Summer Happenings and Game Hints!

The FIRST Tech Challenge annual Game Kickoff is Saturday, September 12th at 12 noon ET this year and we hope that you will be celebrating at a Kickoff event or party in your area (and if not, join one online - more info as we get closer to the date).

In case you are a newcomer to FTC, welcome! Here's a little background information. Each year, FIRST Tech Challenge releases a new game that presents teams with fresh engineering and design challenges.  We keep the game secret until our Kickoff in September.  The Kickoff happens online, with the release of the game animation and season materials, and also at a growing number of live Kickoff events in your regions.

We are really excited to reveal this year's game at Kickoff, which is three months away still, but a lot of other exciting stuff is happening between now and then:

Intelitek has released the first New Technology Training Resource, with Part II coming out later this summer, and Part III coming out early fall.

The new FTC Kit of Parts, including the new technology, will begin to ship in just a few weeks (register your team and order yours today!).

Game Manual Part I comes out in early July. It will include the robot rules, tournament information, and awards descriptions. Be sure to read it cover to cover once it's out.

And on that topic, the updated Mentor Manual and FTC PushBot Guide will be released (available on the Team Resources webpage), so you'll have lots of FTC-related summer reading to help you plan and prepare for an outstanding season.

The second annual FTC Virtual Summer Conference Gear Up with FTC in the Classroom will be happening July 15 this year. Mark your calendar and watch for the release of presentations soon.

And of course, over the next few months, we get to tantalize your curiosity and thirst for hints about this year's game.

Beware the red herring!

While we keep the game super secret until Kickoff, but we do like to have a little fun with it here on the blog and over on our social media accounts. You may have seen this alluded to when people ask whether a certain post or comment is a "game hint."  From now until Kickoff, assume that each blog, tweet, facebook post contains a hint alluding to what the game is going to include for the 2015-2016 season.  As always, there might be a few red herrings to ramp up the fun.

Game hints might be in the title, pictures, text or anything else that we can find to use.  If you have guesses or ideas, leave comments on each post.  It's a lot of fun to see all the different guesses, and by the time the final week before Kickoff rolls around, someone usually has a guess that is pretty close to the actual game. Not that we let them know.

Good luck, have fun with this, and remember to keep guessing!

Wait, was that a hint?