Last Monday the LigerBots hosted our annual open house for prospective team members. New students took part in various activities hosted by our returning members to give our rookies a small sample of the technical and business opportunities they will have on the team. Our executives presented a short overview of the team and the FIRST organization, and showed some competition videos.

Activities included three milling and wiring stations, LED programming, a LEGO tower contest, a paper airplane challenge, a display of 3D printing, button making, a photo scavenger hunt, a story board writing project, and an opportunity to drive our 2016 and 2018 robots.

Each completed activity earned a raffle ticket stamp, and we pulled tickets out of a bowl to give away prizes at the end of the evening. Then we celebrated the beginning of our 11th season with dessert. For more photos of our open house, visit our Flickr.

We have new team members interested in many of the activities the LigerBots has to offer, including engineering, programming, graphics, photography, marketing, fundraising, public speaking, writing and finance. We are set to have a great year!

Over the next few weeks, we will be expanding our strategy council and launching into our preseason activities, including intensive technical and marketing skills training.

Our strategy council has already begun recruiting new members.  In addition to scouting other teams at competition to assess their robots’ skills, the newly formed council will do game analysis as soon as the 2019 game is revealed. Approaches developed by this group will help inform our robot design choices and strategies during competition.

Our fall outreach blitz continues! Please join us at RoboExpo in Nashua NH on Sept. 22, and at Newtonville Village Day on the afternoon of Sept. 23.