Re: limiting team membership
 

our team doesn't have an issue with having too many members - we have roughly 20 - but last year we did have a problem with certain members' productivity. now i'm sure i sound like a terrible guy for saying it, but we did have a few team members who actually inhibited our ability to work. i didn't mind during the weeks prior to the build season, but when crunch time comes around, we just can't have team members showing up to listen to their iPods and drink our coffee, just to distract the rest of the team from their tasks. what can we do about this?

Re: limiting team membership
 

the pink team currently has unlimited membership. students are divided into various groups for the workload (i.e. electrical, mechanical, web design, animation, fundraising, etc) at our local competition (we don't spend the night) most students opt not to attend on thursday unless they are "critical" need (drivers, pit crew, head scout, etc) as for all competitions (near and far) students are allowed to attend based on grades, robotics hours, fundraising and community service. there are different levels for each competition. in order to try out for drivers or pit crew, students must have completed highest level of committment.

Re: limiting team membership
 

Yeah, ours is the same way, and we had only 13 out of over 40 go the the Championship last year. 177 is huge this year, at over 60 people, so we need to figure out to do with all of the people (code sounds good!)

Re: limiting team membership
 

We do not limit membership of our club, the only limits we have are on competitions. Everyone that has the minimum grades and that contributed something to the team gets to attend the local competition (which ended up being all but about 2 or 3 last year), and most of the students who don't want to work or are a problem generally quit on their own because they are bored or have been kicked out of meetings (I think I've only heard of one incident of a member being permanently kicked out, and it was before any current members were on the team).

Away competitions we hope to decide travel for based on participation, fundraising, and attendance. We haven't travelled to a 2nd competition since 2004, so there's currently no "set in stone" method of how we're going to go about it.

Re: limiting team membership
 

Sit them down and make it very clear to them that if they are not there to help then they need to be elsewhere. No one person is more important than the team. Then leave it up to them to make the choice if they still want to be part of the team.

Re: limiting team membership
 

Our team doesn't really limit membership, but they have the ability to do so if the team ever gets too big :rolleyes: .
As far a competitions go, they aren't limited to important members as other teams seem to do. As long as the person has been an active member on the team, attending a majority of meetings and other team events and fundraisers, and has fundraised and/or payed the amount required for the trip they have the ability to go.

Re: limiting team membership
 

Our team doesn't really cut members. This year we have a team size of 50-55 members and we expect it to stay around that number because people drop out and other show up through the duraration of the pre season.

Last year we made the mistake using "you get to skip school for a few days" as a pitch line which didn't really help attract the right kind of members :) .

With other school sports happening for the fall we are pretty nice about letting people miss a few of the meetings during the preseason.

Overall I'm pretty confident that our team members are well behaved and are very committed.

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Re: limiting team membership
 

Team 294, for the first time in several years, will be fundraising the cost of traval for a limited number of students. Those spots will be given based on the usually criteria and fundraising. Unless a student is a real troublemaker, all students are allowed to come and pay their own way if they don't earn a spot.

We usually have about 20 students, with about 8 really dedicatedm, and another 6-8 pretty dedicated and then a few that show up a little bit. I wish we had the problem some of you guys have with too many interested kids.

I'm not sure, but I think one of the reasons our team is low in members compared to some of these huge teams is that I can throw a rock and hit nearly 10 teams. Near us are 330, 207, 1759, 22, 4, 687 and a bunch of newer teams that I'm forgetting. Most of those teams are less than 30 minutes away, and 22 is the farthest at about an hour.

Re: limiting team membership
 

On our team I know last year and the year before we have a rule where we make people who are hindering productivity go home. Of course, this isn't enforced very much, but it definitely makes a difference sometimes. :) Other than that, usually only the most dedicated people show up anyways during build, since our team is fairly large, so it hasn't been that big of a problem. :]

Re: limiting team membership
 

Chop shop students had to follow school policy as well, but we allowed anyone who wished to travel travel, but more importantly be on the team. We origonally had a work donated system, but as of my freshman year it was sacked it under the philosophy that everyone on the team is importatn no matter how much they donated. We did, however, indirectly isntitute such a policy. Students payed full price for travel (initially) this price was then taken away based upon the amount of fundraiser money earned on a weighted average of team profit. People who did nt work as much still contributed, but they would had to pay more. (any chop shop person can correct me, im not sure entirely how acurate im being.) However your budget situations are completely understood, as i will probably be goign into build season with little or no fundraisers due to the time i mooved, and corporate sponcers will probalby only be willing to pay for the bot. in other words, were all goign to be paying a lot of money

Re: limiting team membership
 

Yes, so do we. Only we have 15 members.

Re: limiting team membership
 

well wat team 1070 does is we have all the people who wanna come join.. first pay dues... and then throughout the year.. we hav an amount of days that u hav to be at meetings.. and those who don't meet that requirement are cut.. and usually we result in having like...8 people.

Re: limiting team membership
 

Re: limiting team membership
 

for team 868, membership is not limited (as the school mandates all clubs), but this year all members need to raise a minimum of $600, and another $1000 to travel (we lost a $12000 travel grant :( ). plus, all members must participate in at least 80% of the meetings, and have no grade lower than a c. this usually cuts the group to about 25 travelling, even though we have about 40-50 on the team.

Re: limiting team membership
 

Unfortuantatly due to parent/mentor bonds, our team members don't throw out anyone no matter what they do....