[EricH]

Originally Posted by ghandler94

Right now, though, we are working on establishing a build season schedule and organization of sorts. We are asking ourselves questions like:
-Do we want to build two robots?
-How often do we meet?
-Do we have two sessions each night, where girls can choose which they attend?
-How many days/hours do we use to strategize and design? How many to protoype? How many to build? How many to practice?

The build schedule can be broken down by week. One of the better schedules runs like this:

Week 1: Strategize
Week 2: Concept design/prototype
Week 3: Detail design/finish prototyping
Week 4-5: Build robot
Week 6: Finish robot and turn over to programmers (who have been working on their code the last 5 weeks) and drivers (who can't wait for the code to finish loading)
Weekend before ship: Scrimmage! Or driver practice.
Between scrimmage and tools-down: Make adjustments based on scrimmage results

I don't think you want to have two sessions per night. It's just a bit complicated. But having an open format, where if you need to come later than the scheduled meeting time, you can, or if you need to leave early, you can, will help with scheduling and choosing.

Building two robots: If you have the resources, that second robot can provide a lot of driver practice and strategy drills. If you're really looking to do 2 robots the "right" way, start the practice robot around Week 2 and finish it around Week 3-4, then start the competition robot with stuff you learned from the practice robot. If you don't have the resources, put everything towards completing the competition robot before Week 6.