2008 Minnesota Regional

February 24, 2008 – Robotics teams are revving up their cheers, printing team t-shirts and put the finishing touches on strategy as FIRST Overdrive zooms full-speed ahead into Williams Arena March 27- 29. There, more than a thousand high school students, mentors and volunteers from 54 FIRST Robotics teams from around the Midwest will be ready to take their robot to the limit during the first annual FIRST Minnesota Regional competition. All events are free and open to the public! Starting on Thursday, March 27th, FIRSTteams set up their workstations (pits) at the University of Minnesota’s Sports Pavilion, unpacking robots, going through inspection, and taking a few practice spins around the track. The non-stop action of the qualifying rounds will begin in earnest at 9:30 AM Friday morning. For eight continuous hours on Friday -- and an additional three on Saturday morning -- spectators can watch teams compete for the highest possible score in the hopes that they can lay claim to becoming one of eight top seeds. These top eight teams will have the privilege of choosing their two alliance partners for the elimination rounds. Only with a combination of mechanical brilliance, strategic analysis, and sheer audacity can a team hope to lead their alliance to victory!

A Short History of the Minnesota FIRST Regional

By Greg B.

With almost 1,000 teams participating during the 2005 FIRST Robotics Competition season, it may come as quite a surprise that a grand total of two were from Minnesota. Considering that Minnesota is preparing to host its first Regional Competition in March 2008, the previous statistic should come as even more of a shock. How is it that a state virtually non-existent on the FIRST map two years ago now has more than 50 teams, and is in the process of planning a regional tournament?

Well, the truth is a number of things contributed to the rapid rise. The existing two teams, including Edina Robotics FIRST Team 1816, The Green Machine, took it as a personal challenge to aggressively spread theFIRST message. The Green Machine participated in Governor Tim Pawlenty’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Conference in 2006; worked to place stories about FIRST and the team in local print and broadcast media; and helped mentor new FRC teams in the metropolitan Twin Cities area.

At the same time, efforts to promote FIRST in Minnesota were being made by executives at two leading Minnesota corporations. Dr. Stephen N. Oesterle, Senior Vice President-Medicine and Technology of Medtronic, Inc., and Bill McConnell, Senior Vice president of Boston Scientific Corp., stepped forward and each guaranteed financial support for six new teams for the 2007 competition season, producing a total of 12 new teams.
Susan Lawrence, Regional Director of FIRST for the Midwest, spurred on further growth by helping organize events to attract corporate sponsors and, as importantly for teams, draw in mentors from technical, mechanical, engineering and programming fields. Things really kicked into high gear after a challenge was issued directly from the very pinnacle of FIRST leadership to Susan Lawrence and her tiny group of FIRSTRobotics enthusiasts in Minnesota: “Dean Kamen challenged us, and in particular, Dr. Oesterle, to create enough interest in FIRST, to grow the program sufficiently, to get to the point where there could be a regional in Minnesota by 2008,” Ms. Lawrence says. “This meant there had to be at least 15 teams here in Minnesota.”

Ken Rosen was brought in as the newly named Assistant Director of FIRST in Minnesota, to help get new teams going by researching and making the initial contacts. His tasks included helping develop support forFIRST Robotics among high school students, faculty and staff, as well as reaching out to nearby corporations for the critical financial support. Mr. Rosen also worked hard to establish teams in a diverse set of schools to ensure that FIRST Robotics in Minnesota was an equal opportunity for students and schools across the socio-economic spectrum: “We wanted to make it fully-reflective of Minnesota and as inclusive as possible -- so that the state's diversity could be fully-captured by the spectrum of teams,” Mr. Rosen says.

Thanks to the efforts of all those involved in Minnesota, the goal of a minimum of having 15 teams was reached in fall, 2006. This ensured that the first-ever FIRST Kickoff event, a time the year’s game challenge is issued and teams receive their kit of parts, would be held in Minnesota in January 2007. At that Minnesota kickoff event, 14 new rookie teams joined the two veteran FRC teams at the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Union for the satellite broadcast direct from Manchester, N.H.

Even more rapid expansion of the program has occurred since then; there are now 54 teams in the state. Yet, since the milestone of 15 teams occurred right at the beginning of last year’s build season, too much work had yet to be done to make Minnesota “regional ready,” and so the goal was set to have regional competitions begin here in March 2008.

To help get the FIRST Board to approve the Minnesota Regional, Dr. Oesterle and Mr. McConnell in late 2007 vouched that they would be able to locate sufficient funding. Backed by the credibility of helping to found 14 new teams in the sate, the FIRST board approved the plan to host a regional here -- and then the actual planning began.

First on the list was winning substantial financing backing and support from local Minnesota companies. Here again, Dr. Oesterle stepped forward and rose to the challenge. Dr. Oesterle tapped into a network of other corporations and organizations, and worked hard to convince them to support FIRST. The major corporations and organizations funding the 2008 Minnesota FIRST Regional are Medtronic, Boston Scientific, the University of Minnesota, and 3M.

The University of Minnesota’s support for FIRST includes its Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Institute of Technology. The site for the regional was identified as Williams Arena, located on the campus of the University of Minnesota.

Further support for the regional event, as well as funding for individual teams, comes from NASA; Lockheed Martin Corp.; Cargill Inc; General Mills, Inc; Best Buy Corp., EV3 Inc.; Banner Engineering Corp.; Nonin Medical Inc.; Caterpillar Inc.; Pentair, Inc.; Graco Inc.; Thomas, McNemery & Partners; GE Fleet Services; Flint Hills Resources LP; BAE Systems, Inc.; Minnesota Wire & Cable Co.; St. Jude Medical, and Polaris Industries, Inc.
Funding in place, the Minnesota Regional Planning Committee moved into more of the logistical work to get everything prepared for March 2008. Key volunteers are being recruited to help run all aspects of the event, from the Master of Ceremonies, to the referees on the playing field, to the judges of everything from team spirit to engineering inspiration.

Other work that has gone on and continues to go on includes building ramps up to the arena floor, organizing the pits, and getting the sound system ready. Reports and updates also have to be sent monthly to FIRSTHeadquarters to make sure Minnesota will be ready for its first-ever regional event. And so far so good, from only having two teams a couple years ago, Minnesota appears on track to host its first-ever FIRST regional in March 2008!