Watt's Up Musings of an original geek

I spent the day as a FIRST Lego League (FLL) volunteer. It was an all day event from 7:15 AM to 5:30 PM. This was a Lego robotics competition called Power Puzzle. There were about 60 teams comprised of 3-10 elementary and middle school children and two adult coaches. I was a judging room monitor. I wasn’t a judge. I just helped make the judges better. There were two judges, and two monitors for each room. One monitor worked the door lining up the teams, and the other one did the timing. I was a timer. This allowed me to watch the teams work. As a timer I started the stop watch when the team entered, called out five, two and one minutes to go, and stop when it was all over. I helped in the technical room in the morning where the teams were judged about their robot’s design and implementation. Then I helped in the teamwork room in the afternoon where the the teams had to build a non-robotic figure on the spot with movable arms and legs while being judged for their cooperation. There were lots of other things going on, much like a geeky sporting event, including head-to-head non-destructive robot competitions and research presentations/skits. It wasn’t hard, but it was fun especially watching the young people being so creative