World Festival recap: Elizabeth Rankin

 The First Lego League World Festival experience was amazing!   I am so glad we were fortunate enough to make it.  I would like to give you a few highlights of our trip.  

On Wednesday when we arrived in St. Louis we set up our booth.   It was an 8 by 10 ft. area that we could decorate however we liked.  We filled it with items we thought represented Iowa and South Dakota.  It was very interesting to see how all the other teams incorporated their nationality and team name into their booths.   I enjoyed talking to the different countries and I tried to learn a few words in some other languages.   

When we found out that we were going to the World Festival, I imagined that other teams would be a lot better than our team, especially since it was our first year.  It was encouraging to realize that we were all just kids and our team was similar to the others.   There were 81 teams from 29 countries at FLL World. 

To the immediate north of us there were booths for the different high school teams. One was called FTC (First Tech Challenge) and the other FRC (First Robotics Challenge). There were also college recruiters who were giving out $13 million in scholarships to the high school teams. The CIA and the US Air Force were also available for questions and information.  

There was so much to see, you could spend your whole day just looking at the booths and talking with the teams. Through FLL we were assigned a partnering team that we walked around with through these booths. Our partnering team was from Switzerland and we enjoyed getting to know them.  

On Thursday we had our competition for the presentation, robotics questions, and teamwork challenge. We went through stations to be judged on each one.  First we gave our presentation. This went very well. We had some very tough judges’ questions afterward. Next we went to the robotics questions and from there we had our teamwork challenge. 

Once we were done with that part of the competition, we did a few practice robot runs.  We were not very happy about those, however. Our robot, Stuxnet, did not understand the large dome lights shining on the robot tables. Stuxnet was not able to find the black lines that it normally would use to align itself up to perform the tasks. After the practice runs, a few of the boys worked on getting that fixed. 

That evening they had the opening ceremonies for FLL.  Many of the teams sang songs or danced. Some of the favorites included a very flexible girl that did some amazing stretches, a yo-yo performer,  and teams from South Korea and Japan that performed national dances.

Friday was our day for the robot and booth competitions. We had three timed runs for our robot. While the first two robot runs were going on, another team member and myself stayed in our booth area to speak and answer questions for the judges. Stuxnet did well.  Because another team got the patent task before us, the highest score we got was on our second robot run with 340 points.  This was 25th place, over 17,000 teams. For our first year, we were very happy with that place. 

Friday was a fun day.  We wore t-shirts that we had people sign. We tried to get the words “good luck” in as many languages as possible.  That night there was a concert of Will.I.Am and the Black Eye Peas.  There were around 10,000 people there from the different teams and it was a very fun atmosphere.

On Saturday we got a official tour of FTC and FRC and learned more about what they were doing. It sounded very fun but also complicated.  After the tour we went to the St. Louis Arch and rode to the top.  You could feel the arch swaying, it was a very windy day.  

After that we went to the closing ceremonies. It was fun but but also sad to say goodbye to the teams we had met. That evening there was a party with arcade, ninja, and karaoke games. The next morning we left St. Louis and arrived home around 8pm. 

I would like to thank all the financial supporters, Iowa, South Dakota, the legislators, the mentors, the parents, and the coaches. Thank you for the time, work, and effort you put into our team. Praise be to God.

World Festival recap: Keaton DeJong

The team began our trip on Thursday in a 15 passenger van we borrowed from a friend, and we pulled a small trailer behind us. We traveled until about 12:30 am and then stayed overnight and left the next morning at 7:30. We arrived at St. Louis late morning and went to visit a Bio-Tec company named Sigma. We had been invited to give our presentation to some people at the company; however, we were not able to meet due to flooding in their building. They sent us a package to our hotel.

We then went to the Edward Jones Dome, unloaded the trailer, and started setting up our booth. All the teams were setting up on Wed. and after finishing we went out for dinner with our team and families. During a long wait for our table, we worked on our last presentation practice and getting our costumes ready.

We set out early the next morning to get there by 7:30. The atmosphere was loud, friendly, and fun. The teams were all walking through each other’s booths and meeting one another. We were paired with an other team, Switzerland, and they were positioned behind us in the pits. We had much of the competition on Thursday – starting with the presentation, then technical review, and finally the core values/team work assessment.

We did 2 practice runs in the dome with the robot, which were challenging, and we discovered that our light sensors were working incorrectly due to the spot lights in the dome. Someone from an other team had encountered something similar in previous year, took time to talk with us, and we worked on some new ways to make small light sensor changes for the rest of the afternoon.

