Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Hey guys,
Team 1817 here.

FIRST wants us to start 20 new teams in the west Texas, Lubbock area. Including Amarillo and El Paso. AND they are starting a new Lubbock Regional this year. Everything is pretty much set to do this, we have students ready to go. But no mentors.

We have been recruiting college students at Texas Tech University to be mentors, but we need more. If anyone out in that area would be interested in being a mentor for a rookie team, or know of anyone (FIRST alumni/mentors/professional engineers) that would be, please let us know.

We can be reached at:
team1817@gmail.com

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

You may want to post to the Facebook alumni group. Many members are college students and I'm sure there are students in that area.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Y'all have some serious work cut out for you guys. At major risk of self promotion.......

Here is what we did here in Georgia the past year or so. At the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year Georgia had 18 FRC rookie teams on the taxiway getting ready to take off. Pretty scary.

About 6 rookies got partnered with a veteran team or went solo. The other 12 attended workshops, hand on build sessions, and other support activities at the Kell Robotics Innovation Center, aka the 'IC'. We didn't take occupancy of the 'IC' until November 1st and held our 1st training sessions in December.

Mentors taught about 1/3 of the material and our team students about 2/3.

1) You need to get a good information kit out to the HR department of companies in the area and ask for mentors.

2) Recruit students to teach essentials of whatever topic is needed. Create a cascade of mentorship. Adult mentors-->student mentors-->rookies... You might not have a choice.

3) We do training sessions by appointment. We quickly evaluate the rookies and quickly adapt the training session to their need, the ability, and where we are on the calendar. Some groups will come in regularly and train over months. Some have had to come in and do a crash build. Trainers have to walk a fine line and manage time and resources and try to help the rookies get a toehold and get excited about what they are doing.

4) Find adult mentors to keep in contact and monitor all rookies. During the build season at the end of week two some MUST do a site visit with the team. I can tell you horror stories about what rookie teams have been doing that have not properly been monitored.

5) Call a mentor / coach meeting. For example, we recently held the GeorgiaFIRST MAC meeting, the Mentor Advisory Conference. We held it at a conference center at Kennesaw State University. After opening the meeting ask the crowd for concerns and questions and wrote them on the board. We had a dozen or so and I facilitated a very interactive guided discussion of the crowd.. Great interaction between rookie and veteran mentors. Very productive format. It is very important to train mentors. They need to understand the schedule of the year, how they can help, and frankly will need some guidance to help them get into a mode where they are working with high school students that have not so much knowledge.

6) This past weekend we had training happen at two sites. In the morning we were at the GeorgiaFIRST full size official FRC field. It is hosted at the Walton Robotics site. There we had rookies tryout driving this pasts years robots that were on the field. Then we went to lunch and then to the Kell 'IC'. All afternoon was basic training. We covered the competition, pit setup, judging, programming, mechanical design, and more. We have a permanent 'pit' setup at the IC. Between experiencing the field at the Walton site, the pit at the 'IC', and a lot of training, these rookies are making some progress. These rookies will be in the 'IC' for many more sessions.

7) Train, Train, Train. We have been training rookies all this past summer and will be doing more from here to the competition. Training will be uneven across teams. If you can figure out how to even it up, go for it. If you can create opportunities to train teams, people will take advantage of that 12 months a year.

8) Training needs to get them excited early. If on the 1st day a rookie can create a Java linetracker project, have them add two joysticks and tankdrive, download it and go, that will fire them up. Understanding will come later.

9) Information push to the teams - a) Chiefdelphi is a good forum for getting quick answers to problems, not too good for quickly getting to organized information about 'standard topics'. b) We created the www.the-innovation-center.org website to help teams get fast answers to training and supplier questions. It is NOT a forum but hopefully an evolving catalog of easy to access useful information. You are not going to have time to answer the same supplier and training questions for 20 teams, over and over. We hope the 'IC' website will be useful. We will see. If you know of information that should be there, let me know.

10) Find some robots to help do the training with. Get some teams to collaborate. Fortunately we have a fleet of 7 cRio based systems so we can have multiple parallel breakout groups. 'Smaller class' size = ( number of students ) / robot.

Creating a mentor training/conference will take the resources of several mentors and some promotion and coordination from your Regional Director.

If the rest of the country is anything like Georgia, getting the word out about FIRST isn't the big issue anymore. Responding to the growth is the real challenge.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

I would recommend getting in touch with the Oklahoma regional director. They started with a huge number of rookie teams a few years ago. I know they have kit bot build on kickoff.

Team 2468 will do some mentoring through Skype and Facetime if you would like. We are planning on attending the Lubbock Regional as our first registration.

Please DM message if you are interested in some preseason calls or online conferences.

Norman

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Know a few people from up in the area (our team is from Fort Worth). Will try to persuade them to get involved, which many of them already seem to be doing. Several very smart engineers up there which would make great mentors.

