• Welcome to Redshift Project Depot.
 

Halloween Theme - Activities, Decorations, etc.

Started by Shreya C, July 17, 2016, 02:48:43 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Shreya C

Below is a list of all the ideas we came up with of things that we can do to tie in our Halloween theme.


  • Halloween party, perhaps after hours?

    • When will this party be?
    • Where will it be?
  • Haunted House/Corn maze - maybe consult CenterStage for help?
  • Potential game twist - collect candy-corn-colored balls that will raise your score
  • Costume contest - could tie into awards: best dressed team, best Woodie Flowers look-alike, etc.
  • Additional aesthetic elements: music, lights, smoke generators, someone running around dressed as a killer bunny (heh), etc.
  • Make it a trick or treating event; every team is asked to bring some candy to their pits for kids walking around
  • Science fair/expo with other clubs at the high school - can do science-related things that also tie-in to halloween (i.e. make slime!)
  • Other potential events for little kids?

    • Maybe a maze race with little vex robots?

While we're at it, I also made a list of other cool activities/features we'd like to introduce to our competition (that are not necessarily related to the theme):

  • Halftime show with U-Turn?
  • STEM Expo with other clubs
  • Machine shop run by teammates -- if you need spare part, need to use certain tools, etc. we're here!
  • Mini-maze:

    • Can release specs beforehand, get people to make their own robots, bring them to the competition, and have a side contest
    • Can have parts there for people to build robots during lunch
    • Could also have people just race the robots through the maze

  • Could have FLL chassises, and other elements that kids could attach to the chassis
  • Scratch on laptops so kids can play with drag and drop programming, maybe set-up in band & chorus rooms, need volunteers
  • Scavenger hunt app!

    • Sort of like fed-ex challenges, but digitized
    • Need to talk to certain people, go to certain places, do certain activities
    • Afterwards, you scan a QR code & get points
    • Accumulate the most points and get a prize!

  • Snapchat geofilter for the duration of the competition

Sarah A

In order to make this a memorable competition, we need to target what teens of this day and age love to do (besides robotics, of course). And what do a lot of teens use? Snapchat.
Basically, Snapchat has this thing where you can purchase a geofilter for a specific amount of time, and you get to design it and stuff. The cost depends on the design and the amount of time you want the filter to be active.
The design could include Halloween elements and our competition name, and hopefully we can get our resident art guru (Hi Veronica) to do it.
I think it would be really cool to have our own filter because as far as I know, no other competition has done it (yet) although someone did try to get this going for worlds.  :)

Louis L

Sarah,
I love the idea of using modern day devices and/or apps to make things fun!


Veronica G

Wow, I'd be very open to designing a Snapchat geofilter! In terms of social media, there are a lot of ways to get the word out, during the competition and before it (advertising). Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are some of the mediums I think would work really well. Snapchat has been a pivotal social media platform in recent years, so a geofilter would be awesome!

I think having themed awards or accomplishments would really work with a Halloween themed competition. Imagine getting a shoutout for team spirit based on costumes, facepaint, the overall team aesthetic. It'd be an extension of what people already do at competitions. Costume contests are also cool, and to boost the spirit opportunities, we could even branch out to having honorable mentions for specific costumes... Best Comic Book Character, Best Woodie Flowers Lookalike... It'd really encourage people to have fun with it.

Since it's also Halloween themed, this could also encourage people to really bring things to hand out, not just buttons and the like. You could simulate trick or treating in the pits, and really overall put focus on the community aspect of competitions. 

Of course, these are just wide possibilities, and depends on the participation and enthusiasm of other teams, plus planning on our part. I think just in general, no matter the theme, something that could set apart our competition from other off-season events is a higher focus on the creative and cooperative parts of competitions. 

Veronica G

#4
Also, depending on how much of a focus we end up having on graphics + design + all that, I'm open to designing t-shirts, special buttons, pins, etc. Anything that needs to be branded, even if it includes figuring out the brand itself. I have a few ideas, but I'm here as a resource if anyone is interested in graphical work. Also, I do know some people who are into graphic design/can use those programs, so I needn't do everything by myself.

