The 2018 Turkish Robotics Off-Season was held on October 19-22nd, 2018 at Ülker Spor ve Etkinlik Salonu. The game played was FIRST PowerUp!
The event hosted 61 teams, making it the largest event we’ve ever held. Twenty-seven of the competing teams were new to the program. This event has helped spark incredible growth in Turkey this year, taking us from 53 teams in the 2018 Season to 81 in the 2019 Season, a net growth of 28. The event also spurred us to establish a second regional for Turkey – The Bosphorus Regional.
The 2018 Off-Season followed the same format as the preceding 3 Off-Seasons. The Kickoff (that doubled as a mini-off-season) was held September 6-9 2018, at the GameX convention at TÜYAP Convention Center. The event again used the same year’s official FIRST® Game, allowing for easy management of the event. This event also allowed us to test the capacity of our venue for how many teams it can hold, which we may need to utilize as we grow.
The Kickoff for the 2018 Off-Season was a unique event for the foundation – as the organizers of the GameX convention invited us to hold a FIRST Robotics Competition event at their convention, at no cost to the Foundation. We were able to not only hold a kickoff, but hold workshops and set up a field and pits and have demonstration matches for all four days of the convention.
