Introduction

Every VEX Robotics Competition event a team attends exists because somebody decided to host it. Not a governing body, not a league office. A teacher with a gym, a parent with a community center, a coach who got tired of driving two hours to compete. Event Partners are the reason there is a competition season at all.

A season needs places to go. Teams can build all year, but a robot that never leaves the room it was made in is only ever measured against itself. Your event is where a team meets forty other kids working on the same problem, sees six other answers to it, and finds out what their own work can do in a room full of peers who understand exactly how hard it was.

As an Event Partner, you will not referee matches, score them, or run a field. Your work is making it possible for other people to do those things well: choosing a date and a venue, recruiting volunteers and telling them what to expect, building a schedule the day can actually hold, and then, on event day, being the one person who sees the whole room.

This course is designed to help you:

• Describe what happens at a VEX Robotics Competition event and why each part of the day matters.
• Apply the Student-Centered Policy, Code of Conduct, and Youth Protection Policy to the decisions you make as an Event Partner.
• Plan an event — date, venue, budget, staffing, and schedule — and understand how those choices depend on one another.
• Post your event and prepare for event day.
• Run your event and complete the work that follows it.

The Structure of this Course

Event Partner Certification has two parts —basic and advanced. This section covers hosting a local qualifying event, which is where nearly every Event Partner starts and serves as the basis for other advanced events like Signature and Championship events. These chapters cover elements like: what an event is and what you are committing to, how match play fits into a day, what has to happen around match play, how to plan your event, and how to run it. After the final chapter you will complete a Certification Exam and earn your Event Partner certificate.

The next chapters build on this foundation with the event types that have their own requirements — Spotlight Events, Signature Events, and Championship Events. Local events are the prerequisite.

This course does not replace the Global Robotics & Science Foundation Library or your Program Support Team. The Library holds the procedures, checklists, and step-by-step instructions you will use when you host, and lessons link to the relevant articles throughout. Your Program Support Team is working with you every step of the way to ensure your event is a success. The course teaches the reasoning behind the procedures — the decisions, the tradeoffs, and the questions to ask — so that when you open an article you know what you are looking for.

The course is self-paced and should be completed in the order presented, since each chapter builds on the one before it. Check Your Understanding questions appear throughout to help you monitor your progress and review before moving on.

Thank you for taking this on. Hosting an event is real work, and every team in your region competes because somebody in your position was willing to do it.

The time to complete this chapter is approximately 30 minutes.

In This Chapter

This chapter establishes what a VEX Robotics Competition event is and what you are agreeing to when you host one. You will walk through a full event day, learn about what student-centered means for VEX Robotics Competitions, and see how a single local event connects to the season around it.