8/27/10

Yesterday in the evening a group of 4 student, myself included, and our teacher, Mr. Lajvardi, went to a convention called Microchip Masters. This is a convention were Microchip invites there employees from different locations all over the world and they go to workshops during the day. In the evening the are exposed to some entertainment that has some Microchip features. Microchip is one of the many generous FIRST sponsor and they invite FRC teams from around the state to come and demonstrate and explain what FIRST is all about. We were asked to have a display of our robotics program along with participating in a "Robotics World Cup". Every team present was assigned a country to represent, we were Spain, we came to think it was a sort of omen and that we would end up winning the games. Unfortunately our robot began to malfunction, we believe it was due to some electrical components that were not in operating in a proper manner. Even though we were unable to win the World Cup, we met many people from around the world who work for Microchip. I myself, met people from the United Kingdom, Mexico, Holland, Germany, and other who were more local. After speaking with most of them I was intrigued by the differences in our school systems, socioeconomic status, and lifestyle. The man from UK said, "We would never be able to find a groups of students who would be willing to give up so much, or work so hard just for a simple robot competition." It is then that I explained that FIRST is not all about the robot, that it is everything that you learn, people you meet, and things you discover in the process that is valuable. Every one that I spoke to had the same expression of awe on the face. When we were able to have some free time we also visited some of the exhibits out side. One of the exhibits that caught my attention the most we a machine that would receive and decode information right before your eyes. It was fascinating to see something so complex yet so simple work its magic. One of the more thrilling moments of the evening was when we saw the Energizer Bunny mascot. We took a team picture with him and with our robot. Overall the event was very enjoyable, not only did we entertain others but we had fun in the process too.