Re: Re: Why cant we get girls interested in joining our team?! Advice please!
 

*cough* are you implying something? *cough*

/me runs away to burn my newest bikini

- no swimwear for you next year!

How to get more girls to join the team? Easy. Just tell em that Mandy Moore was at nationals last year:D

Really though, we just got about 10-15 girls that joined our team this year, and it is all from explaining what we do, showing them pictures of past competitions and especially closing ceremonies from the 2001 season... they seem to really like this and this

some of the girls that joined our team this year even are asking us to teach them how to use the tools and they want to help with the construction of the robot. Its still a wonder to me......

Don't mention Florida when recruiting.
If they're not going to join for the sake of the team but only to go to Disneyworld believe me, you don't want them!
It shouldn't matter if they're boys or girls as long as they are eager and enthusiastic about participating in FIRST(our team was girl heavy, particualrly the PAW room which was all girls except for me and the other animation mentor. The only problem that presented was having to chase lurking boys out of the PAW room so the girls could get their work done and the boys could go get their work done:rolleyes: ).

Ed you sound like a teacher.......Which means you are of course right...lol

Definately you want the hard working type of people on your team, but, you need to convince the would-be hard workers to come out in the first place.

I've found that if anyone actually joins the team, once they get out and doing something they do a good job at it - regardless of how they came to join the team.

As for florida, its a good way to get people to come out....And if they don't do anything for 6 weeks, they wont be expecting to come with the team to florida (that they know). So Fl gets the interest, but in the end its the Robot that will determine if they actually join the team or not.

if i didn't tell my friend that the team goes to florida....we wouldn't have a programmer

My wife is a teacher at Wilson. I work for Xerox(therefore it's a marriage of convience:D ). Wilson will do some recruiting for new members and Florida will not be mentioned . If the kids aren't interested in the X-Cats because want to be X-Cats then nothing else really matters. The team comes first. Disney is a reward(some teams cannot even afford to go to the parks, so selling Florida is really nothing more than a cruel joke).

You are soooo crurel it's not even funny. We got our principal and vice principal to come with us to WDW. I got them on Test Track (quite the most funniest moment durring the whole time there.)

I saw teams at the Nationals that were slapping together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their kids to eat and did not stay at the All-Star resorts but had to stay off-Disney instead and had to leave immediately as soon as the cometition was over. They just don't have the money to go to the parks or feed thier kids overpriced Disney food.
The company I work for has lost millions in recent year and laid off hundreds of people but still pays for FIRST and the kids(and adults) to go play in the parks.
Florida is a blessing, not a privlidge.

It's not such a wonder. We're out there, just to repressed to now that some of us might have a true calling in tech, etc.
I was an artsy theater, type. I spent years in training as a classical soprano. But let me tell you, I was constantly finding myself hanging around with the stage crew because I had this really overactive sense of curiosity about how everything worked.
I just had to know. (it actually got in the way of my singing career sometimes because I would rather have worked on the nuts and bolts, so to speak.)

I was always interested in how things worked and still am. It's shocking to think that even as recently as the mid-80's when I was in High school, I was still being told, "No, no, no, dear. You can't do that. It's a man's job."
Oh I was sooo angry! (still am sometimes)

I defied everyone. I went out and learned how to do all the tech jobs at the theater and got hired on professionally, but even then, I was always relegated to the housekeeping jobs (even after two years) because I was a girl. "Hey girls are better at it than us! You're the best one suited for the scrubbing." They would say.
I would leave the room and hear them snickering behind the door.

I finally quit after two years of being treated like garbage by my male counterparts. I never once got to do anything on a show other than set up the house, and clean up afterward.

I'm not saying all of this to whine. I'm just saying that there are girls out there with hidden talent that don't know they have it. When they come around, be patient and give them a chance to discover if they have the knack for the mechanics etc. You could change thier lives so much for the better, I can't even begin to tell you.

I was on Rambots for 3 years and it was all guys. Well..that's cause we were an all guys school. Shrugs......Now I don't have a team.:(

And....anyone know what's Nutron's site is? Or how I could contact their leader?

If you went to an ALL GUYS school, I would really really hope that everyone there was actually A GUY...lol

Does that not make sense? :p

Implying something? *cough* me? no...never!

We had one team member who conviced his girlfriend to join the team, and while this meant that during most of our meetings these two were off in a corner making out, his girlfriend did manage to convince a number of her female friends to join.

Yeah finally. I've found that mentioning the possibility of Florida, or just driving the robot around does get a lot of people interested, but not in the right way. The are either there a) free field trip (miss school), or they just want to drive and play with the bot, not actually work on it. So you have to be careful