From India to St. Louis

February is probably the busiest FTC competition month of the year. Between Regional Championships, Qualifying Events, and workshops/practices there's a ton going on.



Here's a couple shots from India this last weekend where they held their Regional Championship. As always, it's all about the teams - but it could not be done without our great sponsors. Thanks to PTC, John Deere, National Instruments, Techtronics and the many others who helped. Special thanks to John Stuart of PTC and Pat Barnes of John Deere (below) who made the trek to India to help make it all happen.



Look for India teams Adroit, and S.M. Tech this April in the Dome!

"Bowled Over" creates spike in ladder sales

The bar (or crate) was again set higher this weekend at a Florida FTC Qualifying Event. Congratulations to teams Pandara 506 and Masquerade 4997. They combined for a score of 584 total points in a match this last Saturday.

Good thing the Edward Jones Dome has plenty of head room.

You want data? - we've got that

Hey FTC teams,

FIRST commissioned a study this summer with Brandeis University to measure the impact FIRST participation has on a variety of important things.

Why is this interesting? You already know the good stuff about FIRST – but you may want to:

• Find more money/sponsors
• Attract more teammates
• Start more teams
• Use FIRST to get you in that college (and scholarships)

How does this help you do that? Look at these stats – anyone you’re talking to about the bullets above will quickly “get it” with regard to what you’ve been doing with FIRST!

• 92% of FRC and 94% of FTC students report their program helped them understand and explain the engineering process of designing complex systems (robots).

• Over 93% of FRC and FTC students report learning how to solve problems programming and designing robots.

• Over 90% of students in FTC and FRC gained real world planning and problem-solving skills in areas of iterative design, unstructured problem solving, and working in teams.

These are just a few highlights of the data gleaned from this survey. To see the full executive summary of the survey click here. Use this for the purposes above or other things to show the rest of the world what you’ve learned – and how valuable that makes you in the future.

Ken