The new FIRST Tech Challenge game has been released and we’re delighted to learn – it’s a Block Party!  What a great looking game, and what a great Kick Off at Middleton High School.

Many thanks to Middleton Robotics for a terrific and fun filled event!  We were especially happy to make the formal acquaintance of Scott and Jordi from Sumo Software Corporation , who will be helping out our parent sponsor,  Learning is for Everyone, with Robocon Tampa Bay.   Scott and Jordi turned out to be FIRST alumni – from 1996 and 2006 respectively! – and came out to the kick off to learn more about FTC. We’re glad they’ve found their way back to FIRST!

Congrats N.U.T.S.!

The Florida FTC kick off event was huge! Over 45 teams turned out for it, from across the state, with 400 students!  Our Florida Guess the Game winners is FTC 5070 Team N.U.T.S., who guessed there would be an endgame hanging component. They received a hand crafted duct tape backpack.

Our out-of-state winner is waayyyy out of state – in India! Congratulations to Team 7003, Electrohephathenix from Pune,  India, who not only guessed the game name correctly – Block Party – but also that it would involve manipulation of blocks in some way.

We may also have to give out some prizes for Most Creative Guesses, which would have to include FTC Team 5937, Renaissance Robotics, and one of their guesses which was that the game would be “Water Polo” and involve “Robots riding horses in a swimming pool while playing a ball game.”  Our other favorite guess came from Whitney High School FTC team 542, who said the game would be called “Beautiful Babies”.

“The game will consist of transporting fish and other effective nutrient-rich food to live babies. The amount of points will be based on the amount of calories each alliance has given their baby. The endgame will amount to putting a cat on the baby’s heads. The cats will be docile because they are full of morphine. This will be a difficult and challenging endgame.”

TDT member Jacob with his little sister (under the big hat!)

No one can ever accuse FTC teams of lacking in creativity!

This coming Saturday, we put our duct tape noses to the grindstone and get to work planning out our new season build. Before the meeting starts, though, we’ve also got a fun and exciting international outreach project we’ve been invited to be part of by our FTC friends south of the border (or in our case, west of the border, across the Gulf of Mexico, in Mexico City.

FTC Team 3141, the Bears, is hosting an international FTC Google+ Hangout this Saturday, Sept. 14, at 12pm EST.  Besides us and the Bears, we’ll be joined by Landroids FTC 4220, of New Jersey,  and Team Beta FTC 3550, from Iowa.

We’ll start at noon (11am CST) with team intros, followed by team presentations and then “Game Talk”, where we’ll be chatting about things like Block Party first impressions, favorite aspects of the game, ideas about strategy and game play.

The Bears invites FTC teams everywhere to follow along at their Google+ Hangout on Saturday, and so do we!  In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the Bears’ bilingual presentation of the the Block Party! game.  Hope to see you, Saturday!