Quote:
Originally Posted by quinxorin
p.s. If you can get an 80% retention rate, I would love to know how you do it.
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Today was our team's second meeting. We had 75 members at the first meeting, and 71 members at the second for a 94.66% retention rate. Hopefully this keeps up.
Some observations on what works and what doesn't work:
Does work:
- Have activities requiring input from both veteran members and new members, but making sure veteran members lead off.
- Background visual engagement: we had about 15 miscellaneous robots, some team-made and some from mentors' collections, and placed them in a very noticeable place. We promised to demo them, but not until the end. Anticipation retains attention.
- Officers introducing themselves without their given title to alleviate intimidation and any sort of psychological barrier. Emphasize the team feeling, not a hierarchy. Titles can come later.
- Introduce mentors on a first-name basis (our only exception was our faculty contact, whom many of the members have as a teacher)
- Veteran member modesty and humor.
- If anyone has a fantastic short-term memory, being able to refer to the members by name after they introduce themselves.
Doesn't work:
- Cheesy activity names. For instance: "Meet the mentors!"
- Any one person talking for more than some 30 seconds at a time..
- Inside jokes and veteran member side conversations.
I'm not sure if we were just really lucky or if our methodology was actually effective. I know that the same first meeting structure will be used at a rookie team in the area, so if I hear anything about how that goes I'll be sure to post here.