Contacting a FIRST Team

[ttldomination]

Anyone here notice that it's extremely difficult to contact a FIRST team in your area?

Sure, you can use the FIRST place to find the teams that operate around you, but actually reaching out those programs to open a dialog can be extremely challenging.

For me, I've become a bit of a pro at hunting down teams, but it's not been easy. I have to really hope that a team has an active webpage with an active email address. However, if that doesn't work out, which doesn't most of the times, then I'm having to scour Chief Delphi, look through school webpages, or go through my existing FIRST contacts.

However, very recently I went through this process with someone who is new to FIRST. Someone who is looking to get involved and simply wasn't sure how to reach a team, and frankly, it was embarrassing.

FIRST needs a way for people to be able to reliable contact FIRST teams, regardless of how established a team or its presence in social media.

- Sunny G.

[notmattlythgoe]

Anyone here notice that it's extremely difficult to contact a FIRST team in your area?

Sure, you can use the FIRST place to find the teams that operate around you, but actually reaching out those programs to open a dialog can be extremely challenging.

For me, I've become a bit of a pro at hunting down teams, but it's not been easy. I have to really hope that a team has an active webpage with an active email address. However, if that doesn't work out, which doesn't most of the times, then I'm having to scour Chief Delphi, look through school webpages, or go through my existing FIRST contacts.

However, very recently I went through this process with someone who is new to FIRST. Someone who is looking to get involved and simply wasn't sure how to reach a team, and frankly, it was embarrassing.

FIRST needs a way for people to be able to reliable contact FIRST teams, regardless of how established a team or its presence in social media.

- Sunny G.

I agree. I understand the need to keep contact information away from the public for privacy reasons, but having a forwarding email set up in TIMS that connects to a contact page on the first website would help with this. No names or personal contact info would need revealed, but you would still have a way to contact them.

[g_sawchuk]

Anyone here notice that it's extremely difficult to contact a FIRST team in your area?

Sure, you can use the FIRST place to find the teams that operate around you, but actually reaching out those programs to open a dialog can be extremely challenging.

For me, I've become a bit of a pro at hunting down teams, but it's not been easy. I have to really hope that a team has an active webpage with an active email address. However, if that doesn't work out, which doesn't most of the times, then I'm having to scour Chief Delphi, look through school webpages, or go through my existing FIRST contacts.

However, very recently I went through this process with someone who is new to FIRST. Someone who is looking to get involved and simply wasn't sure how to reach a team, and frankly, it was embarrassing.

FIRST needs a way for people to be able to reliable contact FIRST teams, regardless of how established a team or its presence in social media.

- Sunny G.
This is actually extremely true, and I wish the FIRST community could try and improve in this aspect to better the amount of team members and getting more of those that are interested in robotics into robotics. I think each team should supply an email, Facebook, and Twitter on their website, all which they check daily. It doesn't even have to be the teams official social media account, it can be any member who actively checks their accounts.

[Rosiebotboss]

Reach out to your Regional Director or friendly FIRST Senior Mentor....in your case in Georgia your FSM is Linda Pham, lpham at usfirst.org. We can contact them for you, IF they are reading their emails. Lots of teachers don't check school email accounts during the summer months and teams go dark for July/August.

Anyone here notice that it's extremely difficult to contact a FIRST team in your area?

Sure, you can use the FIRST place to find the teams that operate around you, but actually reaching out those programs to open a dialog can be extremely challenging.

For me, I've become a bit of a pro at hunting down teams, but it's not been easy. I have to really hope that a team has an active webpage with an active email address. However, if that doesn't work out, which doesn't most of the times, then I'm having to scour Chief Delphi, look through school webpages, or go through my existing FIRST contacts.

However, very recently I went through this process with someone who is new to FIRST. Someone who is looking to get involved and simply wasn't sure how to reach a team, and frankly, it was embarrassing.

FIRST needs a way for people to be able to reliable contact FIRST teams, regardless of how established a team or its presence in social media.

- Sunny G.

[Steven Donow]

I was actually just thinking last night that on the official page for each team (ie. this (http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on/team/211469/?ProgramCode=FRC)) should have an added category for team Twitter and Facebook

[MrTechCenter]

I've encountered this same struggle. We host an offseason competition and 80% of the teams in our area don't even know about it because there is zero contact information available to us online. I eventually just sent an email to our the director of our local regional who agreed to send an email blast to teams in the area.

