Hosting Tips

[Teammax]

Hello everyone. Our team, Team MAX, is making plans to have our own invitational. It will be the first annual:

"Where is Wolcott Invitational"

and will take place on July 14th at the Wolcott High School in Connecticut. I am wondering (and hoping) if there are a few teams out there that run (or have run) invitationals that we could use as a resource. I have no specific questions at this time and have been in contact with FIRST and local organizations to tackle issues that we have identified.

I would love to hear from a few teams about how many people they need to run their events. How do they distribute everyone. Is there a job list that teams have generated and use to plan ahead. Do teams have a food list that they have have developed over the years to accomidate the teams coming in.

Basically any documentation about your invitational that you want to share I would gladly take and read. You can certainly email anything to me at rcormier@wolcottps.org or post useful information here on this thread. With all of the teams out there a sharing of ideas would help many of us.

Thank You in Advance
Rob

[Teammax]

I guess partly what I am looking for is: Is there anything you learned when running your first invitational that you wished you knew ahead of time.

[Beth Sweet]

I would suggest getting in contact with Chris Fultz. He seems to be the head dog in charge of IRI, the best off season event I've been to by far. They manage a multi-day competition with night time activities and food for only $300 a team. They have teams on the wait list to get in every year!

[nparikh]

Make sure you have LOTS of people. To be honest, there can never be quiet enough staff. Depending on how many teams are there (our Brunswick Eruption averages about 30), you may need 'pit helpers', people to help set up and take down the field, field resetters, a ref crew, A/V team, food concessions people, PR people, and so much more. We have a workforce of at least 50+ people for our offseason including students and parents.

Most importantly, try and get as much as possible planned ahead of time as to avoid confusion. Think about teaming up with a local team to 'cohost' the event doing an invitational by yourself if you are a small team is quite the task. Feel free to ask anymore questions or PM our mentor (Wayne C.). We've been doing this for 5 years now.

Don't hesitate to ask for advice. The people at PARC, Ramp Riot, Duel on the Delaware, etc have got this down to a science.

[Teammax]

We have a workforce of at least 50+ people for our offseason including students and parents.

Most importantly, try and get as much as possible planned ahead of time as to avoid confusion.
See now this is what I am looking for. Do you have a list of jobs and how many people you devote to each job. I am not trying to be a wiseguy :yikes: . I know I need a lot of people but I would like to know if I have all of the jobs covered a head of time. So really I am hoping for the document that you use to divide up the jobs

[Carol]

Send me your email. MOE has a lot of experience at this with some very highly organized people who documents that could help. I'll forward your questions to the right people.

[Teammax]

I will do that right now. Thanks