An Unusually Small Team...?
 

There are currently 5 competent people on our team, due to 12 team members just had to go and graduate on us last year. Does anyone else have this small of a team, and if so, how did YOUR team get the job done? All of our abilities are rather scattered, one of us can KIND OF program, one of us can wire, one of us can KIND OF machine, and yeah.

Are we alone out here?

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

I believe 1464 has two members as of right now, but they'll probably get more once the school year starts.

We have, I think, 8 returning serious members with 3 of them being PR folks like me. But again, recruitment.

Edit: The way we have it spread out now, I work on PR, another guy does the website, five people actually do robot work and we have another all around guy. It works out ok, but we're losing two awesome engineers and a lot of the PR staff since they graduated.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

So glad we're not the only ones. Any ideas of how to get kiddos to join our not so mass army of robot builders?

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Because our team consists only of juniors and seniors, and because you have to be in the robotics class to be on the team, we get a whole lot of turnover each year. I only had three returning students last year, and I think I'm only getting four back this year. It certainly makes it more difficult, but not impossible. It forces a lot of people to have to do a lot of learning, which, all things considered, is a pretty good thing. Best of luck with your rebuilding process.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

We are just like this, one member of our team literally built our 1 robot ramp singlehandedly, another the base and electrical system, and another the entire arm and endeffector. We just don't have any other members who come by more than once a week.

We managed to build a half-decent robot by using many off the shelf parts, as well as a lot from the kit, meeting at least a little every single day, keeping the robot at one of the dedicated members' house so that they can work on it in their spare time away from meetings, and recieving some help from other local teams.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Getting members is just a matter of getting the name out along with the benefits of joining, like college application material, first hand engineering and business experiences, getting out of school to attend a few regionals, etc. Make sure not to make it seem too tech intensive, because I know we had a large PR group who helped keep morale up and money coming in. Future business types can actually learn about dealing with sponsors, advertising and all that sort of thing. Just make it seem fun and catering to many interests.

Most of our the new members we're getting our people who wouldn't naturally be interested, but who members know and talked to about how awesome it is. Our future wiring guy is the brother of our old art designer who loved coming to our meetings.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Aslo, remember that the season starts the first day of school, not January. Do things around and in school to build a little excitement - even just posters all around the school like "join the robot team" 1st meeting Tuesday at 3:15 in the technology room...

Hey, all you need is for five people to show up, and you have doubled the team! Also, get the teachers involved, especially the science areas, they might be willing to give the team a plug (a mention in class).

Don

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Recruit like there's no tomorrow. Show of the robots at any school activities you can: Back to School Night, PTSA meetings, school rallies, sports games, wherever you can get a spot to get students interested.

Once you've gotten interest, make it easy for them to contact the team. 5 returning members, while not a lot, is certainly enough to make a good leadership team. All you need are eager new students!

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

We are planning on expanding our team. Our team is a small one, but no where near as small as yours are. We are planning on using periods in our school day at the beginning of the year (tomorrow) called activitie periods where clubs can join up and where most people will go to random clubs just to get out of class to recruit a few more people. Then for a longer term version of recruitment, we are going to try to start a Lego League team or vex team for younger students so they will have more interest in joining in the future.

So what I'm trying to say is to start recruiting in a small way like at your High School, then try to start a yonger team like Lego or Vex to get students of a younger age to be interested in joining in the future. You might also want to try to go to a middle school and recruit 8th graders for next years team. These are based off of what we are going to do. I hope you will find it useful.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

In 2007, 1618 brought seven students, a PLTW teacher, an EE, and a marketing major to the Palmetto Regional to some degree of success.

What would I cite as things that helped us do well?

1) Cut back. All 1618 had this year was the robot--no WFA nomination, no Chairman's submission, no FLL or FVC teams, nada. I wish we could do more, but sometimes it just can't be done with the number of folks on board.

2) Have good people. We didn't have many folks qualify to travel, but the ones we had were aware of our limitations and what had to be done--and they delivered. There is no substitute for having a group of people willing to bust their humps when needed.

