The dust has cleared. The trophies and plaques have been handed out. Northeast Alabama BEST Robotics 2013 is finished.
What a great competition season and ten great Northeast Alabama BEST teams! We are grateful for the grace and class with which you conduct yourselves.
Though our parent organization, Best Robotics, Inc. sometimes sits quietly in the background with little recognition, we would like to recognize the many ways in which they make this whole thing possible.
First of all, there are a number of robotics competitions out there. We could have selected to work with any of them. But one competition and national organization stood out to us. First of all, the executive director at the time, Dr. George Blanks of Auburn University, reached out to me personally to ask if Northeast Alabama Community College would be willing to host a hub to serve the northeast corner of Alabama. Those of you who know George know that he is very convincing and is very passionate about BEST and what it does in our communities. After one visit to South's BEST in 2011, we drank the proverbial BEST Robotics "Kool-Aid". Though I don't yet know the current executive director, Tom Fitzmaurice, as well as I do George, I have found him to be accessible and passionate about BEST and its future.
When you join BEST you enter into a license agreement that allows you to use the BEST name, logo, game, resources, etc. as part of your robotics competition. But you really get more than that. When you join BEST you join a family of BEST hubs across the nation. This connects you with others in the BEST family and provides a vast array of resources from all the BEST hubs who are willing to share their time, effort, and resources to help make your hub successful. We are not reinventing the wheel here at Northeast Alabama BEST. We are using the resources provided by various hubs to leverage time and effort to make BEST even better for you.
We, at Northeast Alabama BEST Robotics, wish to thank BEST Robotics, Inc. for all they do to help make our hub succesful, sustainable, and integrated into the BEST family. Please feel free to send them a note of thanks also, should you feel led. Their contact information is shown below:
BEST Robotics, Inc.
Twitter: @Bestrobotics
Google +BEST Robotics
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BESTRobotics
