Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

You'll be fine; it's an ongoing joke to blame the programmers, and I was joking that you ought to account for EVERYTHING since when our electrical for the IR board was messed up... it was my fault. As the assistant programmer, you can blame everything on the lead programmer: "HE should have caught the mistake!" Or just blame everything on the electrical or mechanical teams.

edit: I just realized that you won't be blaming it on the electrical team.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

My $0.02 for rookie webmasters...

Being webmaster isn't as hard as it seems. Just explore the admin panel of your team's website, and be familiar with it. Fool around with it a little bit, if you can do that without completely messing up the website. If you need updates from any of your team members for the site's content, make sure that you don't have tons of different updates all coming in at the same time; try and stagger it if you can. Also...the biggest mistake I made this year when I started off...DON'T PROCRASTINATE! When something needs to be updated or fixed, do is ASAP. This year, I didn't get most of the content up until a day before my deadline, and I spent a good 5 hours working on it. Not very fun.

Also...Google is your best friend, especially if you don't know CSS or HTML, or whatever code you need to use.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

I wish that I would have known how much work forming an FRC team was before we started doing it =p. lol

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

Me too, but not really on second thought because I might have hesitated as a freshman and missed out on a truly amazing experience.

-Vivek

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

top 5 things i wish i knew my rookie year:

5. That I'd be wearing the most embarassingly bright shirt ever

4. That I'd be bored traveling unless I was with my team

3. That I wouldn't be able to stop doing it after high school

2. That I'd meet some of the most amazing people ever

1. That I'd get shamelessly hit on with THE WORST pick up lines

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

Scouting is one the most important things in FIRST, just ask the winning alliance: 1114, 217 and 148. They have a great scouting program.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

It's also nice to work together during build season.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

I know, I headed scouting on RUSH for a couple years. I know scouting isn't worthless, but some people think of it as worthless and a waste of time. They should always do their best regardless of what they think of their job. I agonized over the phrasing on that one for a while, I guess I still didn't get it right. Sorry for any confusion.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

I really haven't got any sleep so i misread it, and thank you for clearing it up.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

I'll have to agree with that -- I put off uploading my custom (if rudimentary) CMS built upon the Zend Framework to a public server 'til the last moment, and found, to my horror, that my host had a horribly misconfigured Apache installation (specifically, a consistently incorrect REQUEST_URI env. var.) that hosed Zend's front controller, which in turn hosed the site.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

MAKE FRIENDS!!! not only will they maybe get you on an alliance (the winning one in my case) but they could become amazing friends forever. I have made friends on other teams that i couldnt live without talking to.:)

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

If you are a pre-rookie or know of a pre-rookie team forming, make sure they notify their FIRST leadership team in their area! We can be of help! That's usually the Regional Director, VISTA Volunteer, FIRST Senior Mentor, FRC Regional Planning Committee Chair.

Step outside of your comfort zone. If traditional methods of learning in the classroom don't excite you, here's your opportunity to learn doing hands-on stuff!

READ EVERYTHING FIRST PUTS OUT - the manuals, the deadlines, the rules updates, the forums, the e-mail blasts - and share the info with the team! This especially applies to you, "main contact" people!

If you're a mentor, join NEMO (Non-Engineering Mentor Organization) - every team has a technical side and a non-technical side and we've got a lot of great resources for you (www.firstnemo.org).

Focus on team organization in the fall (or summer) - and realize that what works for you as a team this year may have to be revised next year. Form your team like a small business complete with a business plan, leadership structure, job descriptions, job application process and termination process, annual review, budget, minutes from meetings, etc. Many of the issues and complaints I hear from teams stem from a lack of any kind of team organization. Take the time to create the team handbook, identify the rules and consequences, decide who will be the ultimate decision-maker if a difficult decision needs to be made, etc.