3) Know that your other limits have gone nowhere. You can't fundraise particularly well with seven kids and three mentors, something that influenced our robot design--the arm structure was mostly angle aluminum, PVC pipe, pegboard, velcro, and laminated paper. Keeping that simple allowed us to keep most of the fabrication (everything except the printing and bearing pressing) in our shop, which kept the kids we did have busy.

4) Look forward. In the time after Palmetto, we hatched a few schemes to help grow the team, and make sure they stick with the team on through to build (the problem that put us in our position last season). We'll see if they stick.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

First off, DON'T underestimate your skills. No one expects teams to have a professional student programmer or machinist. Corry has produced some excellent robots during the past few years, and though your team is currently smaller, you have watched and experienced all that has gone into making those great bots. You and your teammates have more experience than you seem willing to accept credit.

As a school based team, the obvious first choice to build the team-base is within your own school. However, if you are not able to get to your "critical mass" of students, see if the administration will allow students outside your system to participate (private schools or home-schooled students).

One year at VCU, we met a home-schooled team who each built a robot component independent of each other. It was only immediately before shipping that all parts were brought together for the first time and assembled for competition. An interesting communications concept to deal with the large distances that separated the students, and a significantly more difficult challenge than most of our teams face.

Second, spend as much time as possible during the fall to improve your own skills and train new students. If possible, attend off-season events, even if you are not competing, to familiarize your new students to the FIRST culture. Walk around the pits, and have them discuss with teams about how their robot is built/programmed. Get SPECIFIC! Why did they use a dual lift instead of a ramp? How did they build their combo Ramp-Lift? Etc. Off-season events aren't just for gameplay, they should also be a training session for new students and rookie teams.

Finally, if you find that you do need assistance with skills, reach out to the FRC community. One of your neighbors, whom you have traveled with over the past few years, Team 291 CIA, is listed as "Willing to Mentor" on the FIRST website. Mentoring Teams are not only looking to help rookies, but also to help any established teams that need assistance. There are many programming questions that will end up here on CD, and often there are a number of suggestions/ideas to solve the problem. Your team's resources extend far beyond your school, make effective use of them.

CRT has been one of the fun teams to watch at the Philadelphia Regional the past few years, and I expect they will be again in 2008!

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

We had 3 members last year, and we finished 6th ranked in our regional, with semi finals.
In aim High we were 5 memebers, finished 4rh, finalist award.
This year we are curently 1 member team + a few who graduated.

We have good ideas of recruitment which i suggest you to try.
We have a prsentation we will make at the begining of the year, explaining what First is, what kind of people we are looking for etc.
We also show the robot at that presentation, show the highlight video from Rack N Roll, and maybe Aim High too. We give about 5 people from the crowd the chance to drive a robot and see how it is. We were also thinking about doing a simulation of a meeting in which we bring up ideas for a certain part of our robot. In this meeting we talk to the crowd, asking it to give us ideas, and we see how it works. Eventually we will show them the solution our team has found to the problem, and maybe that will get them more excited. The basic idea is to get the crowd excited about Robotics, and make them wanna join.

We also, for the first time ever, organize in Israeli Off season event right in our school gym. We are inviting everyone to come andd see how a First competition is like, and in this event we will have a "Register-to-our-Team" desk for those who are interested. Hopefully it will bring more members.

Hope it helps =]

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

All of these posts are good ones to refer to as you move into your year.

Teams definitely build on their strengths year to year and this will be true in your case. You may be down in membership but you have another year of experience under your belt. Experience will help you. You know what the team needs to do to get through the year/the build season and the competition. Look at that closely, decide what needs to stay and what needs to go, and create/define the year '08. It isn't going to be '07 or '05, it is going to be '08.

Good luck with it, you guys are awesome.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Along with what everyone said, you still have a lot of time. I hope the 5 of you can trust each other. Come up with a plan to recruit more people and decide on what you want to do this year. As Billfred said, if you don't have the man-power, don't submit WFA, Chairmans etc. However, if you have a reason to really really submit WFA, I'd say look around for someone who likes to write and wants to be a part of a team. I have found that simply putting posters all over the place is not always helpful. However, if you could spread the word of what kind of people you are looking for, and what is in for them, then you have a higher chance of recruiting people. Go on the USFIRST site and print out the different scholarships available. Make sure the college names and scholarship amount is visible. This surely will catch the interest of academically inclined students. If you end up with only a team with 10 also, and you all somewhat know how to perform each job, just do your best. You're in robotics, you are smart enough to figure out how to build, wire and program a robot. Just use common sense and you'll be fine. Good luck.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Just as feverishly as you recruit more students, go recruit some mentors who can communicate to students AND help you with the tougher problems. You might also find along the way that you have some companies willing to not only throw some engineers your way, but also perhaps a few sponsorship dollars as well.

