FTC Oregon Update: September 20, 2019

FIRST Tech Challenge Oregon Community:

Before I communicate business items, the Staff and Board of Directors of ORTOP are saddened and stunned by the tragic loss of Charlotte Van Valkenburg, a champion of the Oregon FIRST community. Charlotte embodied Gracious Professionalism in her multiple roles, as Coach of FIRST Robotics Competition Team #5468, Chaos Theory, Mentor and League Manager for FIRST Tech Challenge Central Oregon League, and volunteer coordinator for Bend area Intel Oregon FIRST LEGO League Qualifying Tournaments. Her contributions were recognized earlier this year at the Pacific Northwest District Championships, where she received the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award. We grieve alongside Charlotte's family, friends and students impacted by this loss, but heartened by wonderful memories of Charlotte and committed to carrying on her incredible legacy.
A memorial service will be held for Charlotte at the Westside Church in Bend, Oregon on Wednesday, September 25th at 1:00 PM.
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A few items of business for you:

• October 5th Workshop at Portland State University - SIGN UP 
• Using TensorFlow in JAVA to Locate Scoring Objects on the FTC Field - Applying Deep Learning
• The focus in this hands-on workshop is writing code that recognizes and locates game pieces. It is a hands-on experience with TensorFlow. Students will modify code to make a robot more capable.  Along the way students will be introduced to Convolutional Neural Networks to help them understand how Deep Learning works.  
• Presented by Dr. Edward Epp, Oregon IEEE Robotics and Automation Chair 
• FTC Oregon is accepting applications for this workshop. Slots are limited to 12 per session. 
• Applications are submitted by the Team Mentor.  The Mentor can recommend a student or an adult mentor attend the workshop. 
• Our goal is to provide this opportunity to teams who have some autonomous Java programming skills but have not attempted using Tensor Flow or have not been successful.  
• CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE SIGN UP.  Open until NOON on Tuesday, September 24. 
• Please note: A lecture style presentation on Tensor Flow will be offered at FIRST Fair on October 19th at Gladstone HS. Because it will not be hands-on there are no restrictions on the number of attendees. 
• 2019-2020 FTC Oregon League, Tournament Schedule 
• We don't have all of the pieces to the puzzle in place but enough to release this to you. 
• CLICK HERE to see the current view of the League and Tournament Schedule 
• FIRST Fair - October 5th at Gladstone High School 
• WOW! There are LOTs of workshop offerings. And we are SO close to sharing them with you. The Class Descriptions, Schedule, Sign-ups. Only the FTC Programming workshops have Sign-ups, all other FTC sessions are open for who ever shows up.
   I expect everything  to be posted on THIS PAGE by Saturday morning, Sept 21.
• Skystone Mentor Letter 2019 - snail mailed. Today I mailed letters with stamps on them to all 2018 Lead Mentors and 2019/20 New Mentors for whom I could find a snail mail address.  Please take time to read it, especially if you are not getting the emails. :-)  If you are getting my emails you can click the link and read it.  It's a Catch-22. LOL!
• FTC EQUIPMENT FOR SALE: And Total Chaos will not be participating this season. Their coach is hoping to sell their equipment to teams that need it. Contact him at: Varad Josh - Varad.joshi (at)yahoo(dot)com Phone: 503-621-8420