Your Weekly Get Up & Go has been Updated

Posted by Meaghan Likes 
on Oct 30, 2015
 
Weekly News & Views by: Dick Bourne
Photographs by: Jim Belenis
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     As we began gathering upstairs at the “O Hall” on this last Friday of October, our audio let out a great burping burst of static that brought us all to attention; but soon Andrew Yang had the wild beast under control and soothed us with his piano play, rolling finally into our traditional opening vocals, led with gusto by an energetically-roaming Chuck Snipes.  Next, President Gary Johns became vocal too, searching first (in vain) for visiting Rotarians and then, more successfully, for guests.  In addition to our speaker group from Davis High (to be introduced later), Gary welcomed Melonie and Ellen from the campus Rotaract club, and Arta and Aram, the younger generation of Keith Watenpaugh’s familiar and always-welcome family.
     Gary soon let us know that to promote on-time attendance at DHS, our normal schedule would turn upside-down, with speakers following announcements, thus leap-frogging the sergeants.  (As these minutes will ultimately show, our members kept questioning the speakers long enough to keep the dreaded fine-extracters completely off the floor.)  After Gary held aloft a postcard from Roy Kroener vacationing in Hanelei Bay, Vanessa Errecarte urged all to participate in two upcoming workdays at Progress Ranch, 11/5 and 11/7 (next Thursday and Saturday) from 1pm to 4:30pm and 8:30am to noon, respectively.  The Ranch is at 2725 Loyola Drive, where our crafty team will be repairing things we built before (but not last week!).  Vanessa claimed that our work productivity peaks on Tuesday at noon, so it’s all downhill by Thursday and a good day to join up…
     Melonie and Ellen from Rotaract encouraged us to participate in their pre-Turkey Day potlock event at 7 PM on Tuesday 11/24, in Olson Hall on campus; Gary noted that if we cook and bring something delicious, it will count as a hospitality event; and maybe replace one of Dick Berry’s black Friday events?  Offering Dick a bit of rebuttal time, Gary received precious little response.  Perhaps the energies of our super-senior member were (foolishly, as it turned out) being held in reserve for Spartan Happy Bucks?  But we moved on, as treasurer-for-life Tom Read announced to applause that we had received $3,900 as our “Fair share” of beer booth revenue.  WOW!
     After Gary thanked Vanessa for her role in securing our grant from Empower Yolo, Nikki Grey-Rutamu announced an International Services Committee meeting Wednesday 11/4 at Susanne Rockwell’s house, 224 Jasmine Court. A Nepal global grant will be on the agenda. Nikki also announced a Youth Services Committee meeting the week after; date TBD.  One date that is determined, as attested by Dave Heard, is next year’s Oc/ktoberfest set for, believe it or not, 10/1.  That’s right, this event will actually occur in October!!  (Editor’s Note/Rant: Really Dick, still opposing the original Germanic spelling of Oktoberfest?  If that's the case then we should probably discuss proper spelling alternatives for the following “American” expressions, that have retained their Germanic spelling.You know for consistency sake of future issues of the Get Up & Go… Examples off the top of my head include: Kindergarten, doppelganger, angst, bratwurst, gesundheit, wiener schnitzel & wunderbar. Just teasing Dick – well, sort of).
     Nathalie Minya Mukome updated us in brief on the young boys and girls underwear drive (which this reporter has largely missed) that bears our continuing support. (We see what you did there…) Chuck Snipes polled our intentions to join him for Saturday’s Georgia/Florida game, announcing his commitment to be “filling growlers tonight”; he already has the “gator balls” ready.  Soily minds snickered, and football minds wondered about under-inflation.  The last announcement was Gary’s notice that RI President Ravi will speak in San Jose on January 3rd; Gary can reserve tables to hear this dynamic speaker; let him know.
     And then…on to the program, as Larry Olsen introduced our guest speakers representing the Davis High School Robotics team, now famous as “Team 1678, Citrus Circuits.”  Students Sophia Stockburger, Megan Yamoah, and Kelly Ostrom wore team t-shirts, unlike teacher/advisor/mentor Pete Harvey.  These folks are the 2015 World Champions!  After a short time waiting to resolve technical difficulties (Andrew Yang to the rescue) the team showed a recap video highlighting their march to the championship.  They were second-seeded in their regional qualifying round, but had ten winning events in the “Newton Division”, enough to win and advance to the Einstein round, which they also won to advance to the finals where they won it all to become World Champions.
     Robotics competition in public schools has become quite well-developed. All of it is organized by FIRST, started by Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers.  The highest level, FRC (“First Robotics Competition”) hosts the “varsity” contests at the high school level.  (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Robotics_Competition for more information.)  FTC (First Tech Challenge) is for grades 7-12 and uses smaller robots.  The lowest level is FLL (First Lego League).  For the FRC, the season is:
  1. Build, 6 weeks
  2. Competitions, 10 weeks; proceeding from Valley to Sac Regional to Silicon Regional, then Worlds in St. Louis.
  3. Off-Season: more competitions, training, outreach and recruiting.
     While DHS has 60 students on the team, they can only take 20 to the competitions. Outreach is all student-led; they go to the Farmer’s Market, Homeless Shelter (see the Q&A for more on thisLive Stream, the WISTEM Conference focused on how to recruit girls, Fall Workshops (spreading knowledge to other teams), Woodland FRC, FLL (First Lego League), Summer Camps (demos to elementary school students). The Davis team puts considerable time and effort into helping other teams, including Woodland, Winters and Lodi (started by the DHS team).  Looking forward, Davis hopes to increase their STEM outreach; they now have 23 FLL teams in Davis.  They’d like also to win the “Chairman’s award”, and to repeat as World Champions.
     The team was funded last year to the tune of $140K, most of which went to travel; they also have significant expenses for equipment, operations and fees.  Their income comes from UC Davis, parents, and local businesses, who contributed $38K this year.  Their direct team fundraising efforts included selling bulbs at the Farmers Market, operating the Central Park carousel, pleas to parents, a Rotary raffle, and sponsorships.  They have experienced strong growth recently, expanding to Winters and Woodland, and down to junior high and elementary schools.  Surprise- they would love more support from us.
     After a brief demo of their winning robot’s skill at rapidly stacking a garbage can and plastic cartons, the speakers opened up to questions, which flew by too swiftly for this aging reporter to note each query’s originator.  But here is what else we learned from this back-and-forth:
  1. They save the old robots, though some are raided for parts
  2. Only certain motors and controllers are allowed; a specific computer is required; for other parts, anything goes. 
  3. As a community service, they have developed a Web app that will allow police to find empty beds for the homeless. It is now coming into use in Davis, and they hope to extend it soon to Woodland and other nearby cities.
  4. Vanessa asked how they feel about a California 2019 requirement for student “coding”; they support this.
  5. They invest 5 hours per week in meetings, then often work 9-5 Saturdays and Sundays at robotics.
  6. The winning robot’s name is Lemon Drop (citrus, after all)- She’s the champ!
     They encouraged us to attend an FLL scrimmage Sunday at the DHS South Gym.  AND, they foreclosed the sergeants…reducing our internal fundraising, hmmm…on the positive Rotary funding side, with the draw-of-the-day worth $925, Bud Harmon’s draw won a free breakfast, thus keeping the day’s revenues in the pot.  
     As a grand finale, Gary noted that next week, we will be exploring Mars.  Bring warm clothes!