Well the organizers finally went ahead with the 2020 robotics competition this weekend (only 3 months late!). And in my opinion it was a huge success. We did the entire thing via Zoom by putting each team into their own Breakout Rooms. We asked each team to set up a laptop camera to capture the playing field and use a phone camera for getting close-ups for scoring. Some of the team members were able to get together to run the robot by wearing masks.
Others logged in just like the refs, from home. We saw a lot of basement-backgrounds. I give those coaches a lot of credit trying to coordinate 10 kids virtually.
But once the competition started, it was almost like being back in the gymnasium. You totally forget about the computer. We had our usual mix of creativity and imagination from the Girl Scout teams, as well as crazy costumes from some of the refs. Even a pandemic can't keep a group of nerds from having fun.
