Four new team members and their families came to our Team Duct Tape Open House today, to learn more about TDT and see if it’s a good fit for their interests and schedules. We had such a great time introducing these terrific new families to what we love about Team Duct and FIRST, and it looks like they had a pretty good time, too!

Joining apprentice-turned-team veteran, Ryder, and Mark, who joined us mid-season last year, Team Duct Tape 5.0 looks a lot like Team Duct Tape 1.0, in our founding year in 2010, when we started with five, mostly high school freshmen.  We’re really excited about the focused interest all of these great students showed, and can’t wait to all go to the Sept. 8 FTC Season Kick-Off together.

We watched a bit of the CNN special about FIRST, some competition video, talked about the team in general, how meetings are structured, and what the season calendar generally looks like, and then went out to play with last season’s robot.

Thanks to a very generous donation from Studio 7 Communications, in Oldsmar, we’re able to purchase a new robot kit of parts this  year, so we can keep our beloved FIRST World Championshipscissor-lift robot together for demos, training and outreach.  So we’re really looking

Founding member Chris Willingham, with TDT videographer and 2nd year member, Ryder, discussing programming.

excited about being able to expand our outreach efforts this year with a reliable robot, and creative, energetic new team members who can build on the World class reputation TDT has built up over the past four years, and keep strong and growing well into the future!

Next week: Tool inventory and organizing, so we can  hit the ground running right after the Kick-off!