Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

With our four-day schedule, we tend to get a fair degree of mentor continuity. Our teacher attends virtually every single meeting, as do I. Many of our other teachers and mentors attend regularly as well. However, a handoff system wouldn't be too terrible (person A comes Monday and Tuesday, person B comes Tuesday and Wednesday, person C comes Wednesday and Thursday...), at least in my mind.

To answer your earlier question about reaction from rookies, the answer is that it depends. In 2007, we went from once every other week to three days a week, and a lot of students and/or parents balked; we brought seven kids to Palmetto. This season, we've made no bones about the requirements from day one; I think we'll have some natural attrition, but nothing on the scale of last year.

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

Not here...though I think the primary exception is Kickoff and the immediate meeting for the closest mentor I can think of. 99% per mentor typically ain't bad. And some mentors DO have a life outside of FIRST...

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

gasp?...

I think we need a lot more mentors as of now. where do you get most of your mentors? school, parents, companies?

thanks, vivek

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

Parents, mostly. Or past/future parents of students on the team. My dad started when I was about 8. I was about 14 when I joined the team...

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

sometimes till first period, if its a good day....

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

umm. On a side note, how long can a human being survive/remain sane without sleep? :]

-vivek

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

sane? about 5 weeks.

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

Well, it is really hard to die from lack of sleep; the world record is around two weeks for normal people with a full recovery. For longest period awake, I believe the record is several months, but very long periods of sleeplessness like that are caused by medical disorders that result in death. (There was a rather interesting 60 Minutes story on a family in, IIRC, Italy that had one of these sleep disorders running through their ancestry. Basically, one day in their thirties or forties, without warning, some members of the family would be unable to fall asleep and later die after months of sleep deprivation) You do start to hallucinate after a couple of days without sleep though, which may be a problem operating power tools...

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

so if I get decent sleep first week of build I won't need any for the rest of it. Awesome.;)

-vivek

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

Often, the consistency of the team is based on the consistency of the mentors that commit their time and effort to the team. Teams find ways to work with the schedule. Communication is key in running a FIRST team. The mentors that you have should discuss what they can commit to and what areas they will work in with the team. From there, you can figure out if you need more mentors. It is always good to have mentor support and parent support. Time constraints are a big part of build. Learning to work within those time constraints is real world.

Your team has to figure out what you can and can not do this year and learn from this experience. Build on it. All of this advice is nice but it can also be overwhelming. Go through the thread and write down suggestions that have been helpful and something you feel your team can do.

There are teams who build out of a living room and a garage and they are successful. There are teams that build out of warehouses like you are talking about. There are teams that build out of shops at schools. There are teams that build out of shops provided for them by their sponsors. Every team has to figure out how to make the best use of their time and their workspace. There is no cookie cutter method to build.

If little red flags raise regarding lack of sleep, using energy drinks to keep yourself going, letting studies slide - pay attention to those little red flags and discuss them with your team. Your rookie year is the only rookie year you guys will ever have. It will be stressful and the learning curve will be enormous but approach it with as much common sense as you can and have fun learning what a FIRST team is all about and capable of.
Take the time to read the information that has been released for the 2008 manual.
Take the time to look at the resources provided for you in the FIRST website.
Take the time to look at the rookie resources provided for you by teams and referred to here in CD.

This thread is a thread of advice, humor, and suggestions, but the actual programs that have been developed to help rookies through their first build and competition(s) are where you'll get the most bang for your buck.

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

Wow, lots of replies within a few hours. Uhm, anyway, we have the main teacher and an engineer mentor from a company called Fluke (I still don't know who they are) and I think that's part of our problem with limited hours. That and the somewhat restricted school administration, but that's another story. I really wish we had more mentors, since none of the parents help out at all, although we don't have a big team, so right now we're good.

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

Since you have a mentor from Fluke, and your post implies that this engineer might be your only technical mentor, it would be a good idea for your team to learn a little about that company. Sponsors, judges, politicians, school administrators, and other interested people just love it when students learn a few things about the folks who volunteer their time to help. :)

Fluke is a highly respected instrumentation company. They are part of a larger corporation called Danaher. A division called Fluke Biomedical has one of its head offices in Cleveland, so that may be where your team's mentor works. Fluke Biomedical's website can be found here.

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

Oh, you'd be surprised . . .

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

Yes, thank you Richard! 2007 was my rookie year, so I was just trying to get a hang of the program. But it's good to know a little bit about the company now. And we do appreciate him greatly.

Sleep. I'm still trying to calculate how much of this strange ritual I perform during "that time of the year".

Re: how often does your team meet during build season?
 

For survival, it's really difficult not to fall asleep at some point in time. Actually, I read someplace that missing a couple of hours of sleep is approximately equivalent to drinking two or three beers. And it's possible to medically overdose on caffeine. Caffeine is a drug and can poison your system to the point of your heart stopping, so DO. NOT. OVER. USE!

For sanity, definitely depends on each person. Some people are capable of pulling all nighters two days in a row (!), some need ten hours a night to function. I know people on both ends and everywhere in between. Personally, I can work on 6 hours a night, maybe 5 if I'm really pushing it. Most people are somewhere in between, and I don't really recommend testing your limit. But if you must, make sure you can crash for at least ten hours or so. Once I worked all night on a school project and nearly fell asleep on my bike on the way to school. :ahh: In front of a big intersection. :D