Written by: Audrey T
Preparing for the Fair
Attending the State Fair is a beloved team tradition! The Minnesota State Fair is often recognized as one of the best in the country, making it a great place to demo our robot. In addition to almost all-day demonstrations, we also enter our robot, Dippy, for a chance to win a blue ribbon. This means Dippy had to be in peak condition before the event. Thanks to our engineering team’s hard work, we had our bot ready to go for this long event! If you want to learn more about how our team fixes up Dippy for events, keep your eye out for a blog post coming soon!
State Fair Fun Fact: The State Fair sells 35 miles of hot dogs each year when measured end to end.
At the Fair
Once we reached the fair, we had our work cut out for us. Luckily, we weren’t doing it alone! We had BeastBot, frc team 2855, with us. Between the two of us, we had 18 students to help demo robots and introduce people to FIRST! It wouldn’t be a robotics event without a few technical difficulties, so we were grateful that we had another team there to help! We gave them two of our clipboards to use on their robot; they gave us a quarter twenty for ours, and we were able to lend them a soldering iron.
State Fair Fun Fact: Approximately 200 events take place on the fairgrounds during non-fair time each year!
Attendance did not disappoint! There were 50,000 people, making this our most-attended event by a landslide. Our team members worked all day to ensure anyone interested would be able to learn anything they wanted! From driving robots to going into the crowds to engage the attendees, we had everything covered. We had 14 members working the event, sharing their passions and getting everyone excited about robotics.
Due to the rain, we were unable to participate in the parade ourselves this year. However, that didn’t stop us! Our team members left a cutout of our robot, nicknamed “Dipstick,” to be marched into a parade by teams that would be coming to the fair on a later date. What’s more MN State Fair than a robot on a stick? That wasn’t the only visual we had put together. Along with our robot, we brought a poster board with more information on the team and images showcasing past events. The board allowed for information on our team to be shared even without members there to present!
Everyone’s hard work paid off, we walked away with a blue ribbon in mechanical!