We went to open ceremonies that night, which were awesome.  Many teams did skits and musical performances; it was amazing to see teams from all over the world and speaking speaking different languages. I really liked someone who did a “yo-yo” performance with music, it was cool. 

Friday started with working in the booth and getting ready for judges to walk through, and final test runs with the robot. We did the  first of three runs in the morning, and got 305 points. We missed the heart patch and make some adjustments before the next round. We were encouraged that the light sensors were working well and that we had discovered how to fix the program. Our second run was the best of the day, running at 340. Our highest possible score is 365, but the other team beat us to the patent task so we did not get those points.

We were so happy with this run, everything went as good as it could go. It was awesome being in this huge arena, with spotlights, big jumbo screens, and loud and cheering excitement. It was so neat that not only our families were cheering with signs and yelling but also our partnering team, Switzerland, was cheering for us.  That night, we went swimming at the hotel and there was a private concert from will.i.am and the Black-Eyed Peas for just those at the World Championship. It was a huge event and very loud. 

On Saturday morning, we toured and learned more about the other Lego groups – FTC and FRC, which was fun to learn about. We meet the rest of the group at the St. Louis Arch and toured up to the top. It was really tall and interesting to see from this view.

We went back to the dome for closing ceremonies. Many people shared about what a privilege and honor it was to come and how these teams and kids would really make a difference. They handed our medals and awards to the teams. Our team placed 25th in robotics, out of 83 teams at the World Championships. 25th in the world out of the 17,000 teams that started. We feel really excited about this accomplishment and that all our team’s hard work paid off.

We went swimming for a short while and headed back for a night of fun at the dome where we played Ninja and other arcade games. It was fun to mix with other teams. We decided we should go swimming one more time and had a great time.

Sunday we headed home. We left around 8:30 in the morning and got home around 8:00 p.m.  We unpacked the trailer and cleaned the van. We started the trip with prayer as a team and ended with cleaning as a team.

We are so thankful that we had this chance to go to the World Festival and represent our town and state, and we are thankful for all the support and mentoring to help us get there.

Robot run!

Wow, what a day!

We’re about to go into our third and final robot run at 2:10. After a couple of near-disastrous practice runs yesterday in the done, the team worked on some adjustments.

Because the robot depends on a light sensor to guide it in many of it’s tasks, the team had to recalibrate the robot yesterday to adjust for much brighter lights in the competition area. However, that resulted in an inconsistent performance with an initial score of 0 in the first practice round and 130 in the second.

The team’s high score at the state tournament was 245, out of 400 possible.

Today, however, after time last night adjusting the calibration, and some advice from another team, the robot ran incredibly well, scoring 315 the first time and 340 the second time.

“They had epiphany in their programming yesterday that allowed them to run consistently, and we’re ecstatic about that,” said Eric Rankin, one of the team’s coaches.

Here’s a picture from earlier today:

Opening ceremonies

The opening ceremonies are starting!

Robot technical review

We just completed our robot technical review. The judges commented that they liked our team costumes, and they were interested in our story about why we are representing both Iowa and south Dakota.

We are really happy with how well this session went, and we are about to go into the core values presentation.

The Presentation

The presentation went well. The judges asked us some pretty challenging questions.

Photos

At the dome

We’re here. Our presentation starts soon! Here’s what we’re wearing as a team uniform today.

We’re in St. Louis!

After a long trip, we arrived in St. Louis. We were able to set up our pit area in the First Lego League area at the Edward Jones Dome. We collected a lot of pins from some of the other teams, including one made of a cross-section of wood from the team from the Netherlands. We also met kids from China, Mexico, and Brazil.

It was really rainy here today, and the parking by the arch is completely under water.

We are now waiting for our food at the Old Spaghetti Factory. After we get back to our hotel, we’ll run through our presentation on 3D electrophoresis. The presentation is tomorrow.

We can’t wait for the festival to begin!!

Upcoming event: Pizza Ranch tip night!

After last weekend’s amazingly successful Friends & Family Night (we are still overwhelmed by the generosity of all of the people who came out to see our presentation and robot demonstration), we are looking ahead to our next fundraising event.

Tuesday, April 12, is Tip Night for Sioux Center First Lego League at the Sioux Center Pizza Ranch.  Tip nights help organizations raise money because Pizza Ranch generously gives the group all of the tips as well as a percentage of the sales for that evening.

What: FIRST Lego League Tip Night
Where: Pizza Ranch, Sioux Center
When: 5-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 12
Why: To help defray costs for traveling and lodging for the 5-day World Festival in St. Louis

All donations received will go toward our trip to the World Festival in St. Louis, so please come out and bring a few friends. We hope to see you there!