Sarah A

So as I sit here bored at work, ideas about this keep coming to me 😝.
Anyways, I think one thing we really need to promote at our competition is bonding between teams. Since we are targeting freshmen, we should show them what the whole gracious professionalism spiel is all about.
I think one idea that was mentioned was the pit trick or treating, as in we ask teams to bring their own candy/pins and people go around and collect. That would be really cool if people actually got into it, but there may be a potential mess of candy wrappers in the pits. I think this goes along with the whole costume thing. I think someone suggested that teams try to coordinate costumes or whatnot and we give prizes?
Another idea I had was for the scavenger hunt thing. Instead of making an app or whatever, why don't we use the power of social media? Also instead of having people find lame stuff around the area, we should give them a series of tasks to do and have them take pictures while doing so. Examples would be "take a picture with a judge" or "do the Macarena in the spy box" or "do the cotton eyed joe with another team". It'll be a fun way to meet new people, and they could post the pics on Twitter or something along with a hashtag.
And if we do end up wanting to do something for the younger kids (Gibbons, Elementary, random people), the NXT and EV3 build/program thing would be a good idea, but we would need kits for that. I know shrewsbury has a lot because of their FLL teams, and we could ask to borrow some for that specific day. We could build simple chassis and have others make their own attachments and program the bots to go on the trash trek field. Then again, the kits contain A LOT of small parts and losing them is such a pain. If we do this, then we need volunteers to watch the kids.
Also, decorations! Are we going to decorate the gyms with Halloween decor, and if so... How?
I was thinking we could put random Halloween decor around the gym (maybe make it a part of our scavenger hunt). We could also turn down the lights in the main gym for a creepier effect. As Shreya suggested, we could have someone in a killer bunny costume (Hi Saty). We can do so much with decorations, but I don't want to overwhelm Veronica with all that. Maybe we can get someone to help her?
And finally (for now 😀) the music playlist. I know FIRST has this pdf with a listed competition songs to play (and not to play), but a lot of it is outdated and/or boring. I can make a google doc and list songs that we can play (appropriate songs, of course) using the FIRST list and people's suggestions. I was thinking maybe we could put more Halloweenish songs such as Monster Mash to go with our theme.

Louis L

Thinking about this some more...

I had mentioned the killer bunny thing but it may not be a good idea if we're talking about younger kids. Remember it's all about the audience. But maybe we can turn that around and play a round of Killer Bunnies https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Bunnies-Quest-Carrot-Starter/dp/B0002V82O8 (my girls think it's a great game; me I think it's meh)

One thing I touched on at our first meeting was the notion the some day we may want to have other teams in the area run the competition. What I didn't mention is the notion of partnering with another team to run the competition. It's something that's been mentioned informally before. I haven't mentioned yet simply because I wanted everyone to see the scope of this project. Remember what I said about depth and breadth. We're going to have a lot of breadth (lots of different things going on that need our attention). We can deal with these with careful planning and lots of volunteers. Other things will have a lot of depth (those items that have a long lead time; lots of prep time). These are harder to deal with. We should consider working with other teams if we think that's the best way to go.

FYI - I have a Halloween music CD somewhere and a smoke machine :) For those who were not at the first meeting, music will be carefully selected to avoid that weird stuff some of you listen to  ;D 

Shreya C

Sarah -- really good points, especially with the trash in the trick or treating. Hopefully we'll have enough trash cans! :)

I think using Twitter for a scavenger hunt is a really good alternative if we can't get the app to work, but an app would be excellent and definitely special. We could also offer the Twitter scavenger hunt as an alternative in case someone at the competition cannot download the app.

Music & decorations were discussed at the first meeting and I think that Mr. Lung addressed that :)

Mr. Lung - Love the idea of playing Killer Bunnies! looks really cute :D And easy to set up.

Shreya C

Also Twitter might not work because we will not be allowing access to the school wifi network...

Sarah A

With the whole wifi thing, people are going to use data anyways to access social media and stuff for themselves. And I know from experience that downloading an app takes up WAY more data than using social media for like an hour.

Shreya C

Right, but we want the scavenger hunt to be accessible to all people, even if they don't have data. We could always advertise the app beforehand and have them download the app beforehand.

Jameel G

What do many robotics people love to do when there is a break at competition? Frisbee! Many people come out to either play casual or play a game against other teams. Maybe we could have teams sign up for a mini tournament bracket style Frisbee competition during the lunch break or something like that and have teams play each other and whoever wins gets to play the home team - us :)

Just a thought.  :)

Lucas V

#12
Hello fellow humans,

I propose a method to this scavenger hunt that will not involve any type of networking at all and may make our lives a little easier. Although, it will not be capable of running though twitter like other FRC scavenger hunts.

I am thinking of a simple mobile app. We could make clues and stops based on qr codes: have the user go to places and tag the qr codes, which the program will read and give the next clue. eventually, the last clue will lead to the final place to go, where the first people to physically arrive will claim prizes (or something). The app would display a specific code or message that will prove to us that the user has read all qr codes (found all the clues) necessary in order to have discovered the last place on their own.

This method will require no wifi, data, bluetooth, anything beyond qr codes. We could have an app for iPhone and Android, but that will probably require two different software teams and a bunch of people learning iOS dev for the iphone version of the app.

I would love to work on this app :)

PS: going with what Shreya said earlier, maybe we should advertise this app in the registration website or something so people download before coming to the competition.