Also looking forward to the Lubbock regional. Hope to raise enough funds to attend it this year! Brand new and always will be exciting!

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Only 20? What a lightweight. But seriously, I guess everything is bigger in Texas, including aspirations for FRC.

I know VirginiaFIRST and other organizations try to recruit universities to help with the program, and in turn advertise how much the University loves FIRST. I assume there will be a kickoff event in Lubbock, Texas at TTU. If you could secure some large, general purpose work area for all of the rookies to meet at the University until school is back in session, you could train in weekends before kickoff, and help with kitbot demonstrations and large fundamentals of strategy and design sessions in this area weekends after kickoff until students come back to move in. I imagine a combination of a lecture hall and common area for discussion/hand work could provide a large enough space to hold 20 teams. After that I guess you could assign alumni mentors interested in building a resume to teams that request one, and maybe try to do telementoring with some of the bigger teams in the state, even if they are far away.

Good luck guys. I can't really wrap my head around 20 rookie teams in one metro area just coming into existence.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

The West Canada regional is basically that, before this year there were 2 teams west of Ontario, now we're having a regional. A lot of work by 4334.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Why are you starting 20 teams? Why stretch your team so thin? And where is the money coming from?

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

At least in some geographical areas, you don't go start 20 teams. They pop up like mushrooms overnight. It isn't a choice of the veteran team.

The issue is helping them get off to a good start and then keeping them in good enough shape to stay sustainable and not die off.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Try reaching out to the Minnesota regional director. We grew by leaps and bounds a few years ago. If I remember right, there was 1 team 7 years ago, then around 20 teams 6 years ago, then over 40, then over 100 in the state. We're up over 150, and I think this year we might finally have more FRC teams than high school boys hockey teams in the state (we missed the mark by only a couple last year!) It really was explosive growth, and somehow the mentorship in the area managed to almost keep pace with the need. But then again, I've only met a couple of teams who have said they didn't want more mentors :)

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

That is the problem. If you don't lay a good foundation what was the point. The goal should be to start a team that thrives has money that is not nasa and starts mentoring other teams in 3 to 4 years not hoping they do not die off.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Hey guys...
I've got a question about my Vex robot, but this site is totally confusing me! Sorry to post in an unrelated thread, but can someone please tell me how to post my own question thread? Thank you to whoever helps!

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

try clicking on forums from the portal and scrolling down to the VEX section under "other". you should be able to post a question from there.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Ed Barker nailed it! That's what we did in DC for 2009 and it worked. Follow up the support with competition-day support and you're golden.

Longer-term, find companies that are willing to invest employee time into the 20 teams. Setup recruitment demonstrations at manufacturing plants and software/design tech firms. Make sure the lead of each team knows that the most important thing to remember about the first year is to make it to the second year (and have some fun).

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

I am just a firm believer Organic Growth vs Rapid Growth.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

HQ doesn't particularly seem to care about the return rate of teams, so long as they are seeing net growth.

I've always thought this was stupid, as it doesn't accomplish anything to have a team struggle through a season or two and then quit.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

nuggetsyl and others,

From my discussions with 1817, it's not that they are trying to start these teams. 1817, as the only successfully established FIRST team for the area, is being asked to help support these new teams that HQ/regional leadership wants to start.

Since the University is one of the major sponsors of 1817 the people are one in the same with the people doing the work to prepare for adding a new regional.

I concur that organic growth is generally best, but sometimes you need a kick in the pants to get things rolling. At the very least the best case would be to only have as many of these seed rookies as you have veteran teams to support them, but like I said 1817 is pretty much all there is in Lubbock and even up to a 200+ mile radius. It's very big and pretty empty out there (no offense to the lubbockites out there).

1817 has students from all the schools in the Lubbock area, so it will be interesting to see what happens to their student base as more teams are added into the local schools.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

I'm concerned about the potential number of teams for the Hub City Regional in Lubbock, Texas.
Why not Austin instead of Lubbock ?
I don't see the population density working for a Lubbock regional

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

You have already received some good advice and a few tales of similar challenges. Let me add that my family lives in Lubbock and nearby areas in West Texas. I've had the pleasure of working with team 1817 a number of times over the last few years and have noticed capable teams from Midland, Del Rio, and even Van Horn. I hope that you are able to arrange for one or more kick-off builds, and if so, I'd love to help. I suspect that a number of NI engineers can assist as well. Unfortunately, the eight hour drive each way means we cannot be primary mentors.

Please contact me with details and any other issues you think we may be able to assist with.