[ttldomination]

Reach out to your Regional Director or friendly FIRST Senior Mentor....in your case in Georgia your FSM is Linda Pham, lpham at usfirst.org. We can contact them for you, IF they are reading their emails. Lots of teachers don't check school email accounts during the summer months and teams go dark for July/August.

I also know about this route, and I will admit that I have not used it myself.

However, this a workaround to the problem; not a solution. Plus, this method isn't immediately known to folks who are not familiar with FIRST.

- Sunny G.

[Joe Ross]

I've heard that the TIMS main contact can look up other teams main contacts in TIMS (assuming that the other contacts have opted in). This helps team to team communication, but not outsiders.

[MechEng83]

I've heard that the TIMS main contact can look up other teams main contacts in TIMS (assuming that the other contacts have opted in). This helps team to team communication, but not outsiders.

Yes, this is true. And it's also not accessible from the time Championship ends until FIRST decides to open it again for the following season. The downtime has gotten shorter in recent years, but it's still a pain when you want to contact someone from XXXX team to ask them questions, but the one place you might be able to go to is not available for months on end.

I'm ok with the restricted access to team contact information, but it needs to be something that is available year-round.

[JohnBoucher]

You can search the members area here on CD by team number to see the most active poster on a team.

It would be helpful is all teams had a presence here.

[EricH]

You can search the members area here on CD by team number to see the most active poster on a team.

It would be helpful is all teams had a presence here.

While that's true, there are a number of problems. It's entirely possible that someone has both email and PM shut off, the most active poster hasn't been around the team for a while or on CD for a while, etc. And, of course, not all teams are on CD.



Speaking of CD, I wonder if CD's email system, or a derivation could be applied to FIRST's site. All emails are site-generated, but don't reveal email addresses unless a reply includes one.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Building a strong network in your community is not easy.

Getting to know you're RDs and Senior Mentors helps. Another option is to hold events and sign people up for those events, you build a pretty good database pretty quickly.

I have even gone as far to just go around at regionals/off-seasons and ask teams to sign up on a list so we can contact them in the future.

I like the idea of a contact link on every team's page. It should be simple enough to implement.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Building a strong network in your community is not easy.

Quoted for truth. While I've been lucky enough to easily acquire the main contacts for all our area teams, sometimes they just don't respond. We're hosting an off-season in roughly a month and still quite a few STL area teams haven't registered. Hopefully we see more of a response with school starting up, but it's still surprising to me how hard it has been to get a response from some teams in our area.

[treffk]

Reach out to your Regional Director or friendly FIRST Senior Mentor....

If there is a VISTA in your area you can reach out to them as well.

Personally, before I became a VISTA I have reached to an out of state RD to find an FRC team near where my now husband was currently at. Him and others at his Navy command wanted to volunteer but didn't know how to get in contact with a team near them.

[Foster]

Not sure why they couldn't do a

FRC1640@usfirst.org -> Primary Contact for FRC team 1640
FLL3401@usfirst.org -> Primary Contact for the FLL team.

Granted more spam for the easy to use name, but the delete key is easy to use.

[Rosiebotboss]

Great idea. Send it up to frcteams at usfirst.org

One downside I see right away, capacity on the email servers. I'm no expert, but I would think that the servers have only so many email accounts, it's a bandwidth issue?? Am I right? Experts....chime in here.

Not sure why they couldn't do a

FRC1640@usfirst.org -> Primary Contact for FRC team 1640
FLL3401@usfirst.org -> Primary Contact for the FLL team.

Granted more spam for the easy to use name, but the delete key is easy to use.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Great idea. Send it up to frcteams at usfirst.org

One downside I see right away, capacity on the email servers. I'm no expert, but I would think that the servers have only so many email accounts, it's a bandwidth issue?? Am I right? Experts....chime in here.

If they are all just setup as forwarding addresses it should be fine. The same way colleges have alumni addresses.

[artK]

Not sure why they couldn't do a

FRC1640@usfirst.org -> Primary Contact for FRC team 1640
FLL3401@usfirst.org -> Primary Contact for the FLL team.

Granted more spam for the easy to use name, but the delete key is easy to use.

Sorry for playing a little bit of the devil's advocate, but what aboat the Canadians?

[AllenGregoryIV]

Sorry for playing a little bit of the devil's advocate, but what aboat the Canadians?

I'm not sure what you are getting at. usfirst.org is the domain name still used by the usfirst organization. Why wouldn't that be the email address they would give out?

[artK]

I'm not sure what you are getting at. usfirst.org is the domain name still used by the usfirst organization. Why wouldn't that be the email address they would give out?

