Journalism 133: Prof. Craig: Story Ideas Exercise, Part II

Story Ideas Exercise, Part II

1) FIRST Robotics Silicon Valley Regionals at SJSU Event Center
FIRST Robotics holds a competition at SJSU’s Provident Credit Union Event Center. Each high school competes to go to the District Championships. For the past 20 years, FIRST Robotics held a competition at the event center. The teams traveled from local areas, from around the state and from international areas. The competition season starts in the first week of January and each team has six weeks to prepare for each round of competition. Teams are given an instructional video informing them of what tasks their robots need to complete in order to win the competition.

Secondary Story Ideas:
- Mini documentary video series on following the teams throughout competition
- Find other cool robotic events

2) Associated Students Campus Community Garden’s 10th Birthday
Associated Students are having an event on May 4th to celebrate the community’s garden. There are a lot of vendors going around along with food and free merch to get, with stuff on a first come first serve basis.

Secondary Story ideas:
- Feature profile on the group
- Feature profile on the vendors
- See if the science departments connected to the event are doing anything interesting
- I.e. Gardening to grow vegetables for the culinary school or for Spartan Eats
- Other cool science events related to this event
- Maybe someone has a community garden. This can also turn into another feature profile

3) University having campus rules against “Commuters on Wheels” culture
Summary: All around the campus there are signs saying skateboarders, scooters and roller skaters from dismounting in multiple locations on campus. However, the campus appears to be too small to bike across and too large to walk across campus. It is also common for bikes to be stolen on campus. The demographics for skateboarding, scooters and roller skaters appear to still exist across campus. There are clubs for skateboarders and roller skaters. 

Secondary Story Ideas:
- Skateboarding culture on campus
- Plus history of skateboarding
- Why on earth do so many students like to use scooters?