Team Contests?

We're always looking for new things to do and initiatives.  One of the things you would have to do is figure out how this would work as far as how to promote ahead of the time to arrange people to get in teams, how long the competition would last, etc.  Next, could it work within a competition or would it be something separate.   There's been some creative ways of doing this with students and Design Challenges in the past and there was also Join The micro:bit Summer Code Club Challenge! to get educators to introduce coding to their classroom and in The Great micro:bit Education Giveaway - Project Highlights you can see great collaboration between classrooms. 

Personally,  I'd love to see a collaborative Rube Goldberg Competition.   If we had this as a theme option,  how would the collaboration work, and would people be left out (which we don't want to do) if they aren't able to find a team.  Or, should this be treated as a separate animal all together, like the way we do the Birthday Special and the Holiday Special.   If this were a special event when would be the best time to hold the Collaborative Rube Goldberg Competition?

Tariq,

To prevent people from being left out, we could have a draft to form the teams.  First everyone that was interested in competing could register, so we knew how many teams we should form.  Then we could have team captains, that would take turns selecting team members from the registered members, until the teams were formed.

In order to work out the collaboration, it would help if the project was multifaceted enough that there were enough pieces that could be accomplished individually.  The biggest problem that I see, is when all the pieces need to fit together and integrate into a whole system.  Fun to think about, but it might be a little difficult to pull together.

It might work.

Tariq,

To prevent people from being left out, we could have a draft to form the teams.  First everyone that was interested in competing could register, so we knew how many teams we should form.  Then we could have team captains, that would take turns selecting team members from the registered members, until the teams were formed.

In order to work out the collaboration, it would help if the project was multifaceted enough that there were enough pieces that could be accomplished individually.  The biggest problem that I see, is when all the pieces need to fit together and integrate into a whole system.  Fun to think about, but it might be a little difficult to pull together.

It might work.

"The biggest problem that I see, is when all the pieces need to fit together and integrate into a whole system."

I seem to recall that the Rube Goldberg Machine competition is more generally based around stand alone machines ( or video recordings of stand alone machines ), with each competition set on a theme / required action and that there is some ruling on energy transfer steps (e.g. ball -> switch -> fan -> balloon...) Generally machines are designed to complete a relatively simple task in the most inefficient and entertaining way possible. So if looking at machines that qualify for the above then one would be tied  to the official rulebook for that competition year.

However with the Lego RGM competition, I recall that there are two categories, the first similar to above to complete a task within a specified footprint and a second community category which is where different machines are joined together to make a large machine. There are rules about where the balls can enter and leave a machine and I think there is maximum ball rate limit to prevent a machine from stock piling then releasing all at one go and overloading the next machine.

So it partly depends on whether or not one is trying to stick with the existing RGM rules, or to try make it compatible with the Lego RGM community machines (in form factor but not materials), or whether  to come up with something completely independent.

Another option is to come up with something that has the potential to be integrated with existing competitions but under a new classification of machine. This might be a way to link into STEM projects in schools.

There appears to be 'The Great Ball Contraption' which is another RGM like set-up but limited to moving small balls around the circuit:

Great Ball Contraption LEGO World Copenhagen 2015 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYzuXJ0E4cA

The GBC standard is published here:

Standard - The Great Ball Contraption Wiki

Fischertechnik have their 'Funny Machines' chain reaction sets which is another take on this:

https://www.fischertechnik.de/en/products/playing/advanced/551588-advanced-funny-machines