Week1, Where Art Thou??

Here it is, Sunday, one week after the "Game Revelation" and things are already slipping.

No surprise here. Rather than head to our sponsor's facility, we met at the school this past week to develop a strategy and brainstorm some ideas for the machine.

Lots of good ideas made it interesting w/r/t discussions.

Generally, the new mentors (we number 23 at this point) are trying to lead the students into thinking more carefully about strategy and how that strategy will define the robot. Some get it, some don't, and some never will.

Egos are starting to show, but this may well be an artifact of the tight confines they were all in (a classroom) and the intensity of the effort. Not that the intensity will diminsh over this next 5 weeks, but it will be spread amongs the subteams.

I seem to have turned into a facilitator, and I certainly hope that that will change soon.

What's good this year are that the Pro/E designers will be in close proximity to the prototypers, so they can talk, discuss concepts etc.

The animation team has a graduated team member returning to act as mentor. He's been doing animation for the past three years and really knows how to use 3dsMax. From what I've seen so far, his time with the team has paid off.

Today, our goal is to complete the fabrication of the out-of-the-box chassis and transmissions and get the controls/software team something they can start working with.