Our meeting on November 10th was full of excitement and learning.  The meeting got started with a presentation from our technical leader, outlining important team information and events.

Then we talked about the team culture of Girls of Steel with our mentor George focusing on being inclusive to all team members.

Following our talk with George the junior members split off to get to work on their FTC robots while we announced the game for this year’s End of Preseason Project (EOPP).

The EOPP is a mock competition made up by some of our amazing mentors, to help prepare the team for build season.  This year we invited SHARP FRC 3260, and Taylor Allderdice Steel Dragons FRC 117, to join us in our EOPP. Throughout the next few weeks we will be working on designing, building, and programming robots, just like build season. At the end of preseason we will have a competition to see what all the teams accomplished. Today was the kickoff for the EOPP and we had a joint brainstorming session.

This year the game is to launch balls into a goal opposite of the teams’ area. There is also an autonomous portion where you can knock over a tube that is holding a ball. You can also score by either pushing or throwing the ball into the goal or placing it in a tube behind the goal.

Today we all split into seven groups, a mix from the Girls of Steel, SHARP, and the Steel Dragons. In the first half of the brainstorming session, we discussed strategies to reach our goal. Many ideas were defensive strategies that defend the goals or offensive strategies that carry the balls to the goals or even throw them from across the field! The second half of the meeting was dedicated to drafting pictures of the potential robots with strategies that the groups already figured out. Then the elected speaker gave a short presentation on the ideas. It was a great way to introduce the process of brainstorming and getting to know other teams!

After the visiting teams left, we had a short business hour for our business teams.  The finance girls are working to update and improve our award winning business plan, the media girls have been working hard to keep up to date on all of our social media accounts, and the outreach girls have perfected their robot demo and presentation skills.  We cannot wait for next week when we will learn about the EOPP teams and begin building our EOPP robot.