Most common question from our teams: How to Prepare for their Festival!
Your team should focus working together on their LEGO model, their Show-Me poster, learning and demonstrating their FIRST Core Values. You as the Coach, should have a plan on how to manage both mood and food! Depending on the Festival, the team may not be allowed to bring food into the venue and/or have other limits on snacks and beverages.
At a NorCal Festival, each team will have a dedicated team table (called their Team Pit Table) – most likely this will be a standard banquet table but could be a round table (instead of a rectangular table) and/or somewhere between 5′ and 8′ in length. Most common is 6′ x 30″ but we do not control this. The team may or may not get any chairs at the Pit Table. Most likely power will not be available at each table but instead a shared charging station will be available. I do recommend bringing a table covering as many tables are either rented (ie wood with likely splinters) or cafeteria (ie sticky) tables.
Each team will have a short ~10 minute Q&A session with a panel of 1 to 3 Reviewers, and then, have some fun (but optional) Team Activities. We plan for our events to be between 8 and 16 teams and to last between 4 to 5 hours.
Most importantly, at all Festivals, the team will move their Model and Poster from their Team Pit Table to a separate reviewing room. At different venues, this Reviewing Room could be quite the distance away including having to go outside and/or up or down levels. Parents and coaches are welcome to attend the team’s reviewing session but recognize that this may make the team more nervous and/or add “distractions” that make it harder for the team.
When visiting the panel of Reviewers, the team will be offered a chance of giving a short presentation (this is optional for the team!) of up to 5 minutes – shorter is better!
Then, the reviewers will encourage the team by asking a few questions about their Model, their Poster, how the team worked together and generally how their team’s season went. FIRST has put together a Reviewing packet that includes suggested Reviewer Questions along with a Team Feedback Form that the Reviewers will fill out.
Here is an example schedule (click on image to expand):
Important to note is that this is a Generic Schedule – that means that an individual Festival is likely to have customizations needed just for that Festival. The most likely changes are the exact times, the number of teams, and more. For example, when we have a Festival that is hosted alongside a FIRST Robotics Competition or other FIRST Event, we need to have flexibility on all aspects in order to fit in their day.
To read the schedule, each team will get an assigned pit number. So if you are in Pit #1, your team will go for their Reviewing first and then have a bit of break before the Team Fun Activities start for their division. During this break time, we would recommend having the team talk to the other teams about their model, poster and season. Preparing your team ahead of time for some questions to ask is a good idea.
Some reminders:
- Have a plan to take everything away that you brought to the Festival – this includes food containers as well as the team’s Poster Board.
- Be flexible – many times we have to work around local requirements
- Honor and respect the Venue – if the site asks you to not bring food in, then please do not make us have to remind you – we need to respect the local host
- Manage team’s energy – the team will have breaks / down time with nothing planned. They need to not run around, throw things, etc and they need to be supervised at all time.
- Manage parents – make a point to ensure that the team’s parents understand all of the local restrictions and notes that are emailed just ahead of your Festival including making sure that they understand the goal of the Festival is to celebrate the team’s achievements. The Festival is not for the parents – it is for the kids!
- Finally, every Festival will ask your team to provide at least 1 volunteer – please be good about recruiting someone and getting them signed up quickly in the FIRST system (including getting their background screening) and remind them that every role is critical and contributes to a well run event. We have events that do not go well because people either have not signed up to volunteer and/or ditch their volunteer assignment and hang with their team.