This year's SIGCSE has a new event called "Experience It!" where participants can get hands-on experience trying new software and hardware for computer science education. This year's focus is on easy-to-use robotics for use in all levels of computer science education: from introductory courses, on up through senior thesis projects. Experience It! will be hosted in the exhibit hall at the "Playground." Here you will get one-on-one expert-guided assistance in a variety of hardware and software. Experience It! will also host a grand finale event where participants can demonstrate a short, but entertaining, robot program. We're trying to improve last year's very successful event in three specific ways: Be more visible Get more people to have a hands-on experience Be less complicated The focus of our program will all be in the exhibit hall this year. We're going to have a big booth with tables and chairs for one-on-one demonstrations (see Experience It! Space). Participants will be able to stop by the exhibit hall booth any time the exhibit hall is open and try out a robot. We'll have fewer robots, but each will have a laptop to make getting started easier.

Ambassadors, will occupy the booth during the official conference breaks when they can have the most impact. Ideally, each ambassador will leave two robots and laptops in the booth so that people can stop by and use them whenever they like, without having to install software, etc.

The booth will be "open" whenever the exhibit hall is open, but real our focus will be during the breaks. There are 5 breaks and we'd like ambassadors to commit to spending at least 3 of those breaks in the booth. We suggest that each ambassador also bring along two additional robots that they can loan out to individuals to experiment with outside the booth. We're going to have another "grand finale" event immediately before the luncheon. More on that below.

• AR Drone Quadcopter
• Calliope
• Finch
• Hemmisson
• iRobot Create
• LEGO Mindstorms NXT
• Nao humanoid robot
  
• Scribbler with Fluke (Java)
• Scribbler with Fluke (Python, Jigsaw, Scheme)
• Sun SPOT
• Tetrix
  
• ZeroBrane

Here's what we hope Ambassadors will be able to contribute:

• Bring four robots and two laptops with you - two robots and the laptops would stay in the exhibit hall. The other two are for you to loan out to interested individuals
• Create some "getting started" materials so that if someone wants to try out your robot and you're not there they have an easy way to do so.
• Commit to being in the booth during 3 of the 5 scheduled breaks. We found last year that many people were reluctant to try out a robot without some encouragement from an expert.
• Poster and fliers about your robot

SIGCSE Scheduled Break and Exhibit Times

Thursday, March 1, 2012:
10 am - 10:45am
3pm - 3:45pm

Friday, March 2, 2012:
10 am - 10:45am
3pm - 3:45pm

Saturday, March 3, 1012:
10:10am - 10:55am