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One of the ideas my team was thinking about this year that was partially for money, but mainly to get kids to join the team was a mini-battlebots type competition. There were two ways we were thinking about doing this.
1.Groups of students could buy a kit that would include some minor materials (small extruded aluminum and lexan or some other plastic base material) and our team would mentor the building of the robots. We would get a profit off of their buying the kit from us and we would get kids inspired about building robots. We could get a lot of kids involved because high school guys love to destroy things, but it would probably be too expensive to get kids to buy the kits.
2.We put on a battlebots type competition made up of groups from our FIRST team and charge admission. This also relies on high-schoolers destuctive drive and the fascination with technology. If all of the competitors were working together, we could plan some good matches (such as having a set number of 'good' robots and just have them compete against crap robots that look like they"re good but really have minimal time and money put into them, thus minimalizing waste) and still acheive our objectives of recruiting students and getting money, but if no one showed upo to watch the matches, it would be a waste and it would also be a hassle trying to find a place for the matches to take place.
We might still do one of these next year if we have a bigger funding base, but right now they"re just fantasies that some one else might be able to put into action.
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