Re: Recruiting
 

I am convinced there is. There are many schools where there is big overlap here.

Teams might want to do some targeted recruiting.

Re: Recruiting
 

I wouldn't say targeted recruiting is nessecary. There are many students on our team that have a lot of other commitments and really cant commit to a role on the Build Team. However, usually the people that have a lot of other commitments take roles that require less time or work on things that don't conflict with their seasonal sport/activity.

Re: Recruiting
 

We did a demo at a pep rally for the basketball team too. Didn't think of it before my last post.

I'm not sure how effective that was in getting people interested. The one problem with a pep rally demo is that even when students found out that our school has a new "robotics team", there was no information about what to do if they were interested (what this whole robotics thing is, where to find info, who to talk to, etc), and they still had no sense of what the demonstration was all about.

On the other hand, if we had known we would have the demo more than a couple days in advance, we could have asked for more time in the pep rally and shown a short video about FIRST, which would solve the above problem.

Regardless, any demonstration for recruitment has to be informative enough so that people won't dismiss their interest due to not knowing what to do with it. I've learned that it's important to make sure people know what they're looking at without having to pick up a piece of paper or even ask a question.

Re: Recruiting
 

The trick truely is FLL. Our FLL team is about 6-10 members big each year and we get at least 1/2 of those students. Another good thing is families ;) . Have brothers recruit their sisters and vice-versa. It is good to build teams in that family atmosphere.

Re: Recruiting
 

Thanks you guys for all the cool ideas if you guys can think of any others before school starts please post them cause i know this won't just help me but it will help many other teams out there

Re: Recruiting
 

I am confused... In what way does this promote you guys as hardworking? I can see how it would raise money but how does it get people to join the club? What connection does it have to robotics?

All the same, it sounds fun

Re: Recruiting
 

Ok, let me try to explain this.

418 is LASA Robotics. LASA is The Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy, a magnet school.
It is set down into LBJ High School, a public high school. We have 2 very different student populations under one roof. We do 2 recruiting events with the robots and information in the high school, one in fall and one in spring. The typical response to the robotics team from a number of students is: it's too hard, it's too much like school, it takes too much time, it's for geeks.

We came up with the car bash at Homecoming. It has nothing to do with robotics but it is sponsored by us. We think it is helping build a bridge of communication between the two populations and getting the word out that the team knows how to have fun as well as work hard, also trying to involve others in doing a fun event together.

The robotics team has a wonderful set-up: a metal shop, a wood shop, a computer lab. At the beginning of this fall, the computer lab was split in half and turned from one into two classrooms. The desks didn't fit so the team dismantled them and put them back together in different configurations. No internet until *someone* *cough* rigged something up in the ceiling....
The metal and wood shops are still in tact. This is where the team lives. They arrive early in the morning, come during lunch, stay after school if they can - don't get out much. It isolates the team, unless other students come by and stick their head in. That happens. We have basketball players stop by, the art teacher, the principal comes down. If you want your school to help support you with funding and promotion you have to be a part of the school. It is a little harder for LASA Robotics to do that but we try with things like the car bash. I've been pushing for a catapult for a couple of years but so far no one is listening. I think it would be cool to launch pumpkins.....

Hope this explains it better.
Jane

Re: Recruiting
 

one of the moms from our team called our school during nationals to tell them when our team was competing, and instructed the office to pass it on to classroom teachers... I was fairly surprised how many teachers had their classes tune in, but it finally made what I had been obsessing over for the past couple of months make sense to the people in my classes, and I know that after people watched the web-casts or the NASA broadcast the interest generated was high--I had people I would have never thought would be interested in joining the team coming up to me and asking me all sorts of questions. :ahh: Also we have a lot of FLL graduates who will be joining our team next year.

Re: Recruiting
 

we do demos during our lunch periods. also were big on female involvement (chick power), so we did a women in science and engineering day presentation. we had female engineers form our corporate sponsor come and talk about there experience in science and tech. also another first student and i talked about how kick $@#$@#$@# first is. i can personally say that we got a HUGE amount of response.

Re: Recruiting
 

We do a demo at our local Pumpkin Fest in October (Keene holds the record for the most lit jack-o-lanterns in one place, 28,952), and there are tens of thousands of people there, so a lot of people see us, especially the younger elementary and middle school students. We also do a demo at the school during a day in the fall, and people stop by and give us contact info. In addition to this, we put our meeting times in the school announcements. This got us about 10-13 new members this year. The number does change year to year, but our methods are consistent.

Re: Recruiting
 

Actually I have thought of this T-Shirt cannon with a few designs from the web and I think that that would be a decent recruitment meathod at like a school Pep-Rally. On one of the old robots just put this "Pneumatic Cannon" on and fire t-shirts away.

The awnser to that is Team Shirts so they know about your team and organization etc.

Pavan.
118 Electrical.

Re: Recruiting
 

alot of people dont know much about the team and just think were a bunch of geeks. (well, they're right) its our job to go out and show them that there is a geek hidden deep inside of them too. for instance, i got two my friends to join simply by telling how good they would do and asking them to come to meetings. it helps to encourage, remind, welcome and include new members.

WHAT OUR TEAM DID RECENTLY
our team tried hosting a booth at a semi-popular local event and letting people drive some pre-built vex's. we gained some intrest, sponsors, possible mentors, $76 bucks, and 1 team member. overall, it didn't work out too well.

-Smithers

Re: Recruiting
 

That sounds like a success to me! You checked the box in 5 areas. And hopefully you had some fun as well!