Without proper guidance, you may very well end up with a group of genetic-algorithm-following amigo bots rather than the team you had in mind. (bad memories from college, don't ask)

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Around this time last year we had 5-6 students. We had about 15 or so (but about 30 on the roster) once the season rolls around.

Also, don't forget that most of the work will probably be done by the 5-10 most dedicated students, and the rest will probably just show up ocassionally (seems to be true for smaller teams, not speaking for big teams here).

You guys will be fine, I remember panicking the same time last year.

EDIT: I remember you guys have access to nice machining equipment/resources. Make sure to get the new students trained in CAD/design and machining ASAP. This may get them hooked, and will play to your resources.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Pretty normal situation, actually. In our rookie year EVERYONE was in grade 12, so we were 100% rookies again the second year. This year we have just five or six people returning from last year's team.

I also infer that you actually have more than 5 people on your team, but that you aren't counting some of them because you have not deemed them "competent". It has been my experience that while some people can contribute more to a team than others, that everyone who approaches FIRST with a positivie attitude can contribute something of meaning if provided with sufficient guidance. Remember that FIRST isn't really about the robot... it is about the people.

You have four or five months to recruit new members and work on training and team building... make sure you use it. You can build a robot in six weeks, but it is pretty hard to build a team at the same time.

Jason

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Our team has about 5 people that actually build the robot, and about 4 people that we use for extra hands (no mentors, sadly...). However, we still manage to produce insanely competitive bots each year. Over the summer, we had 2 meetings to plan on how to build the team, and here's what we came up with:

1. Video- Our school has video announcements every morning, and so we'll be making a recruitment video to get more knowledge of the team spread around.

2. Easy Access- Once we run the video, we'll be updating our website with a /join page, in order for students who are interested to sign up with their email or phone number, so we can let them know when meetings are.

3. Quick and welcoming response- Face it, we're students, we have the memory of a goldfish when it comes to scheduling. So what we're setting up is one or two people to be in charge of welcoming. We're going to get back to those people who sign up, most likely on the day after they sign up. Then we'll get them immediately involved, as we are constantly doing projects (RC electric full size car, in house VEX competition, tool and training sessions, as well as many other things).

4. Follow up surveys- Every few weeks, or maybe once every two months, we're going to send out a survey to members of both the team and random school students. The members of the team can give suggestions on how to improve the team, while the other students will let us know what they think of the robotics team, so we can work on our image in order to attract more students.


Due to the size of our team, and that fact that we're all seniors, the robot is actually taking a back seat to recruitment until we gain enough students to guarantee survival of the program.

Hope that helps!

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

1516 ran the whole season on 7 people, and one mentor... Entirely student built and managed. And everyone was always busy and everyone knew their job. Get 5 people who are committed, and you will be fighting with the big dogs in Atlanta. You don't need big flashy sponsors (they help), overly complicated designs don't exactly mean results. If anyone needs any advice on how to run a small team go ahead and PM me... Alotta teams at SVR can vouch for how we roll...
Greg
1516 General Manager 2006-2007

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

You guys are studs BTW!

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Well, we HAD one dedicated member who knew how to cause the robot to grow. We have a couple of possible freshmen who with a lot of coaching could make the bot but since I graduated this year the team doesn't have anyone who really knows enough to get the bot to completion.

Luckily I'm going to be going to school up the hill this year and can run down a couple of days each week as long as I don't have homework. I'm really hoping that the new kids will step up to the plate with gusto cause I don't want them to loose out on building the robot.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

THAAAANKS!!! That really helps. We're having a meeting tomorrow, and I'll bring up some of your poings to everyone else. Thanks again!!

