Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

Another thing -- We have repaired our robot from our previous year (which turned out be magnificent after replacing a chain). Next week we are exhibiting the robot at our school's science fair. In previous years we have done something similar with our FTC robots and we have borrowed FRC robots from other teams to show and gain interest. However, what we found last year is that much of the interest is fleeting and we don't manage to retain many that showed interest initially.

Suggestions on introducing interested members to the team?

Also: What are some other ways that you use previous year robots for awareness (we were thinking to pseudo-crash a sports-team pep rally by driving the robot through the middle of it >:), with permission of course.)

(I feel as if I am asking too many questions in too short a period of time, but there is so much to learn)

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

Just a few Ideas we have done or I have seen other teams do successfully...

Get out there in the school, and be part of the community.

The Pep rally is a great idea, but just be there for a short time. If you guys have a school flag or banner, simply zip tie it to your robot and drive around when people are cheering and other appropriate times.

Get into your schools talent shows and other school traditions.

Do a halftime demonstration at sports games, and maybe organize a raffle where the winner gets to have a "shootout" vs your robot from last year. If they beat the robot, they get their 50%, if not the team gets 100%. (make sure you follow all school and community procedures for this)

Our team has a mass amount of success from inspiring videos on the school announcements. (make them short and exciting)

Set up a safe area and let prospective members drive the robot.

Promote to your members about what they can get out of FRC and what you guys do. Promoting to prospective members is not the same as promoting to sponsors.

-Kyle McGurk

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

We have always kept our previous years' robots running well into the next build season (now, with a large enough supply of parts, we'll likely keep them running indefinitely). Aside from off-season competitions, they are great tools for recruitment and promotion.

Some of the things we've done recently off the top of my head:

• Open House demonstrations (allow potential new students to drive the robot and learn about the team)
• Club rush booth/demos on campus at all three schools that make up our team
• Middle School demonstrations - we travel to half a dozen middle schools that feed into our three schools to do demonstrations and let the kids drive - they love it!
• Non-profit organizations - demos/presentations nearby after-school tutoring centers that focus on providing technology access to underpriveleged youth
• Storage Hunters TV show - yep, our 2012 bot and practice bot are going to be "discovered" on an upcoming episode of the show
• Pep ralies - our pep rallies are held in the theater, so we have the robot on stage (we typically don't drive it, but we show an exciting "pump-up" video)
• Basketball games - since this is the first time we have a basketball-playing robot, we've arranged to do a halftime show during a bit game with our main rival school in January
• Middle school workshop - we invite students from surrounding middle schools, boy scout troops, etc. This year over 100 kids showed up to participate in workshop sessions to learn about the team

A pretty large number of our outreach is geared at middle-school age kids because it's a powerful recruitment tool for our three high schools.

We promote the team pretty heavily within our schools too - regular segments on the school TV network, we bring the robot to random events like Food Truck Feasts, fundraisers, etc.

This was probably a broader answer than you're looking for, but I wanted to make a few points. When explaining the team to your school community, you have to get over the hurdle of "what is robotics? Is it like battlebots? why don't you put a chainsaw on it?" It will take a while for the community to understand what you do, for us it took about a year. Now that everyone knows basically what the robotics team does, we focus on getting more detail out there - what roles are there on the team? Why should students join? We want to explain that you don't need prior experience to join, that their are opportunities to learn and practice business and creative skills in addition to engineering.

My advice: bring the robot to every event you possibly can within your school community. Get some professional banners, pins to hand out, etc. Just focus on getting the word out there and make sure students who are interested have any easy way to sign up and start getting team emails, information, etc. We typically run these recruitment efforts during August-September and have our "fall kickoff" in late September or early October (naturally, team members from the previous year have been continually working year-round, but this is the cycle on which we typically induct new members). For us it is a bit late to have students joining now, but there's no reason they can't and we still have a few trickling in. You have a couple weeks before Christmas break, so make the most of it in terms of promotion.

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

If your school has an "8th grade day" or something similar where incoming freshmen go and see all the different clubs and activities they can participate in, you should definitely be there with your robot. My team always gets a big crowd of freshmen around their booth, and a couple of those students will usually show up to our 1st meeting each year. As far as retaining students, I would suggest using an FTC or VEX competition to engage new students and give them experience with a "build season" and the design process. Just make sure they are the ones doing the work so that they can learn.

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

As I hinted at above, we focus heavily on recruiting middle school students and incoming freshmen because we want them to be on the team for four years. They get so much more out of it, and the number of veteran members increases, our team gets stronger, and in turn, new members get a better experience learning from a larger number of veterans (we pair new students to veterans 1:1 in a Peer Mentoring system). It's a virtuous cycle.

Interestingly, our 2nd largest group of new members after freshman is seniors.

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

Keep them busy! Over the off-season, we tinkered with a car project (yes, an actual car), built a trebuchet for the local punkin' chunkin' contest, held a silent auction, and sold programs at USC's (that's "South Carolina" for you ESPN-watchers) home football games. Interest meetings and piddling are a good way to scare them off when the real work hits.

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

I don't think fundraising is really something you can have a group for, its an overall group effort. Putting some kids aside to work solely on fundraising during meetings, especially in your case where everyone wants a part in the robot, is probably not a good idea.

What I've found that works in the offseason (we tried some new things over the summer), split your meetings in half and start of with fundraising that everyone works on. Write a letter to get sent to businesses together, plan some fundraisers, maybe give each person homework such as come in the next meeting with a list of 10 potential sponsors and a mailing address. After you wrap up that portion of the meeting, all hands on deck for robot-related activities.

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

That's certainly one way to do it, but not the only way. During the off-season, we do have a committee that works specifically on funding (grants, fundraisers, preparing flyers/publications, writing letters, calling, giving presentations, etc.). Those students might also be part of other committees, but there is a "group" specifically for funding. This may not work better on smaller teams, and during the build season, we do expect most of these students to be active on robot-related tasks.

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

Based on suggestions in this thread, This is the list I have come up for in improvements specific to my team.

• Bring Robot to every school event possible
• specially target underclassmen
• Emphasize no experience needed
• Coordinate fliers / announcements about informational meeting in
• homeroom with an exhibition day
• Collaborate as a whole on funding / fundraising materials (prepare fundraising letter)
• Brainstorm as a group, divide based on interest
• get the administration on board
• More pizza
• Make cool videos
• Team Manual / Agreement on commitment / minimum meeting requirement to attend competition
• Parent Meeting

Thanks for all the advice! Anything major I may be missing?

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

Looks good, I think you're on the right track! Nothing major missing, except, I would privately (or with a few key team leaders and/or parents) meet with your teacher/advisor to more clearly define her role in terms of team function, logistics, and holding students accountable. All of that stuff doesn't have to (and shouldn't have to) fall on you.

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

I agree, that it should not have to, although I am finding this to be an absolutely amazing experience in practicing leadership, organization and reliability!

Re: Help for Second Year Team
 

One of the most important skills you can learn as a leader is delegating. And you may be surprised that you can delegate to those both "above" and "below" you :)