Founder's Broadcast, Kickoff Broadcast, Encrypted Materials, and Hosting Files

Founder’s Reception Webcast Tonight Live from Dean’s Home!

We’ve talked about this before, but I’m so excited about it I wanted to talk about it again. Tonight, January 2, is the Founder’s Reception, hosted by Dean at his home. Traditionally, it’s been a chance to thank our fantastic mentors for all they do. However, while two mentors from every team are invited to attend, we recognize that you may have some plans the next day that could interfere with your ability to actually participate (note the casual understatement in this sentence). So, this year, for the first time, we’re doing a live webcast from the event. Get a little peak inside Dean’s home and hear some folks talk about important things. Also, I’ll have a special announcement about the 2015 season that honestly I can’t wait to get out there. So, even if you are not a mentor on a team, you may want to tune in! You can stream at this link. The party starts at 7PM Eastern! And, the main portion of the webcast is only scheduled to last about 30 minutes. I think it will be worth your time. 

Kickoff Broadcast

If you aren’t attending a local Kickoff tomorrow (it’s tomorrow!), you can still watch the broadcast here starting at 10:15 Eastern. The main portion of the Kickoff runs from 10:15 to about 11:07 or so.

Key Downloads

To prepare for Kickoff, I would encourage you to download the encrypted files below. You’ll be able to open them with the password that will be shown at the end of the Kickoff video. Downloading them now means you will get instant access after the game is revealed.

Game Manual and Field Drawings

Kickoff Kit Checklists

Software Updates for LabVIEW and Eclipse

Classmate Images

Hosting Documents or Files

As we’ve said in prior years, it’s very important that only FIRST host FIRST content. That is to say, rather than taking the documents and files you can find through usfirst.org and hosting them on your own sites, we need teams to link to our information instead. This applies to videos on our YouTube channel as well. There are two main reasons:

1. Version control. Our documents and files may change over time. If a 3rd party links to the content instead of hosting it, any updates we make will carry through. If the content is hosted instead of linked, the content may become obsolete, which would be helpful to no one.
2. Intellectual property. We do have a responsibility to protect FIRST IP, as any organization would. It’s not all created by FIRST, but it’s created for FIRST. So, re-hosting content may or may not infringe on donation agreements, licensing agreements or other matters that may not be public knowledge.

All that being said, we thank you for understanding and respecting this request. If you have questions, please feel free to contact frcteams@usfirst.org or (800) 871-8326, ext. 0.

Can’t wait for tomorrow!

Frank