Monday, April 13, 2009

On the road again Starting a busy few weeks. Of course, soccer is heating up. I'm hard at work on assignments for the 1,000 high school games I assign every year (since 1989). Mayfest Tournament assignments will be done in two weeks, and spring games are ongoing. This week I'll be in Chicago to hear a presentation about new products from Siemens, then on to the Maintenance and Reliability Technology Conference at the Doubletree in Rosemont where I am speaking to a session at 2:30. I'm sure you still have time to sign up and come to heckle me. Then I'm off to Houston for a meeting. Next week, I'll head up to the Detroit area for the ABB Robotics Technology Fair followed by a couple of other meetings. Looks like a California trip the week after. The first week of May will find me back in Detroit for the annual meeting of the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems. That looks to be a good day-and-a-half of technology. Then the week of May18 is the Yokogawa User Conference in Houston. Look forward to seeing you at one of these events. 2:37:30 PM    comment []

Supporting Students The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) are now in process and we are beginning to hear about companies who are sponsoring the events. If you're not familiar, this is a competition where students at various levels of high school build robots and enter them in competitions that eventually lead to a "Final Four" like national competition in Atlanta held this year from April 16-18. I wrote about this competition and its foundation of "Gracious Professionalism" at Automation World. Enable Training and Consulting Inc. has announced a new collaboration with PTC to support students participating in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Technical Challenge (FTC) by creating and distributing curriculum to support the students to think critically about designing and building robots as well as programming their machines to think and move. Enable Training and Consulting is the provider of LVMastery.com, the first self-paced video-based online training resource for National Instruments' LabVIEW (the programming tool for FIRST) users. "We're thoroughly impressed and inspired by the talent demonstrated by students" said President Ben Zimmer.  "It's amazing how quickly they've risen to the challenge of employing the same hardware and software tools used by industry professionals."  In addition to courses for LabView users, the LVMastery.com web site features FRC tips and tricks through regular video blogs as well as forums and online Webinars with experts. PTC is a market leader in product design and Product Lifecycle Management solutions for product development and, is actively involved with education and the sponsorship of FIRST. PTC has been named as the Crown Level Supplier to the 2009 FRC and the Official CAD and Collaboration Supplier to FTC. With PTC sponsorship of FIRST, all FIRST teams can gain access to PTC's suite of solutions; including Pro/ENGINEER, Windchill and Mathcad. As part of a three-year sponsorship, PTC supports and develops curriculum and resources used in over 30,000 schools, and looks forward to continued involvement in FTC. Here are some fun facts about this year's competition: 1,680 teams 42,000 high-school students Teams from 48 states in the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Turkey, and the U.K. 40 Regional events in the U.S., Canada, and Israel; seven District competitions and one State Championship in Michigan FIRST Robotics Competition Championship at the FIRST Championship in Atlanta, GA, April 16-18, 2009 Robots are built in 6 weeks from a common kit of parts provided by FIRST, and weigh up to 120 lbs. (excluding battery and bumpers) 1:03:57 PM    comment []