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@San Mateo County Event Center

As some of you have heard,  3 of our 11 weekend qualifiers were cancelled by school administrators this Saturday due to air quality health concerns. This is sad and disappointing to all involved but the health and safety of all involved must come first.

We have been monitoring the air quality around our region and working with the rest of the 8 event tournament directors and as of this moment, all other events are a Go! If the situation changes for this weekend, this blog post will get updated, an email will be sent out on the norcalfll-announce googlegroup and a direct email will go out to the primary coach, assistant coach and team contact provided during your registration. We may also be able / need to call the emergency phone number provided depending on the timeline.

In all cases,  please keep the health and safety of your team, parents, volunteers and everyone and the entire event in mind.  Although the tournament is a great capstone event, it is not worth risking anyone’s health. Be safety minded at all times.

The 3 qualifiers that were cancelled were:  SF Mission at SAIC,  Buckingham Charter in Vacaville and Pleasant Grove HS in Elk Grove.

For all Northern California FIRST LEGO League volunteers,   there will be a training webinar on Sunday 10/28 at 7pm pacific.

Please signup for the webinar at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4992696877679587587

Topics: Overview of the FIRST LEGO League program, how the Qualifier tournament day is organized, what roles are available for General Volunteers and training for the General Volunteer roles.

The webinar will be recorded and posted on www.norcalfllc.org/volunteer page.

Qualifier Tournament Deadline:  The qualifier tournament registration deadline for NorCal FLL is 10/22.  The deadline to complete the local registration payment is 10/20.

• Registration instructions, including the payment link can be found here.
• Team status can be found here.
• Tournament registration capacity can be found here.
• NOTE:  THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS YOUR FIRST REGISTRATION.  This is an additional registration to compete in a local official event.
• If your team does not plan on competing in a qualifier tournament please reply to this email be sure to include your team number.

Qualifier Tournament Volunteers:  All tournaments, unless otherwise instructed by tournament director require a full day volunteer from each participating team.

• Team volunteer can sign up for the tournament by clicking on the “Volunteer For Event” Link for their team’s tournament here.
• Team volunteers can indicate their team affiliation in their FIRST profile.
• Deadline for Team volunteers to sign up is 10/23.  Volunteers will need to complete a YPP screening, so recommend starting to sign up early.
• Team volunteers can not be one of the two main coaches.

Scrimmages:  There are still a few scrimmages available.

• There is one 10/20 at The Play Space
• There are two scrimmages on 10/27, one in Mountain View and one in East Palo Alto.
• You can find more information and sign up here.

Okay,  did an exhaustive test of the systems today.  I believe we are a Go for tonight to open qualifier tournament registration.

General Registration will open today (10/12) at 7:30pm.

The only upside of the ISP and server issues from the past couple of days is that while going through an exhaustive testing the system, we uncovered a real logic bug…so, that is better than finding it when people oversubscribed to tournaments.

We apologize for the delays opening general tournament registration.  No teams (ZERO) have been able to register for general registration yet.

The only way to be notified when general registration is opening is to join our Google Group and update your settings.  Instructions can be found at the bottom of this message.

SCRIMMAGES – Scrimmages are a very important part of tournament preparation, especially for a rookie team. There are several scrimmages that still have space posted, including some this weekend! Scrimmages postings.

HOW TO JOIN THE GOOGLE GROUP:

1. Join the Northern California FIRST LEGO League Google Group
2. Change the default Google Group settings from ‘Don’t send email updates’ to ‘Notify me at every new message’ (about 1 email per week). NOTE: If you do not do this step, you will NOT get any important updates about tournaments. See below for instructions:
   1. Sign in to Google Group
   2. In the top right, click Membership and email settings (the gear + person icon)
   3. Update Email Delivery Preference to Notify Me for Every New Message.
   4. Click Save.
   5. Look back and READ all the messages posted so far for this season

Thanks,

The Playing At Learning Team

– The recording from our Ask An Expert call with Stanford Professor Juan Alonso is now available.  Thank you Professor Alonso and The Space Cookies!

– Please listen to the preparing for a qualifier webinar as you get your team ready for your qualifier tournament.  The only change from the webinar for this season are the updated rubrics, available here.

– Several scrimmages, Tips, FLL Tables and more may be available on the NorCal Social Site.

– Please ask your team volunteer to sign up to volunteer at your team’s qualifier tournament.  THIS IS A REQUIREMENT TO COMPETE.  Please note volunteers may not be one of the two head coaches and must volunteer for either a full day role or 2 half day roles.  Need help signing up?  See this presentation.  Team volunteers must complete YPP screening, sign up by 10/15/2018.  Remind your volunteers to note their team affiliation in their profile.

– We are still in Early Bird registration, General Registration will open 10/10 @ 7pm, information on how to register your team.  Registration spots are first come first serve.

– For more information on this season, please read all 6 messages that were sent so far this season.

ASK An Expert:  Professor Juan Alonso, a Stanford professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, has generously volunteered his time to give team members a chance to ask an expert.  Professor Alonso is the founder and director of the Aerospace Design Laboratory.

NOTE:  Team members are encouraged to ask questions – no coach, parent or mentor questions please.

When:  Wednesday October 3rd, 3:30 – 4:30pm

Where: Register for the Webinar

More resources:

NASA has created this resource to help support FIRST LEGO League teams

NASA expert talks can be found here.

1. General Registration will open October 10th @ 7pm.
2. NorCal FLL will close registration for new teams registering with FIRST on or before October 3rd (this is NOT the same as qualifier tournament registration).
3. East Bay Teams – we are hopeful that East Bay Early Bird Registration will open 9/28 @ 8 pm.  This date is tentative and subject to change.
4. No Core Values poster is required for the qualifier tournaments.