FIRST, the first

Today at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, the 66 teams of the FIRST Robotics Greater Toronto Regional Competition arrived and began fine-tuning their robots, and running practice rounds. The collaborative culture and environment that FIRST has been working for years to nurture and grow is an incredible thing to experience.

All of the teams are getting their robots ready in "the pits". There's a lot of activity -tightening of bolts, re-engineering of widgets, and robotics jargon that is well over my head ("bolts" and "widgets" were the most technical sounding things I could think to write). Despite each team feeling the crunch, gracious professionalism was still a top priority for teams. The only announcements made over the PA system in the pits was when teams were shy on components or needed help with something. It would be announced, and other teams would come running at the expense of their own limited time to donate their materials and expertise.

At the Judge's Dinner this evening, I was honored to be among some very accomplished engineers from industry, government and academia. Of all the technicalities of the program and intricacies of the scoring, we actually spent most of the night reviewing the culture of FIRST, and discussing how we would behave to maintain and grow the culture. An incredible experience.

Watch a live broadcast of the competition through the Discovery Channel webcast here on Friday the 28th and Saturday the 29th. Although, I feel Discovery's plug to watch "robots at war" is grossly inaccurate. Robots are at game, the important component - the kids - are at something much greater than game or war.