FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Hey guys,

I recently created a facebook group for FRC Captains to network, share experiences, and forge relationships with other teams. As FIRST grows and as we go on to college, forging relationships with fellow leaders of FIRST can be key to forming the next Apple or Microsoft etc. We are the ones who will become those future leaders in industry, and it is our responsibility to keep in touch with those of the same caliber.

Group name: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Page

To spread this page to more Captains of FRC, please let me know of any Captain that you see can be added to this group, and I will be more than happy to add that person.

Thanks for being involved, see you at the top!

Arjun Krishna
Captain, Team 334 "TechKnights"

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I have a question. Do you need a Facebook account to be in this group?

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Can captain alumni join?

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Why just Captains? Or is that just the name?

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Pretty sure he explained that in the first post.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I disagree.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

You can disagree all you like, but words mean what words mean. I don't know how the OP could have stated it more clearly (unless you demand the word "only" be placed in there--I think the Department of Redundancy Department may want to have a chat in that case.)

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

That group is a really neat idea... All captains should join it!

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Some teams don't have captains, some have presidents, some have co-captains, some have oligrachies, some have virtually no student leadership structure whatsoever.
Maybe a "Student Leaders" page would be more appropriate?

20 this year has 4 co-captains, while 5254 has yet to establish any official student leadership structure due to our relative youth and small student population.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I think that captain is just meant to represent leader here... A president would also apply in my opinion...

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I would be safe to assume that Student Leadership is accepted. OP can correct me if I'm wrong but student presidents, co-captains, and the like are welcome to network as well.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I think you may not have read my post:

I wanted to know why OP was barring all team leaders who haven't held a "captain/president" title on their team. My broader point being that the OP was talking about how useful it would be to have a network of students of a certain 'caliber' but how he was leaving out anyone who didn't get elected (or appointed) to a position called "captain/president" on their team. A point that other posters have since reiterated.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

It wasn't clear that this was what you were asking. I still think he outlined why he wanted the captains, and that was to share ideas about what captains can do/meet new teams from across the world. This is kinda similar to the Dean's List Finalist Facebook group that also exists. If you want completely open networking, there are many many many other facebook groups for first that are open to join. (Game specific ones, FRC, FLL, Alumini groups, Regional FIRST facebook groups)

A team captain group is just another commonality that people can have something to talk about when getting to know each other.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I think I get what Monochron is getting at... when one tries to label people it's a potential slippery slope of making some people feel superior to others... so I ask this... What about including students that desire to be a leader or captain but never got the opportunity?... don't they count? I know those kind of people, and they are the ones that will surprise you... their worth is every bit as much as those who have received the "label".

Just something to think about... everyone deserves a voice.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I agree. I feel like this group should be for people who are interested in forging relationships/sharing experiences with other FIRST members, and members shouldn't be barred from joining the group just because they don't have a leadership title. Also, many people who don't become student leaders or never get opportunities to become leaders usually can become leaders in college organizations or the work force (with interest of course), so barring students who haven't been given a title in high school is wrong because they will get many more opportunities to become leaders in their lifetime and hit the "caliber" the OP was talking about.

I feel like the OP should do some clarifying here, based on the responses to his post.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Maybe even just "FIRST Student Leaders" rather than "Captains".

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

The purpose of limiting members to only captains not only ensures that you don't get a whole lot of fluff, but also that members can forge more personal relationships. If you allow many people in it's harder to form those relationships.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Yeah, I do see the value in it. I guess I just don't see those students who have been elected as Captain on our team to be of higher "caliber" than our other students. I see the students who have proven themselves to be 1. Able to see tasks to completion, or 2. good leaders of others, to be of higher "caliber". Often Captains are included in that group.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Hey Guys,

Thank for all the replies! I'm happy to say that the group has grown to about 50 members so far! :]

I would definitely like to clear up some things that were discussed.

