Sneak Peek: Inventioneers' World Festival Tournament Tips

The Inventioneers are developing a newsletter for teams invited to the World Festival for the first time. If your team has qualified and is making its first trip to the FLL World Festival this coming April, send us a newsletter request at TheInventioneers@yahoo.com for insider tips to a fun and successful World Festival experience!

Merry Christmas from the Inventioneers!

Jr. FLL Event Coordinated by Inventioneers Team Member

This season, Inventioneers' team member TJ created an innovative Jr. FLL curriculum and used it in coaching three Jr. FLL teams. The program was a great success. TJ was ably assisted by team members Jaiden and Bryeton, and the Jr. FLL Young Engineers program ran for 12 weeks in partnership with the Southern NH Montessori Academy (SNHMA).

For the finale, TJ organized the SNHMA Jr. FIRST LEGO League Exhibition at the school on December 15th. To top the season off, Ms. Dana Chism, Jr. FLL Global Program Manager was the "celebrity" reviewer for the day. Thanks Ms. Chism!

Inventioneers Win Young Adult Mentor Award

We want to thank all the teams who nominated us for the Young Adult Mentor Award at the NH State FLL tournament last weekend! It was great to receive the award from two presenters who are very special to us - Mr. Skye Sweeney and Ms. Kerry Creeden!

We were completely surprised because we were only thinking about giving an award (see post below) and were not thinking of receiving one! We have devoted collectively almost 2000 hours to helping new teams and promoting FLL in the past year and we only wish we had more time! (click image below for full story.)

We were thrilled to see so many of the teams we have helped at the tournament and want to say congratulations to all with high 5's to some of the teams we mentored this year: Holy Cow for their second place Presentation Award, Pantocraters for their Rookie Award, Sapientia Venatores for their first place Teamwork Award, and the Black Holes for their awesome fourth place ranking on the table!

Inventioneers Award First Annual Patent Scholarship

What a great time we had at the NH State FLL Championship Tournament! We slept in (we got to the tournament at the crack of 9 a.m.) since we weren't competing, gathered our camera equipment, and once we were at the tournament, we got to work on shooting the footage for our new project video! So many people came up to us to say hi and to say thanks for all the support, mentoring and training we have provided to them over the years.

The Inventioneers Big Idea Patent Scholarship Trophy

Then it was on to the Inventioneers Big Idea Patent Scholarship Award. We took the floor with our partner Attorney Vern Maine to present the award. We had an awesome trophy made which we customized - it was cool (see photo above). Congratulations to the winners - the Lego Mind Freaks from Manchester! They have a cool heart monitor device which they will be able to obtain a provisional patent on with the help of Attorney Maine and his staff. They were ecstatic and we were so happy to make this scholarship possible. Stay tuned for more on patent scholarships for next season! (click image below for the whole story)

The Inventioneers, scholarship sponsor Vern Maine,

and the scholarship winners, the Lego Mind Freaks

Our Column: Dear Inventioneers

This Week's Topic: Robot Performance Consistency

Dear Inventioneers,

Our robot missions will work 5 times in a row one day and then the next day will not work! It is very frustrating to us. How can we get our robot to perform more consistently?

Compiled from multiple teams from NH, VA and CA.

Dear Teams,

Robot reliability is a challenge every team faces - both veteran and rookie. It's one of the reasons coaches are tempted to provide too much "help" to the team - it can be so frustrating. There is only one secret to reliability. Here it is . . .