Kickoff!

Kickoff is here! Which means that it’s time for late nights in the shop (or cold basement if you’re a programmer) and fun dinners with the team! We split our kickoff into two days and here’s how it went:
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Day One: 
Early Saturday morning, we stream into our school’s cafeteria with the Wild Raccoon where kickoff is taking place for us. Everyone is tired but excited as we sit down and watch the game animation. This year’s game is called Crescendo, and the objective is to shoot rings (called notes) into "amps" and "speakers" and to climb on stage (chains) at the end of the game. Maybe if you’re feeling ambitious you can try to place a note into the trap (which in our opinion is definitely a trap). After watching the animation, we split into groups and studied the game manuals and rules in depth. We also brainstormed various strategies and each group presented what they came up with.

Day Two: 
We did a quick review of the rules and then split into groups again. Each group spent an hour in each branch (engineering, outreach/marketing, and operations) to discuss that specific branch’s goals for the year. In engineering, we learned about the importance of scouting, what it is and how we do it. Then we head into the metal shop to prototype. We had a lot of fun watching our ideas come to life through the prototypes. In Outreach/Marketing, we looked into how we can improve our pit layout and sketched out ideas (last season our pit crew was sitting on the dusty floor *insert sobbing emoji*). In Operations, we discussed judge-talking and talked about awards, focusing on the FIRST Impact Award and Woodie Flowers Award. 

And that’s about it. There we go, kickoff with Team Paradox is complete. Happy Build Season everyone (we’ll be posting these blogs once a week so be on the lookout!)!!