Information Technology
Formerly the Website Team, the Information Technology Team is in charge of not only the website, but various other projects. The IT team is also responsible for preparing the Programming Team’s laptops, Autodesk License management, and our Regional scouting system. Here are some full explanations of what we do:
Website:
The Information Technology team is responsible for the design and functionally of our team site. We use programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks extensively. To create all of the graphics we used Photoshop CS4. The team website is powered by WordPress, an open source content management system. In the winter of 2009 we redesigned and revamped the entire team website.
Scouting:
The IT team also creates our regional scouting site. During the matches at Regionals and the FIRST Championship our team collects quantitative match data, and stores it in a MySQL database. We share all of this scouting data with all the other teams at the competition, so that they can use it to develop their pre-game strategies.
Programming Laptops:
With the aid of the Technology Dept. in our high school district, the IT team was given ‘new’ laptops that we prepared for use by the Programming team. This included, but not limited to, adding RAM to the PCs, and creating an image of a fully prepped system, complete with LabView, Microsoft Office 2003 Professional, and all other programs our programmers might need. This allows for our programmers to be successful in their important task of programming the robot.
License Management:
Another job of the IT team is to manage all the licenses that FIRST provides to us. We make sure we are using licenses appropriately, and on the correct computers. For example, we make sure that only 10 machines have Autodesk Inventor, 5 have 3D Studio Max, and all programming laptops have LabView, WindRiver, and all other programs.
Leaders: Anthony (CEO), Michael S.
