A few last minute pieces of information – we have received many phone calls and emails about these items.  (Most were covered in the “Preparing your team for a tournament” webinar).

1. The QT directors have their team lists and should either have already sent or shortly will be sending out a welcome message to your team contact and/or coach. Team name changes are very problematic at this point.
2. IMPORTANT Reminder: Each team must bring a copy of their team’s latest FIRST Team Roster to turn in at Team Registration (and if needed, bring a copy of any additional Forms)
3. NEW :  The NorCal Region overall will be advancing 3 slots for each of the 16 team tournaments and 2 slots for each of the 12 team tournaments.
4. We do ask the Judging Crew at each Qualifier Tournament to select 1 additional (unannounced) wait list team to invite to a Championship, if space opens up.
5. We have a 2 tier tournament system here: Qualifiers & Championships.  The way to be invited to a Championship is based on the team’s overall evaluation as well as robot game performance at a qualifier.   Each qualifier only advances teams into their specific District Championship.  [and no, the dates are not known yet]
6. The NorCal Region does not use the Core Values poster but does use a FIRST-recommended short, icebreaker activity called a “Teamwork Activity” during the first few minutes of a team’s Core Values Judging session.
7. The NorCal Region does not use the Robot Design Executive Summary but a team can bring in extra items to the Robot Design Judging session to demonstrate their programming  (print out is great), their innovation through the season and their strategy.
8. It is important for teams to keep up with the published Project (10/24) Updates & Game (10/21) Updates .
9. Each Qualifier will hand out the following team awards:  1st Champions’,  1st Project, 1st Robot Design,  1st Core Values,  1st Robot Performance.  Optionally, the judges may select a team for a special recognition Judges’ Award.
10. If you did not review these when you completed tournament registration, I would strongly recommend reviewing the NorCal FLL Official Policies, particularly the Pit Practice Table Policy.

Now, for my favorite FIRST LEGO League Core Value:  We Have Fun!

‘Twas the night before competition…   (with a nod to Mr. Moore’s poem):

http://fllblog.wordpress.com/2011/09…efore-release/

http://graciousprofessionals.blogspo…ournament.html

https://www.norcalfllc.org/twas-the-night-before-…2005-edition/

Did you get our latest e-mail with updates on when general registration opens, how to update your team roster, scrimmages, grants, upcoming events and more?

If not then you can read it here  (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/norcalfll-announce)

If you want to get updates as they are sent out, you should join our google group and update your settings to receive emails as they are published.  This is only the 4th e-mail all season, so we only send messages when there are important updates for NorCal FLL.

Early Bird Registration is *only* available to teams who complete the registration process and would like to register early, in their home district.  Please note that once you register for a tournament you can not change tournaments, so pick wisely.  Tournaments will be posted every Wednesday around 7pm and will be posted as they are confirmed.  Currently, posted tournaments can be found here: https://www.norcalfllc.org/2017-qualifiers/.  Half the available spots at each tournament are open for Early Bird registration.  The remaining spots will be available during General registration.  

If you try to register and tournaments don’t show up in your area that means all the *Early Bird* registration slots for that tournaments currently in the system are full. Check back Wednesday at 7pm, for newly confirmed tournaments here: https://www.norcalfllc.org/2017-qualifiers/

Differences between Early Bird registration and General registration can be found here: https://www.norcalfllc.org/norcal-tournament-registration/. More registration information can be found here: https://www.norcalfllc.org/norcalfll-qtreg-2017/.

A note about tournaments: Tournaments are a community effort, location scouting, tournament organizing & directing and all the people running tournaments are volunteers.  If you would like to see more tournaments in your district, please volunteer – help run tournaments in your district!

East Bay Teams: there are currently NO TOURNAMENTS confirmed in your district.  When/if tournaments are confirmed for the East Bay you will be able to register, otherwise, you will need to wait for general registration to make a selection.

National FIRST LEGO League team registration will close tomorrow (Friday 9/28 ~5pm pacific).  

We have tried to reach out to all of the teams that started but have not finished registering their team on the firstinspires.org website – now is the time to finish.  Please contact us if you are having any issues in finalizing the registration.

Note that team registration is not the same as tournament registration.  We are still in the Early Bird Tournament Registration period and will move to General Tournament Registration no later than October 10th (possibly earlier if possible).

Early Bird Registration opens at 7pm Friday September 15th for teams that are both eligible according to FIRST as well as from NorCal FLL.

We are excited to offer an early option for teams to get registered into a qualifier tournament.  Once your team becomes eligible to register, a link to register will show up in your team’s status page (similar to how you accessed the payment and jotform links).  Some important notes though.

1.  Not all of the qualifiers are confirmed!  Current list.  On each Wednesday at ~7pm, I will be adding any additional confirmed qualifier tournaments.
2. As time allows, we will be reviewing team’s jotform submissions, so you will be enabled just as soon as your requirements are met.
3. Early Bird Registration will effectively close since eventually there will not be any additional open spots until we move into General Registration which opens up the remaining half of all tournament spots.
4. Don’t register if you are not 100% sure of which qualifier tournament you want to attend.  We do expect most of the 2016 tournament hosts will be returning, so if you don’t see the qualifier tournament listed that you want, then don’t register!
5. Once you register, there is no mechanism to change your choices, so choose carefully!

EAST BAY TEAMS:  It is not clear if we will have enough tournaments in the defined East Bay district to keep it a separate district – as we determine this over the next week or two, we may have to be merged into other district(s).

Not sure that Early Bird Registration vs General Registration means?  Here is the information published earlier.

In Northern California, teams have a couple of steps to do before they can register into a tournament.   All steps are live and should be working.

We are still planning on Early Bird registration opening on September 15th – and will start posting confirmed qualifier tournament locations and dates shortly.

We have 3 confirmed locations for the 2017 NorCal FLL Kickoff!

You must pre-register – Click on the Events link in the Menu above to get to the Eventbrite registration page.

2017 NorCalFLL Team Registration update!

As many of you have asked in email (and thank you for paying attention),  yes, NorCal FLL should be open now for  “Early Bird Registration” for our Qualifier tournaments.  And as many (more) of you have noted, the FIRST Team Roster process (aka STIMS) is not open yet for this season.  Important  – We do not yet have a definite date for the Team Roster process to be online.    So, we are going to have to move forward this season without that.

This means a couple of things:

1. The tournament registration “pre-req” process will have to change – I am working on updating the jotform to not require the team roster.  (You will still need to identify the team members, mentors and coaches – but matching that with the team roster will have to come later)
2. We are going to delay the Early Bird Tournament registration for a couple more weeks – my target is September 15th but will publish a definite day/time as we get closer.
3. This means that once the FIRST Team Roster process is available, each team will have only a short time to complete this process before your qualifier tournament. Once we know more about what has changed and when exactly the system will be live, we will let you know.   IMPORTANT: Your team will not be able to compete at a tournament if you don’t have a copy of the completed team roster (plus any additional paper waiver forms) with you.

TL;DR:  FIRST Team Roster won’t be required in order to register for NorCal qualifier tournament this season.