Education Marketing Manager, Amy Mollison, sent employees this message last week.

The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science & Technology) Robotics Competition is a program that brings together high school student teams with mentors, volunteers, and technical professionals to design and build a robot in six weeks that meets a defined engineering challenge, in a competitive game environment. The competition combines the practical application of science, technology, and engineering with the fun, intense energy, and excitement of a championship-sporting event. This year marks the 19th season of Autodesk’s support for FIRST.

The Regional season begins the weekend of March 3, 2011 and runs until April 9, 2011. There is a local Regional event being held in a city near you, where you can join teams, volunteers and other sponsors as they watch these teams compete. These events are a lot of fun, a great way to get to know your local FIRST teams and staff, plus fun for the whole family to attend. The season began with the unveiling of the 2011 game at the kickoff events and the short six (6) week build season began at that time as well.

If you work in the San Francisco office, you have the option to go to the following Regional event(s):

• Sacramento Regional
  UC Davis ARC Pavilion
  Davis, CA
  March 17 - 19*, 2011

• Silicon Valley Regional
  San Jose State University
  San Jose, CA
  March 31 - April 2*, 2011

  *Day of Final Rounds

Thanks Amy. My wife, some neighbors who are UC Davis graduates, and I will be attending on the 19th.

The Autodesk Gallery has a FIRST exhibit that features a robot from Gunn High School in Palo Alto. Their robot stacks boxes but also has wings that extend to knock over the stacks created by the opposing robot. This is indeed a competition after all.

The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.

Dancing like a robot is alive in the lab.