All jobs in a FIRST team are important.
 

I think every position is important in a FIRST team, so don't say writing a newsletter isn't a "standard duty" for you team. There are all kind of position in a team: from the people who work on the robot such as the different components team, to the electronics team, to the animation team, to the chairman team, to the organization and public relation team... etc.

There are all kind of people who have important duties. Even if they are only cleaning up the shop by picking up nuts and bolts or only designing signs and banners for the team, or photographers who take pictures of the team, and even news letter writers such as yourself have something important to contribute to the tea.

So don't think your job isn't a standard duty in the team. You are as much of a FIRST person as your team leader or drive train leader are. FIRST doesn't just help the growth of engineers, but also help raise the general quality of all kind of people who participate in it. I know people who will never become an engineer, but they benefited from the FIRST competition a whole lot.

Now back to your question about the newsletter. You can always include daily progress of the robot of you team, and add some general reminder of the schedule your team leader decided. Talk about what's going on in the FIRST community as well, things like team updates, and topics that came up in the forum. Finally, include stuff going on in other teams, and include outside resources such as other team's database and scouting system, and report what happens in the regional competitions.

Those are only some of the ideas I have...

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

as my signature indicatates, i handle communications on my team. one thing i was looking at for next year was a newsletter. it's not such an unusual idea, i know the Thunderchickens have a newsletter, which they distributed each day in atlanta.

i don't think that you should consider yourself an oddjob on the team. you have a job, and when you are available you are given the extra little things that come up. that is how things go on my team, and it works pretty well. i do random jobs and scouting at competitions because my job is like yours, done away from the competition itself. so don't get down about your job, make the most of it! the newsletter is what you choose for it to be, use your power to make your job fun!

PS: I'm a journalist, JOURNALISM ROCKS!!! :D

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

Team 188 has a newsletter that we send out to sponsers or potential sponsers. Lots of logos and info on team. If your team doesn't have one they should. Just think how much easier it will be next year when you approach a sponser and ask for money. They have been kept informed and they see their logo going around to other sponsers. Is this job important? You bet!!!! Never look at any job as if it were not important. Even the relished task of sorting screws, nuts and bolts is important. You can even learn from those jobs.

Someone find me a 8 - 32 x 1 1/4 bolt please. :rolleyes:

Re: Everyone has a good job on the team.
 

Hahahaha. I went to the dining hall for breakfast this morning (An unusual occurance, I'm normaly in bed) and ran up to one of my friends and said "I got a story, It's really cool, wanna hear it?" Her Reply "If it has to do with robots, no." Oddly enough, for the first time in about a year, it didn't have to do with robots (it had to do with mushroom clouds and chevy blazers :yikes: ).

We don't really have a newsletter, because (at least on my rookie team) there's only 10 of us. We do have some other interesting jobs though..
>>Power Cord Hoarder - Makes sure that the power cords for the computer speakersare well hidden because otherwise our productivity drops about 300% because all they do is argue about what kind of music to listen too)
>>Ant Killer - Self Explanitory (there's a nest of them in the wall and the school doesn't seem to mind, but I find it annoying)

And on 226 ---
>>Filing - I was always in charge of filing (like getting rid of sharp corners filing, not paper filing). I cam out of every other meeting looking like I had been painted with three coats of silver spray paint

A newsletter would be a really good idea for 226. It would give another of those 60+ students on the team something interesting to do.

Allison

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

Replace "shop tools" with "hand tools" and you've got what I do when I'm not programming. I'm surprised that no one on the Electronics team has killed me yet. :D

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

I know ChellyZee93 did a lot of 93's newsletter - talk to her, she's good at that stuff. :)

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

Well, our team is working on creating a newsletter for next year, right now we have email blasts from our mentors. On the team, my job is essentially anything that does not directly relate to the robot :p ie. Web design, graphic design, video, etc etc.

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

As Captain... I do or lead in the doing of the "dirty work" fundraising, sponsor relations, some communications, promo items, banner making, etc...

We used to have a newsletter, but that was discontinued after we moved to a two part website. a public and a private. The private is for team members, mentors. families, and sponsors. We have all news and a calendar there.

It has made information much easier to get out.

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

We have a newsletter on our team. It is sent to the families of team members (we don't get to see them a lot, so this way we can keep them in the loop), sponsors, and our school. One person on the team does most of the newsletter, but if individual students want to submit articles, they are welcome. We try to have our newsletter come out regularly, about once a month, but, as i'm sure you all know, this is frequently impossible.

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

A senior on my team sent out an e-mail newsletter this year and it was great. He talked about the teams progress, what would happen at the next meeting, and made sure everyone knew about all the logistics of trips. I really appreciated the newsletter because it really helped to organize the team. They may not tell you but i'm sure your team appreciates your work so don't feel like your jobs not important.

Ben Van Selous

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

Wow, this goes back to 2001!.
I do monthly targeted email newsletters. Communication is a big challenge and these help. One gets sent to the school system people (principal, head of Tech Ed, school board, etc), one to parents, one to the team, one to sponsors. Sometimes they are all the same, sometimes vary. They are short, bullet format, easy to read, clearly labeled in subject line. They can also be printed out. We get positive feedback from these. I learned the hard way not to include all audiences in the same email, as there are many who don’t understand basic email manners, such as you don’t hit “reply all” to complain about something petty and send to the superintendent!

During the build, a student does engineering updates every other day, sent to the engineering mentors.

For example, the May newsletter will list the seniors and their plans for next year and any FIRST/technology/scholarship awards they received (the school system is VERY interested in this), the new officers, fundraising update, summer plans, and info about our visit to Lockheed Martin, a sponsor.

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

One of the complaints we've had in previous years is that there was little communication on the team. This year I became the self-appointed "communicator" for the team. I take the minutes from each meeting and e-mail them to the student members and all adults (including parents) who wish to receive them. I forward the FIRST e-mail blasts. I send out the agendas for upcoming meetings. I send out anything else of interest to the team.

In addition, I send info on a regular basis to our sponsors, school administrators and local politicians.

I create a newsletter (tried to do it monthly) and e-mail it to our parents, sponsors and school administrators and also post it online because some of them have e-mail accounts that cannot read HTML e-mails. You can look at an issue here.

I have informed the team that I am gladly giving up this role next year and that it's an opportunity for one of them to step up and take (as I feel it should be done by students who have a different viewpoint than mine). So far, no takers...

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

Me too!!! But I'm not holding my breath :)

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

our team is small, so we don't have a newsletter. actually, like the entire school doesn't even know we exist or that we were building a robot. anyway, i do everything. i mean everything i can... so just keep bugging ur teacher about ur skills n maybe u can do other stuff...or u can just hang out n touch shiny stuff. hehe! :D

Re: Am I the only person with this job?
 

For those teams that have the haphazard system of sending out emails to their team members and all, perhaps you should consider getting a forum? If you go to http://proboards.com you can register a forum - already setup, hosted, everything - for free. It takes liek 30 seconds.

Our team has a forum of sorts and it works wonders. We do a lot of communicating on it since not all the team members come out to meetings (and some of us are alumni working :P ) We try to make participation in it mandatory, but it doesn't always work. :P