Broncobots Blog

Team 1987: The First Four Years

Becky Hand — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 02:31:31 +0000

After having been involved for the first four years, we, Emma, Tom, and Becky, thought it important to document the things Team 1987 faced, overcame, and accomplished. Because we were at every meeting, volunteer event, presentation, build day, or competition event, we believe that our memories, combined with all the wonderful photographs taken by Lisa Smith (and others) should be shared. We chose to do so by writing this book.

It has 118 pages with around 520 photographs and it highlights each build season and the subsequent competition events. Also included are all the submitted documents that took us to the Championship in Atlanta three years in a row.

This book tells the story of what it takes to be a humble and very successful FIRST® team.

We did a bulk order through emails already. If you responded/paid, we have accounted for your order. So far, we ordered 24 books which should be here in a few weeks. If you didn’t respond to us and would like to buy one, you can buy one online. Here is the Blurb bookstore preview and order website: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/1030061/3d956800543b3f2a9fb4bf27e5daf8a8

We are very excited to finally publish this book. We have been working on it for many weeks. Going through pictures to choose the perfect shots as well as following our progress in words took hundreds of hours, and we feel it is a great representation of Team 1987’s first four years. If there are any questions about the book, please email: thand@kc.rr.com.

We hope you enjoy it. To see the first 15 pages of the book, go to the link above.

This is my last work as a Broncobot. It has been an honor since the start!!

Kansas City Area Teams at Nationals

Becky Hand — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:42:21 +0000

Click pictures to enlarge. Thank you to Lisa for getting this to me already…we haven’t even been home 24 hours!!

Home Sweet Home

Becky Hand — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 05:25:07 +0000

First of all, we would like to send out a HUGE congratulations for our sister school, Team 1986, for winning the NATIONAL Innovation in Control Award sponsored by Rockwell Automation!!!!!!!!!!!!! WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP AWARD FOR TEAM TITANIUM!!
Also, big congrats to Team Driven for doing great in the semi’s. It was a great showing for Lee’s Summit R7 Alliance Teams!

While the rest of the team is on a bus probably about 6 hours away, I am home loading up my few pictures I can’t wait to see the parents pictures later! I apologize in advance.. I was in the stands very little taking pictures so there aren’t any of matches or anything going on in the actual Dome…haha.

This is how ya pack for a regional… 10 decks of cards

Good flying day!

A tad intimidating..

Happy to be in Atlanta

Uncrating Wednesday night before the bus arrived.

It was actually pretty…this doesn’t show it.

Yay programmers!

How many hands does it take…

Welcome to the Dobyns photography session:

Uh….

Piggy back rides are a Broncobot’s special

At the Ryan’s Buffet!! We walked in and saw the card we sent them last year plus a welcome letter! This seriously meant so much to us. They kept our card for a year and remembered us!!! (We went to this exact Ryan’s with the 3 teams in 2009)
Also, Michelle rocks.

Goodbye Atlanta! (In the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport) EDIT: By the way, as many of you know I am bad at reading signs, I just now saw the “Moving Walkway” listed on the sign…darn it! That sounds so fun!!

Next year the Championships are in Missouri’s very own St. Louis!

Even though some matches didn’t go quite right, it was still a fun trip

ATL

Becky Hand — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 03:34:34 +0000

Can you believe it is time for Nationals!?! The bus leaves Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning at midnight. We are excited to share it with Team 2410, our awesome Alliance Captains from OKC.

Thank you to all of our sponsors that are making this trip happen. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to make the long trip to the world Championships.

Our sister school Team Titanium (1986) is on Curie, while Team Broncobots (us 1987) and Team Driven (1730) are on Archimedes. I’ll post the links to the webcast when I find them.

In the mean time, enjoy some photos from Michael B!

2007 vs 2008 vs 2009 vs 2010

Becky Hand — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:26:33 +0000

2007-Denver 2008-Minneapolis 2009-Denver 2010-Oklahoma

TREE
2007: Same hotel and we got snow then also!

2009: Same hotel, this time we had a huge snow storm blizzard!

PIT
2007: Pit in 2007 had a dark tent and just a table on the side, along with Max, in Denver!

2008: Pin in 2008 also had a dark tent and a table on the side in Minneapolis!

2009: Brand new pit in 2009 in Denver!

2010: Pit in 2010 in Oklahoma!

AWARDS
2007: We won the 2007 Delphi Driving Tomorrow’s Technology Award in Denver.

2008: We won the Engineering Inspiration Award, the second highest award, in Minneapolis.