"I wanted to know why OP was barring all team leaders who haven't held a "captain/president" title on their team. My broader point being that the OP was talking about how useful it would be to have a network of students of a certain 'caliber' but how he was leaving out anyone who didn't get elected (or appointed) to a position called "captain/president" on their team. A point that other posters have since reiterated"

Well, for one thing this group IS a Captains group. If I wanted to allow others to join, I would have created a general FRC networking page. What I mean by this is, this group was created for Captains to network. This is because each person who was appointed Captain on their respective teams, was appointed for a reason whether the rest of the team was either in support or not. In any well run team, organization, or business, there is always a leader to keep things moving and on track. I simply want to network with those people.

Do not misconstrue my words here. Even though there may have been people of the same caliber / potential to be captains on their team, they for some reason weren't. I don't mean this in a bad way, it's just that this was the way the ball rolled. As many have said, there are multiple networking pages for everyone to join. There you will be able to interact with captains. This group however is for the core group of individuals who were given the opportunity to lead their teams through the many trials and tribulations of build season and competition.

Anyway, I thank you all for your support, and your understanding. I hope to see more Captains join the group!

Best Regards,
Arjun Krishna
Captain Team 334 "TechKnights"

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

That does seem to make it clear that you indeed meant exactly the word "Captain" from the start. However, you're still not addressing what I see being asked: what is your reason for limiting it to people with that title? Not all teams use military nomenclature.

On the other hand, other parts of your response do appear to be more inclusive:

So it's still not clear that you would keep a "Team President" or a "CEO" or a "Principal Lead Student" from joining the group. Would you mind answering the simple question of whether the specific title of "Captain" is required? (And if not, why did you name the group that way?)

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I guess I'm coming from a place where I have seen many "leaders" get appointed in a nearly arbitrary way. Not on my team specifically, but in general.

What is that "a reason" that they were appointed for? It can very wildly from team to team and I'm not sure it is a good metric to include or exclude people by. Sometimes it is because the team believes they will be a great leader. Sometimes it is because they are really really popular. Sometimes it is because the real leaders on the team could not run for the office.

I have seen many teams where the real student who is galvanizing the team and stepping up to make the hard decisions is NOT the captain, but someone who saw that action needed to be taken and took it. Possibly in a situation where the person elected Captain was eager to get a title and feel responsible and the other student was eager to put in work to make the whole team successful.

I would say that if your goal is to network with the leaders who "keep things moving and on track" on teams then you would be better served by opening it up to "FRC Student Leaders" rather than just Captains. I am definitely not advocating a "open to all" networking page because there are plenty of those. But as I don't think you can effectively verify is someone was, in fact, a Captain then opening it up to more leaders is sensible.

This is all just my 2 cents and it may turn out that having a smaller population is beneficial.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Ah, I get it now... an officer's club.

I'll leave with a little anecdote while I was in the military... when we got out of basic we were in the habit of calling everyone sir... and when I said that to my new boss (NCO staff sergeant) he looked down on his sleeve and then looked at me and said... I don't see any bars on my sleeve. (meaning sir as in offi-sir)

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Can we all agree that the meaning is "Student Leaders" meaning Presidents, Captians, CEOs, Tribal leader, Cult master, or whatever the hell we call the student leaders? Like this whole thread has made Mt. Everest out of an Anthill (I know the original saying, this is exaggerating a step further, mainly because words are hard and it's just a name).
Maybe to avoid confusion we can call the group "FRC Tribal cult team master warrior President and CEO leader captain (in a non-military way) bleh".

Also, your question is recursive. Unless we name the group "FRC Tribal cult team master warrior President and CEO leader captain (in a non-military way) bleh", we can't possibly account for all of the types of names that teams give to leaders. So for the same reason naming the group Captians might somehow in a different universe exclude Presidents and CEO's of teams, there is no name to umbrella everyone (except for "FRC Tribal cult team master warrior President and CEO leader captain (in a non-military way) bleh"). I think that's what his team calls the student leads, and as he made the group he labeled it as such...

Being a member of this group, I can assure you that it is not to exclude anyone but to collect a certain group of people. We also include many types of leaders. We also, don't really check if you're a captain or not, it's kind of on the honor basis. Not targeting or making fun of anyone specifically, but lets put the rivets in the coffin for this thread.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I'm perfectly willing to assume that, but Arjun (he created the group, right?) appears to be going out of his way to use only the title "Captain" when describing the group's desired membership.