Do lots and lots of teambuilding exercises before kickoff. FIRST tends to attract us introverts, who are very happy and content doing our own thing, and frankly, our ideas are better than anyone else's on the team, right? WRONG! Get used to working together as a team. Don't like the team t-shirt or color? Learn to love it and respect it. It is your team's uniform and soon enough you will be very proud of it. (I often use the analogy of a freshman football player telling Coach (s)he doesn't really like to wear the color gold, so could they change the uniforms? Or better yet, the freshman showing up with his/her jersey cut at the shoulders or pulled back into a knot so a little bit of skin shows... um, yeah, you'd last how long on the team?)

Speaking of which, team identity has been mentioned - establish your "media look" - will you wear khaki pants with your t-shirts? Ironed clothing looks best before the cameras, and before prospective sponsors! practice your 3-minute elevator speeches!

Prepare a media packet. Prepare a press release you can take on a laptop with you to your event and a list of who to e-mail/fax it to. Prepare a wish list of everything you'd like to have, from a white board to a CNC machine, and hand it out to everyone.

Figure out by October if you will go to Championships if you win the Rookie All-Star Award at your regional event. You DON'T want to have to make that decision at the event in March when emotions are running high. Can you get the time off from school/work? Will the school system allow a last-minute request to travel out of state? Can you fundraise enough to cover last-minute travel expenses? Will the whole team go, or just a few people?

DOCUMENT your rookie season (and every one that follows!). Take lots of photos/videos, identify the people in them, keep a scrapbook, save a t-shirt, use the info to create a website and/or Chairman's Award entry. On your team's 10th anniversary you will wish you had saved these items in a box somewhere. Even if you don't create a CA entry, make it a habit to create an annual report for your stakeholders - sponsors, parents, school administration, team.

Network, network, network. Go to the off-season events in the spring and fall before you start your team. Hang around other teams and explain you are a rookie and ask questions. Most teams will be glad to help you! Be proactive and ask your FIRST leadership team if you can host an event in the fall - maybe a workshop day or maybe just a get together so teams can meet one another.

Be humble and say thank you a lot and celebrate your successes.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

My first year of FIRST was also my freshman year of college. Its funny how very different I was...

1) Cutting metal will not kill you. I was not a shop guy and had no interest in being a shop guy.
2) Its ok to put students to work, if they are a fooling around to much kick em out of the lab.
3) Don't invest your heart into a project none of the team cares about.

Back then all I was interested in was Design and CAD. So I locked my self in the lab, didn't interact much, only worked on the inventor & animation awards, and never touched the robot. When every thing was said and down, I had a partial finished project that couldn't be submitted. I don't know which then was more discouraging: that it didn't work out or that no seemed to care.

It wasn't until my junior year of college that I made any sort of part. My machining was horrible (still is in fact), but at least was able to help out and feel like I contributed. I even kept a small peice of scrap (with its S-Shaped straight cut) as a momento which is still in my wallet to this day.

Oh and scouting is huge. I've been doing it seven years and don't plan on quiting. There is no doubt in anyones mind on Chuck that we won the Philly Regional twice these past years because of our scouting team and alliance pairing. We even take the extra step of running match results to the drive team then organize our big book by match order. This way the drivers actually have an idea who they are up against (or with), and since typically all they get to see is their match or plan for the next, it becomes a huge advantage.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

Rookie Year? One of the veteren teams in my area (I'm pretty sure it was 192) told me something that has only remained true since.

Get a rolling base before everything else. If you don't have the resources to run separate projects then make sure a rolling base happens first. Code only works on a moving robot, a driver can only practice on a rolling base....you get the point.

But that is advice after the start of build season. Before build, work with the students that will be the team. Team building is a good idea. Odds are not everyone will like each other and they don't have to, but they will need to work together.
Simple things
4 Square (you would be surprised)
Pot Lucks
Movie nights with a projector in a garage.
Paint ball.


Find a FRC team nearby, any team worthy of their number will be happy to help

Also raise money, you will need it for next year at least, most likely you'll need it for tools, or spares or travel to Atlanta.

In Hind site I am really glad I didn't know how much of my life would become wrapped into FIRST. I may have backed away from it as a cult or something. But I am glad I did.

Re: What Do You Wish You Would Have Known Your Rookie Year?
 

If any rookie team or any team for the matter needs machining help or need parts made. Email me at rcthekid1323@gmail.com and we can help.