As for finding mentors, I"m not sure what you've tried, but there are tons of energy companies, oil and wind, and their engineers are distributed throughout the region. Personally, one of the most inspiring technical people I grew up with was a shade-tree mechanic and responsible for keeping the local cotton gin operating. He certainly wasn't a trained engineer, but with the Chilton manual for any automobile ever made, he could work miracles and simultaneously explain what was wrong and how to keep it from happening again. My point is that technical inspiration doesn't have to come solely from college students or professional engineers, especially when you are looking to start that many teams.

Greg McKaskle

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

I belive this has to do with the eventual change over to the district model in the future. They need a good distribution of teams/events to make it work. That being said I wouldn't be suprised to see an austin district when the change is made.


Also 1817 is basically out there all by themselves, and I really doubt that there will be alot of quality teams at that event especally if they have tasked a college supported team to found them. That model does not work, and while you may see 20 new kitbot teams this year, I bet only ~10 survive into year 3 (this due to the assumption for regional earmarked 2 year grants).

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Looking forward to the Hub City Regional, and helping in any way we can. We will have students available at the tournament to help troubleshoot Labview programming, as well as electrical/mechanical issues. If we can help anyone via Skype during the build season we are open to that as well.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Team 2468 is registered for the Hub City Tournament officially. We are looking forward to the event and competing with some veterans we already see registered as well as with the new rookie teams.

We are more than willing to do some online training this Fall as well as during the build season. We will come with students ready to assist teams at the tournament including programming, bumpers, wiring and getting to compete at the tournament.

Let me know how we can help.

Good luck on starting the new teams and finding the sustainable growth out in West Texas. I was raised in the Panhandle and went to college in Plainview. I am very fond of all those memories.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Mentors are always the toughest part of the equation:
As Greg said, you can often find mentors in places you don't think to look first.
In my experience, many of the best mentors come from similar backgrounds....many of the best FRC mentor I know were once farmers or participated in some sort of motorsports.
I did both, and so did one of my other team leaders.
FRC requires a good combination of using your head and using your hands. It seems like there would be many good candidates in Texas.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

Just keep in mind Texas has one of the lowest rates of return, if not THE lowest. When starting teams make sure to find faculty that care as much about the program as the students do, and give them all a copy of "the new cool" so they know what to expect. ;)

Im excited to see another regional in texas (even if we lost our second dallas one :(). How much longer till we go district...hmm...

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

I will express general concern with the task of just providing minimum, one-year funding to a gaggle of teams. I believe Texas did this exact same thing before and things didn't go as well as hoped.

I believe between 2011 and 2012 Virginia had 5 rookies join the FRC program but netted -1 teams. That is frustrating to me and shows that somewhere along the line, the veteran teams (us), the sponsors, and/or the program failed. Success or failure is not defined on the field, but in the number of kids we can try to inspire. When a team becomes sustainable I call it a success, but when they silently die out that I see it as a colossal failure.

I know when I graduate from college I feel called to work on some watch list for team retention, because gaining rookies but losing team count overall was a bad feeling.

Good luck.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

I'm really happy to see many people putting down offers to help. Half of Texas teams are in dire need for help.

Here's my quick count from looking at the thread.

Online Mentor List :
0. Appreciate - 2468
1. Titanium -1986
2. Robovikes - 4206
3. Nu Bots - 3730
4. Greg McKaskle
5. DiscoBots - 2587

Let's help 1817 get up to 20 online mentors to match up with 20 new teams.

Who else is willing to Skype help new Texas Rookies ?

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

We still have every intention of signing up for the Hub City regional should a slot remain open November 1st.

17 teams are currently signed up. 4 of these are rookies, and 3 of those from the great state of Texas. Should have no problem getting over 24 teams to fill out the elimination bracket if anywhere near the 20 estimated rookies eventually register.

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

We are officially on the wait-list for the Hub City Regional. :cool:

EDIT: Never mind on the wait list. We are officially in! Yeah!!! We are looking forward to coming down to Lubbock.

I noticed that 1817 (who started this thread) isn't registered for this event. Are you guys planning on playing, or just volunteering at the event?

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

It would appear 16 also decided to join us. Seems to be shaping up pretty well!

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

25 teams registered and growing. We will have a full elimination bracket. :cool:

We have several teams coming that have won Chairman's and/or Engineering Inspiration Awards in the past and could be good resources for young teams on how to set up a sustainable program that positively impacts their community.

16, 932, 1108, 1986

The following team have won an Engineering Excellence, Industrial Design, Innovation in Control, Quality, or Creativity award within the last 3 seasons and might be a good resource for putting a competitive product on the field.

16, 932, 1986, 2468, 2848, 3310, 3366

Re: Starting 20 new teams this year. Need help.
 

2789 has won the Entrepreneurship Award two years in a row at two different regionals, and we regularly give workshops on team sustainability and how to come up with a business plan. Both of our winning business plans are posted here on Chief Delphi, and we would be more than happy to give advice before, during, or after the regional, let us know how we can help!