Most importantly: October 11-13
So, who’s going? 
Count us in 
http://vexrobotics.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106&Itemid=89
Most useful stuff.
Oh and:
An interesting concept. New Zealand teams have been travelling to North America for years and making the competition here richer as a result, so I hope there will be many teams from around the world taking this opportunity to visit New Zealand and making this competition a success.
I am, however, unsure whether I like the idea of prize money for the tournament champions. I can appreciate how it is instinctive for teams to equate winning with financial reward and have been asked several times at events what “the prize” is for the winners, but I’ve always felt that that question displays an incomplete understanding of why robotics competitions, such as VRC, are valuable.
Quite frankly, I’ve never felt that any robotics competition that I’ve been involved in… FRC, FVC, FTC, FLL or VRC… was about “winning”. It was about helping students and society to advance their knowledge and appreciation of engineering and technology. The real prize doesn’t come from winning the tournament, but from the skills students gained in pursuit of success. Winning an event is nice, but rather than winning being the goal of the competion, the pursuit of victory was a means to achieving the goals of the competition.
This competition has pretty much come out and stated that the goal is to win. That’s fine, I suppose, but it represents a shift away from what motivates me to coach teams and volunteer at robotics events. Maybe thats a good thing… certainly opening the Olympics up to professional athletes seems to be working out okay… maybe it will draw more people in. But putting up prize money sets of some alarm bells that somewhere, someone is taking the idea of winning as an end in itself just a little bit too seriously.
I hope the competition works well. It looks like the organizers have some great ideas and, like I say, it’s about time the NZ teams got to play some international competitions on their home turf. I’m not suggesting a relatively small (when divided amongst team members) cash prize is a sign of impending apocalypse, but I do want to encourage team members to think about what truly motivates them… and also about what motivates the sponsors and volunteers that they rely upon in order to compete.
Jason
Great job!
dtengineering, you have a good point about the money. Think of it as more an incentive to come, as it is a long journey for teams to make. I really hope that all the teams that come along are not just doing it for the prize money; i wouldn’t expect them too, the vex community is great!
I hope to see many teams there!
It suppose it might take a bit of incentive to get someone to make that looong trip for the first time, but strangely everyone I’ve met who’s been to New Zealand is ever so willing to return!
Heck, I’ve only been there briefly, as a stopover on my way to Australia… but am really looking forward to getting back for a visit some time when I’ve got the chance to really explore.
A big warning to all those teams considering going… you might just find it such an awesome place that you’ll regret not having planned to stay longer!
Jason
This is fantastic that someone started the post about the VEX Robot World Cup. We were planning to make an announcement about it in a week or so but as the ‘cat is out of the bag’ we may as well let people know that this is a fantastic event for VEX worldwide. As the world’s media will be looking for things to report on between Rugby Games we believe the VEX Robot World Cup will fill the gap for them.
The prize money was discussed at length and has been put up to specifically help the team that wins it get to the 2012 VEX Worlds in Los Angeles. The organisation that is sponsoring the prize (will be formally announced soon) has noticed the fantastic effect that VEX is having around New Zealand (and the world) and wanted to create a stir in the community that would get noticed by the international media. A substantial prize raises the profile of the competition with the result that more people will get to hear about it and will be able to benifit from becomming involved. Once they are involved they will learn the true values that we (the VEX community) hold dear and find out the real benifits of being involved in the competition.
The Robot World Cup is going to be a blast and there are heaps of things that we are working on that will be announced shortly. Please SERIOUSLY start thinking about comming to NZ to visit and compete.
I want to say more but I have to wait until the deals are set in stone before publishing them.