2009: WE WON THE CHAIRMANS AWARD, the highest award, in Denver!!!!!!!

2010: Entrepreneurship Award in Oklahoma

2010: Website Award in Oklahoma

2010: Chairman’s Award in Oklahoma!! (We forgot to take a team picture…)

2010: Regional Winners

POSE BY CHAIRMAN’S PRESENTATION TEAM
2008: Won the Engineering Inspiration Award in Minneapolis in 2008.

2009: Won the CHAIRMAN’S AWARD in Denver!

2010: Won the CHAIRMAN’S AWARD in Oklahoma!

Here is the Chairman’s Award Video Submission http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T4RBG3pTNg

Pictures from Lorri

Becky Hand — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:50:13 +0000

Today Lorri brought me over her awesome pictures and video from the OKLAHOMA REGIONAL!!!!! Lisa texted me at 10pm after she had worked and sorted on the pictures she had taken all day, which totaled over 1000. I can’t wait to see them!

MEDALS

Becky Hand — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 07:03:59 +0000

FIRST OF ALL,

We would like to send a HUGGEEE thank you to Team Titanium for welcoming us home this morning, with not only a lovely shiny banner and people, but CUPCAKES and music. It was a lovely homecoming, we really really appreciate it.

Also, a very very large thank you to Paul from Driven who originally came down to cheer us on in OK, then ended up helping us program and be a fun day addition to our team. He helped our programming team find some errors and set stuff up so we could score in auto. A big shout-out to Hillary too who came to cheer us on and party with our team. Hillary is always a big help with her experience and knowledge.

By the way, we won the Website Award, Entrepreneurship Award, were on the winning regional alliance along with 2410 and 935, and Chairman’s.

We made it to Oklahoma City!

Becky Hand — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 03:29:49 +0000

We made it to Oklahoma City at about 9:?? tonight. Yay!!! We start practice tomorrow morning sometime early. There should be a webcast starting Friday, so I can find that link hopefully sometime soon. Thanks to our awesome driver Dean for getting here safe!

Volunteering at Operation Iraqi Children

Becky Hand — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:49:38 +0000

We started our Give Back the Magic program this week. The Disney program “Give a Day, Get a Day” reached their goal of 1,000,000 tickets already, but what I realized is that even if we don’t get to give back many Disney tickets, we are spreading the magic in other ways. For example, today we worked at Operation Iraqi Children. We packaged school kits that get sent to soldiers overseas who then distribute them to kiddos in Iraq and Afghanistan. These kits will make a difference in many kids lives, 780 children to be exact. We have a great education system here, and in Iraq they are still restructuring an educational system, and I’m betting supplies are limited. We had 17 great volunteers from our team today, I’d like to thank them all for taking a day of Spring Break and volunteering.

I did a little research on Iraq’s educational system. Here are a few interesting points I found: “This stems from the fact that the country’s economy has been mismanaged for 40 years, and a country that once held a bright private sector and educated population has come to have one of the lowest human development indicators in the region.”

“Because of under-funding by the Hussein regime, in 2003 an estimated 80 percent of Iraq’s 15,000 school buildings needed rehabilitation and lacked basic sanitary facilities, and most schools lacked libraries and laboratories…In the 1990s, school attendance decreased drastically as education funding was cut and economic conditions forced children into the workforce.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Iraq)
“Iraq’s adult literacy rate is now one of the lowest in all Arab countries; UNESCO estimates literacy rates to be less than 60 percent, or 6 million illiterate Iraqi adults. Rural residents and women have been hit hardest; only 37 percent of rural women can read, and 30 percent of Iraqi girls of high school age are enrolled in school compared with 42 percent of boys.” (http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomplishments/education.html) Restructuring an entire education system after creating a new government obviously is difficult, therefore anything can help. Our packages will help kids get through school.

Thanks again for all the volunteers!

KC Regional

Becky Hand — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:40:35 +0000

Congratulations to our sister schools, Team 1730 and 1986, on a job well done at the 2010 Greater KC Regional! Team 1986 and 1730 ended up on an alliance along with Blue Springs. Being on the field volunteering all three days, I had the opportunity to see all the great teams in attendance. The matches today were action packed the whole way through! The end game is so awesome!

Congratulations to all the teams at the Greater Kansas City Regional 2010, Team Driven for winning Engineering Inspiration, qualifying them for Atlanta, and Colin from Team 1986 and Paul from 1730 for winning the NEW Dean’s List award! What a great city to be a part of–Go Lee’s Summit, Missouri!