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Err...I didn't mean to seem like a jerk when I used the word competent. It wasn't the right word...the right thing would be "dedicated on a regular basis"

-Andy

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Ahh... that makes ALL the difference. Passion and dedication in this field are definitely required to become competent.

If you've got five committed team members now, then you've got a good start for building from in the fall.

Jason

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

First off i would like to say thank you. Though I graduated i still am going to help out and i know a few things. The team is bigger than 5 people, being that it was summer, people have trouble making it in. In the fall I know our mentor makes it possible for people to go to school in the mornings and work on machine shop stuff, and then in the afternoons on anything else. Also before we left last year we trained the members that were on the team, and taught them almost everything that we could. What some of the new members don't know is in 2004 we, the 12 seniors, were in there shoes. We didn't know anything and know one really taught us how to do anything. In 2005 when we were the oldest ones left we had to do everything ourselves, and we didn't have the greatest robot. We taught ourselves how to do everything. As bill said we have built some excellent robots, but it wasn't until we used all of our resources.
Finally there are still team members around that are willing to help out, all you will have to do is ask. Team 306 was not left with nothing, and if they use all there resources wisely they will succeed.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

675 has about 30-45 members, however many of them flake out before build season (For associated reasons, such as "I joined Robotics to build robots and go to competitions, not do fundraisers or clean the shop" type stuff, but that weeds out the lame ducks honestly), or don't contribute to the build (We get a force of about 7-10 strong all build long in all departments).

The mechanical and electrical build team is currently at 3 people. But that should change with returning members changing divisions or actually doing work, as well as freshmen (assuming we can get them to behave...).

But I have a feeling, as it's been in previous years, it'll end up being a group of about 3-5 core people who put work into the mechanical aspects. With one programmer, that sets us at 4-6 people that REALLY contribute everything those 6 weeks. Add in mentors, and Gweaver, and we've got just about 10 people.


Basically the key to having a good team, especially for build, is to have good designs. Not only for the bot, but team design. Divide up the tasks to different members. For example, There's three people on my team who divide up tasks for the build into the night (7-9pm is about when we leave). One person does frame/mechanical stuff on the mill and lots of wrenchwork, one does electrical, and one joins the two with the drivetrain.

So, basically, the key to a good team is good designs for the 'bot and team, and communication.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Could you point me to this page with the scholarships by any chance? Thanks. =)

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Time to recruit fresh new faces. A team must always be looking at the next generation to fill in their ranks.:]

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

Everyone has made awesome suggestions of innovative ways to recruit new members. All of them are worth trying.

Another thing to keep in mind when you're recruiting new members is to let people know that--although the program is very robot-oriented--there are different facets on the team that a person can join if helping to build the robot is not for them.

Examples include:
+Chairman's Report
+Woodie Flowers Report
+Animation
+Film Crew/media
+Fundraising
+Etc.

In my own personal experiences, I know that potential members think that the only thing robotics is about is robots, and they feel that if they aren't mechanically knowledgeable (sp?), they shouldn't join the team. Let them know that there is a vast array of positions available on your team, and I guarantee you will get some new members. How do I know this? When I first joined Team Hammond, I was the same way. I thought because I didn't build things, I couldn't do anything. Once I went to a few meetings, however, I got interested in the media-aspect of robotics, became hooked, and the rest is history.

I hope this will help you, and good luck! :)

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

try going to administration and seeing if you can demo your last years robot during lunch. that was an idea that I heard worked out for ppl. we are a 2nd year team so idk besides that. dont worry youll get it together. the most important thing is to have fun with it i guess. i mean I would rather have a season where everyone learned and had fun that a season where we won nats but we ended up not having fun or learning anything.

-vivek.

Re: An Unusually Small Team...?
 

:rolleyes: There's always us, heh.


I mean, I graduated, But I'd like to think that I'm still a member of the team... Anything you guys need help with; you can just get a hold of me and I'll help you. I'm sure (as Kyle all ready expressed), that the other graduated members feel the same way. Andrew and Bemis might be a wee bit far... but we'll all come back at some time or another... and we can always be there if you really need us.

After all: once a FIRSTER always a FIRSTER.