the CAD gifts PTC has made to FTC, as well as to reach out on behalf of FIRST to encourage more mentoring and support of FIRST robotics teams.

PTC conference goers try their hand at robot driving

We also took a side trip over to Electronic Arts Tiburon studios in Orlando, where EA software engineer Ryan Burkett, who is also a FIRST volunteer, arranged for Team Duct Tape members to meet with programmers, artists, and game interface  designers to learn how they bring their wide ranging skill sets together to create remarkable games like Tiger Woods Golf and Madden Football.   Ryan also set some

TDT @ EA with Ryan Burkett, on left.

time aside to show interested TDT members how to use particle physics to simulate visual game effects, definite icing on the cake for our programmers.

As John Abele pointed out: Shift Happens – Our students are at the cutting edge of our future, and with the help and support of all the great people who have shared their time, talent, interest and experience with them,  they’ll create a great future of us as well as for themselves!