The End of the Road...
Well, the Mindstorms Developer Program ends today. It's been a great experience and I have no complaints. I've made an invitation to other MDP members to join our blog as contributors in the hopes that we'll continue to see some new ideas and projects before the official retail release.
Our discussions are and will remain private - that was part of our agreement with LEGO. I think it's important to understand that one of our jobs was to find bugs - another was to put the product to some extreme testing. This was done so LEGO could make certain that the final retail version that hits shelves soon would be as good a product as they could make it.
I don't know anything more than you, but I can read between the lines in some of my email correspondence with LEGO employees - LEGO definitely has some surprises in store for us, and I get the impression that LEGO, too, has learned some lessons from RIS 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and the MDP experience and intends to put more energy into this new version. My guess is that LEGO will be releasing some expansion products sooner, rather than later, to keep the momentum going.
A while back, I posted a "Letter to LEGO" with some of my ideas. I'd like to invite you to add to it. I know that I've got some LEGO/Billund readers who visit the blog, so maybe some of your comments/suggestions might make a difference.
The end of the MDP does not mean the end of The NXT STEP. Brian, Matthias, and the rest of us will continue to keep you informed of any news related to NXT. And if you know of something that needs to be included, please email one of us. The amount of information is growing quick and I'm sure we can't find it all.
Time to go build a bot...
Jim
Our discussions are and will remain private - that was part of our agreement with LEGO. I think it's important to understand that one of our jobs was to find bugs - another was to put the product to some extreme testing. This was done so LEGO could make certain that the final retail version that hits shelves soon would be as good a product as they could make it.
I don't know anything more than you, but I can read between the lines in some of my email correspondence with LEGO employees - LEGO definitely has some surprises in store for us, and I get the impression that LEGO, too, has learned some lessons from RIS 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and the MDP experience and intends to put more energy into this new version. My guess is that LEGO will be releasing some expansion products sooner, rather than later, to keep the momentum going.
A while back, I posted a "Letter to LEGO" with some of my ideas. I'd like to invite you to add to it. I know that I've got some LEGO/Billund readers who visit the blog, so maybe some of your comments/suggestions might make a difference.
The end of the MDP does not mean the end of The NXT STEP. Brian, Matthias, and the rest of us will continue to keep you informed of any news related to NXT. And if you know of something that needs to be included, please email one of us. The amount of information is growing quick and I'm sure we can't find it all.
Time to go build a bot...
Jim
Comments
I created a model of the FIRST Lego League competition table in Google's free program sketchup. Not sure if this is the right audience, per se, but someone might find it useful.
Wanted to email it to you for posting, but I can't find your email address here on the blog. Shoot me an email and I'll reply back.
Jake Covert
jakecovert [at] gmail [dot] com
FLL's usually pretty tight about any competition information in order to keep a level playing field.
If this is for an upcoming challenges, it may not be wise to publically post it.
Jim
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Brian Davis