Welcome!

Welcome!

I am feeling particularly ambitious at the start of this new year and shall endeavor to  document the progress of our build season to the extent that I can manage.  In a perfect world, I'd love to share most of the work we do -- sketches, discussions, models, prototypes, plans and results -- but I'm not sure how realistic it is for me to get all of that information captured, edited and shared.

To get started, here is a bit of information about our team --

Team Xbot is team number 488 and was founded in 2000 by employees of Microsoft in cooperation with Redmond High School in Redmond, WA.  Beginning in 2003, the team moved from Redmond HS to Franklin High School in Seattle, WA because its leadership thought the opportunities afforded to students in the FIRST Robotics Competition would be more meaningful to the students in urban Seattle's poorest neighborhoods.  The team's current leader, Donna Lew, became involved at that time when her son, Ryan, feared that the team lacked support from the school administration and might disappear.  Ten years later, the team is going strong with Donna at the helm and Ryan among its many mentors.

The team strives to create a fun, challenging, competitive environment for students and mentors alike.  We are family -- in some cases quite literally -- and value that relationship above all else, but we work and play hard at being the best team we can be.  We began striving to build highly competitive robots in 2007 and have won two regional events since and been finalists several other times.  We've won the Regional Chairman's Award twice -- in 2008 and again in 2012 -- in addition to many other technical and non-technical awards for our work.  Our students have been named to Dean's List and our leader, Donna Lew, has won the regional Woodie Flowers Award for her tireless dedication to supporting our kids.  We're quite proud of how the team has grown and look forward to continuing this success this season and in the future.  But, even if we don't, we'll still have a good time trying.

A bit about me --

I'm Madison and I expect I'll be doing most of the writing to this blog, but I'll try to get some guest blogs written by some of our students and other mentors.  I've been involved with FRC since 1999 and with 488 since 2005.  My background is in technical design, with experience designing everything from crash test systems for automobiles and spaceships to security solutions for retail displays of Microsoft's XBox 360 game system and museum exhibits.  These days, I work as a software engineer for a small company in Seattle.  Despite years on an FRC team, I didn't know anything about programming until October of 2011.  It's been a long, challenging learning curve and I have a long way to go, but it's been a fun, interesting change of pace for me.  Unfortunately, it also meant that I had to step back a lot during the 2012 season.  I am excited for 2013, though, since I think I can jump back in with both feet.

On the team, I am the lead mechanical designer (by sheer force of will, really) and technical mentor and I try to help where I can with all of the many other parts of running our team.  At competitions, I have been the on-field coach for 488 since joining in 2005 and for 6 years before that for a few other teams.

So, that's as good an introduction as any, I think.  I hope this turns out to be something useful and that, by documenting our process, progress and results, other teams might learn a thing or two about the ways that our team works (or doesn't work, as the case may be).

Welcome. :)

-Madison