Arjun stated quite clearly yesterday that the group is exclusive. He doesn't seem to understand that his choice of label makes it hard for many of us to divine the extent of that exclusivity, and I don't think his attempt at clarification did a good job of settling the question.

I would be most satisfied to find that the intent is to include all elected or appointed team leaders. I am highly unsatisfied by seeing "words are hard" used as an excuse for a lack of clarity.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Unfortunately "Student Leaders" and that list you gave have entirely different meanings. "Student Leaders" on our team are a group of officers including Engineering Captain, Communications Lead, Business Captain, and more. I would guess on your team "Student Leaders" only refers to the one or two students at the top?
If I were running the group I would replace "Captain" with "Student Leader". If Arjun doesn't want it that way then that's his prerogative. I just thought it would be worth discussing.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson (Post 1493372) That does seem to make it clear that you indeed meant exactly the word "Captain" from the start. However, you're still not addressing what I see being asked: what is your reason for limiting it to people with that title? Not all teams use military nomenclature. On the other hand, other parts of your response do appear to be more inclusive: So it's still not clear that you would keep a "Team President" or a "CEO" or a "Principal Lead Student" from joining the group. Would you mind answering the simple question of whether the specific title of "Captain" is required? (And if not, why did you name the group that way?)

Alright guys. Since my last reply, I'm happy to note that we've grown to around 60 members.

Now...if we are truly going to dwell on this, then here is my answer: This group was named FRC Captains Round Table, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT SOUNDS COOL LIKE THAT. :cool: You know....Knights of the Round Table sort of thing....

Also, say you are given the title Team President, Team Leader, Principal Lead Student, CEO, or anything else that is the equivalent of a Team Captain, then you are DEFINITELY ALLOWED TO JOIN. People who have held the title in the past are also allowed to join the group.

I will stress that this group will not let in: Coaches, Team parents, any student who isn't Captain or the equivalent (which includes sub division heads etc), or Mentors (unless they were captain or the equivalent in the past).



This will not be a group for general student leaders within the team, and if anyone wants to make that happen, by all means please start a group for that and I would love to join. This group, is for the afore mentioned list of Team Leaders.


I hope this helps in everyone's understanding!

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

*sigh*

I apologize if I'm being unreasonably dense, but your answer didn't help me much. Your reason for choosing the name "Captains" still isn't clear, which makes me worry that I don't share your understanding of what it means. Worse, though, it looks to me like you're saying two different things about the intended membership.

I'll accept without further discussion the fact that you think it's cool, even as I see no explanation of why you think "Captains" is a cool name. De gustibus non est disputandum, though.



Here's the part with which I'm still having difficulty:

So in that part you're including "sub division heads etc" as the equivalent of Captain, but...

...here you're saying "general student leaders" are not invited. It's clear that you don't consider the phrases I quoted to be the same thing, but that ends up making me not know what you do consider them to mean.



It was said earlier in the thread that words mean things. Unfortunately, it's common to find that they mean different things to different people. I'm obviously not grasping the meaning you want to get across. If it's just me who's still confused, I'll graciously stop trying to wrench something I can understand out of you. But if others have the same difficulty figuring out who you do and do not want to include, that's a problem.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

The good word here is not why, it's why not! :)

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

You may be confused by the parsing of that sentence, which I clearly read as "anyone who is not X", wherein the set NotX includes subteam leads.

I would suggest Top (of your team) Student Leadership as a synonym. The students who do/did not report to or serve under other students. Sub-leads, as their name implies, fall into the category of "did serve under/report to" and thus do not meet the definition.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Being a former captain I was on the fence hoping your answer to the "why captains" question would convince me. Unfortunately it's done the opposite. I was hoping you would say something like "I want to network with captains and equivalent leaders because they can more effectively initiate change from the top down." Unfortunately what I heard was "This group was named FRC Captains Round Table, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT SOUNDS COOL LIKE THAT. :cool: You know....Knights of the Round Table sort of thing.... "

Maybe there's just a misunderstanding here, but the communications skills in this thread are making it a mess.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Does safety captain count?