Which domain would Canadian teams use? usfirst or firstroboticscanada?

[BrendanB]

Which domain would Canadian teams use? usfirst or firstroboticscanada?

usfirst.org I don't see a reason to make things more confusing than it needs to be.

[artK]

usfirst.org I don't see a reason to make things more confusing than it needs to be.

While I think that it would be helpful to have one email address per team on the US FIRST site, it could also be useful to have the regional websites (like Canada, California, etc. ) as an easy way for communication within regions.

[notmattlythgoe]

While I think that it would be helpful to have one email address per team on the US FIRST site, it could also be useful to have the regional websites (like Canada, California, etc. ) as an easy way for communication within regions.

This still makes it more difficult for the people that are not in the know to get in contact with teams in their area. A contact link accessible from the "What teams are in my area" search results is what is really needed.

[Rosiebotboss]

artk--don't get hung up on the US part of usfirst.org. The official name of FIRST is United States Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. In the beginning, in the latter part of the last century, it was promoted and branded as USFIRST and all the official filings were made using US FIRST. Today, we all know it is multi national and hence US was dropped from the branding.

While I think that it would be helpful to have one email address per team on the US FIRST site, it could also be useful to have the regional websites (like Canada, California, etc. ) as an easy way for communication within regions.

[treffk]

While I think that it would be helpful to have one email address per team on the US FIRST site, it could also be useful to have the regional websites (like Canada, California, etc. ) as an easy way for communication within regions.

Most regions I've encountered do have specific websites with information for main contacts in that area. I'll like a few I know off the top of my head plus a few other's I quickly pulled from a google search of the state/region + FIRST robotics

Kansas City Metro (http://www.kcfirst.org)

VA, MD and DC (http://www.virginiafirst.org)

Saint Louis, MO (http://www.stlouisfirst.org)

Colorado (http://www.coloradofirst.org)

California (http://www.cafirst.org)

[Foster]

Which domain would Canadian teams use? usfirst or firstroboticscanada?

Do both, it's only mail forward records. I'd automate it so it follows the main contact person.

So there would be two entries, one FRCnnnn@usfirst.org and the same FRCnnnn@firstroboticscanada.org

Not a big deal and easy for us to say Oh you want 1640 and their cool swerve, they are at FRC1640@

And you could get carried away and do all the other countries, it's just entries in a mail forwarder. Bytes in a lookup table are cheap.

Plus it would kill off the 200 messages a year "Need to find a contact for team 1234. FRC1234@

[KathieK]

However, very recently I went through this process with someone who is new to FIRST. Someone who is looking to get involved and simply wasn't sure how to reach a team...
Not sure if you were working with someone who wanted to be a mentor or not but I'll assume you were...
Like Dana said, please become familiar with who your Regional Directors (RDs) and FIRST Senior Mentors (FSMs) are. We have greatly expanded the FSM program this year and most areas of the US (and some parts of Canada) are covered. It's the FSM's role to recruit event volunteers and mentors for all four FIRST programs in their area. I will not give out contact info per FIRST's privacy policies, but I will get some background info on the interested party and forward that to the team. I leave it up to the team to make the initial contact, based on their needs.

[Larry Lewis]

Certainly you could talk to your FIRST lead mentor for the area or your regional director for more information on what teams are in the area.

I know that some teams will put contact submission forms on their webpages. That has worked well for us over the years. Just make sure you put on a question to filter out spam.

Also we provide links to other teams in our area to help connect people to the team they want to contact.

[ttldomination]

Not sure if you were working with someone who wanted to be a mentor or not but I'll assume you were...
Like Dana said, please become familiar with who your Regional Directors (RDs) and FIRST Senior Mentors (FSMs) are. We have greatly expanded the FSM program this year and most areas of the US (and some parts of Canada) are covered. It's the FSM's role to recruit event volunteers and mentors for all four FIRST programs in their area. I will not give out contact info per FIRST's privacy policies, but I will get some background info on the interested party and forward that to the team. I leave it up to the team to make the initial contact, based on their needs.

So, from what you're saying, if someone new wishes to mentor a team in their area, the FSM is the perfect person to contact.

However, this isn't really noted in an easy-to-find place on the FIRST website. Heck, even I didn't know that connecting new mentors to teams falls under the FSM's purview.

- Sunny G.

[KathieK]

http://www.usfirst.org/community/volunteers/first-senior-mentor-program. Because we are volunteers working for FIRST our webpage falls under the Volunteer section of the website. They are working on getting the page updated with all the new FSMs.
"Through outreach events, expositions and demonstrations they are able to attract new Volunteers, Mentors and Coaches to sustain and support both rookie and veteran teams."