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

Like Groucho, I wouldn't want to join any club that would be willing to stoop low enough to invite me to join. ;)

Speaking as a sneech on the beach who doesn't care whether or not the other sneeches do or do not have "stars upon thars"; and looking at the group's purpose through a lens of service-before-self, this whole thing sounds epically off-target.

Blake

PS: In one of my favorite movie scenes, in Ghostbusters, Ray is asked if he is a god. He answers incorrectly. Afterward, the other Ghostbusters tell him that the next time he is asked that same question, his answer should be an unambiguous "Yes!"

I would keep that in mind if I wanted to join the FRC Captains Round Table (which I don't).

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

So just my last two cents, I think this group is only for leaders of the Student Leads. Here is an example leadership bracket from my team (Please excuse the formatting):

Build Co-Capts(4) |Communications Co-Capt(1) |Business CoCapt(1)
Build Coordinator (3) |Awards Director (1) ---------- |Financial Lead
Strategy/Scouting (3)|Outreach Director (1) -------- |Sponsor relations
Safety (1)-------------|...-------------------------------|...
Electrical (2)
...

There are more positions where the ellipses are but I'm doing this from memory and we've changed our bracket over the years so some of the positions might be outdated, but the structure remains the same.

The FRC Captains Round Table Group is meant for (in this type of bracket) the bolded positions. So it really depends on the teams structure, but "Captains" are defined as Sub-team heads, or presidents, CEOs, etc.
Again, this isn't to exclude anyone, but to create a new kind of group, the point is to connect students and alumni from teams who have lead the leaders and have had much responsibility on their teams. The reason this group seems to be "exclusive" is because there are so many FRC groups with thousands of people posting on them every day, and those kinds of groups are both hard to keep up with and uninteresting to follow because of the sheer number of notifications and different topics. In this group, the conversation is pointed towards what leaders can do to make a difference on our teams, how to handle mentor and administrative difficulties, and things to improve team standings.
In the end this group is for people who have achieved the "captain" status on thier teams. There are other exclusive groups for people who are girls on FRC teams, Dean's List Finalists/Winners, FIRST Volunteers, etc. This is just another one of those groups.
Another point of this group (I think) was to create a student-saturated version of Chief Delphi. A lot of times some of us feel intimidated that there are always more alumni and mentors answering our threads when we want student opinions. It's not something that's happened to me personally, but I often see anonymous accounts created by students to ask questions they might get unhelpful hate for by a certain group of people. (Like let's be honest there are distinct factions on CD, and it sucks when one of them hate on you). Most of the group are students and I think the only alumni are 2015 seniors.
If the name is hurting other people's feelings or insulting to someone, I'm sure if someone suggests a name that's more inclusive for the exclusive group, there will be compromise. Let's not get worked up about the name of a new FIRST group, or it's function. There are so many "exclusive" groups that we could argue for ages if we discussed each one.
I really don't want to reply to this thread anymore cause if the conversation goes past this, then it'll be more ridiculous than this thread.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

On Chief Delphi? This all-inclusive, happy community of innocent robot-builders? :eek:
Nah definitely not. :rolleyes:

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I don't think the discussion was over the name hurting feelings but rather making sure it was clear and offering suggestions for an improved membership criteria.

With the group as it stands questions like 'how is CADMan sure that people he doesn't want haven't already applied for an been accepted to the group?', 'at what point does a captain transition to "alumni" or "mentor" and have to leave the group?', still need to be answered.

Re: FRC Captains Round Table - Networking Facebook Group
 

I'm not sure about the first question, but as of now the population seems to be people who send a request to join the group and the request gets granted. Actually, now that I think about it, i think I sent a message saying I was a captain, but I don't think that was necessary. I honestly don't think it's strictly regulated so it really depends on the people requesting and whether they are telling the truth or not. The rest would be up to theCADman since I think he's the only admin right now.

In the group's description on facebook, it says that the group was created to network all the captains of team so that they can do stuff, ask advice, etc. Also in the description is that they want to keep the group connected because these connections may help 10 years from now when we're in the professional environment. It's a nice thought and group, so that's why I joined it. So I have no idea if there are plans to kick off future alumni or mentors, but I think there are a few there already, and they've been pretty helpful in some of the discussions we've had.

Those are my best answers as a member of the group, not as an admin though.