[Mr V]

So, from what you're saying, if someone new wishes to mentor a team in their area, the FSM is the perfect person to contact.

However, this isn't really noted in an easy-to-find place on the FIRST website. Heck, even I didn't know that connecting new mentors to teams falls under the FSM's purview.

- Sunny G.

Unfortunately the FIRST Senior Mentor program is not widely known, but yes connecting potential mentors with a suitable team is one of our duties. At this point the link that Kathie posted is not up to date with all the new FSMs. Since the program has rapidly expanded in recent years there have been discussions of how to increase awareness of the program. In the past there were just a handful of FSMs so it didn't make sense to promote it nationally (or in Canada) because so few areas were served.

[protoserge]

http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on is the closest thing I've found and it's quite laborious to get results (hint: FIRST, can you make it easier to keep form submission and re-query?)

Search (http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on/teams?ProgramCode=FRC&Season=2014&Country=USA&StateProv=FL&ZipCode=&Radius=&op=Search&form_build_id=form-WjiLODFwcYVU8OL-2EL5i5P-mGU7H_PMXPtjBJ-Cf9k&form_id=first_search_teams_form) for Florida teams...


And find out what awards they got, but no way to contact them.

This is a prime location for the aforementioned contact information to be applied. At the very least, a team website would suffice. Perhaps FIRST can provide hosting for a team contact page that simply uses a generic web contact form that forwards to the TIMS contacts and masks replies much like eBay and Amazon. Most domain names will forward the email to other services (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.). A web form with a recaptcha would go a long way to preventing spam submissions.

[Mr V]

http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on is the closest thing I've found and it's quite laborious to get results (hint: FIRST, can you make it easier to keep form submission and re-query?)

Search (http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on/teams?ProgramCode=FRC&Season=2014&Country=USA&StateProv=FL&ZipCode=&Radius=&op=Search&form_build_id=form-WjiLODFwcYVU8OL-2EL5i5P-mGU7H_PMXPtjBJ-Cf9k&form_id=first_search_teams_form) for Florida teams...


And find out what awards they got, but no way to contact them.

This is a prime location for the aforementioned contact information to be applied. At the very least, a team website would suffice. Perhaps FIRST can provide hosting for a team contact page that simply uses a generic web contact form that forwards to the TIMS contacts and masks replies much like eBay and Amazon. Most domain names will forward the email to other services (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.). A web form with a recaptcha would go a long way to preventing spam submissions.

There is a spot for team website on the same page as the events attended and awards. Of course that requires the team to have a website, submit it to FIRST and actually keep up on the payment of the domain name. Even if they have a website they may or may not have contact info listed.

[Bluman56]

Yes, this is true. And it's also not accessible from the time Championship ends until FIRST decides to open it again for the following season. The downtime has gotten shorter in recent years, but it's still a pain when you want to contact someone from XXXX team to ask them questions, but the one place you might be able to go to is not available for months on end.

I'm ok with the restricted access to team contact information, but it needs to be something that is available year-round.

I (Lead Mentor #2 on TIMS) am currently trying to get in touch with two local teams but I cannot find any menu to get to where I could look up teams Lead Mentor contact information. I remember this existed in 2015 before the big website change. Does anyone know how to get access to this page again?

[sysdes]

It's tough to find much by going through the first web site. Your best chance would be if the team has its own web site with reasonably up-to-date contact info. Best way I know of to find the web site is www.frclinks.com then in the box type w/XXXX

[Greg Hainsworth]

Totally agree.

I went through the FIRST website to find nearby FTC/FLL teams to partner with and hopefully form some lines of communication. No contact information (sometimes not even a school name) available on the website. I did my best sluething and called a few people only to find out that the teams are inactive and no one knows anything about them.

I went to FIRST to ask for help in identifying which teams were active and which were not. I got a form response back basically telling me to go through the website to look up teams... which was where I started. I couldn't even get a list of team numbers that were active in the last 12 months.

Not every team has a website (FLL and FTC teams seldom have that).
I know there might be privacy concerns but even passing my contact information through to them would have been sufficient for me. Hard for me to unite with the FIRST teams around me without support from HQ, and they hold all the information.

[Tom Line]

There is absolutely NO reason FIRST cannot implement a double-blind system similar to Craigs-list where you can click on a team and send an email to their head mentor through the First Website.

It is troubling that basic communications systems like this don't exist.