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Unread 08-12-2012, 00:10
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AKA: David Carr
FRC #3309 (Friarbots)
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Re: Help for Second Year Team

Quote:
Originally Posted by Moriarty View Post
Another thing -- We have repaired our robot from our previous year (which turned out be magnificent after replacing a chain). Next week we are exhibiting the robot at our school's science fair. In previous years we have done something similar with our FTC robots and we have borrowed FRC robots from other teams to show and gain interest. However, what we found last year is that much of the interest is fleeting and we don't manage to retain many that showed interest initially.

Suggestions on introducing interested members to the team?

Also: What are some other ways that you use previous year robots for awareness (we were thinking to pseudo-crash a sports-team pep rally by driving the robot through the middle of it >, with permission of course.)

(I feel as if I am asking too many questions in too short a period of time, but there is so much to learn)
We have always kept our previous years' robots running well into the next build season (now, with a large enough supply of parts, we'll likely keep them running indefinitely). Aside from off-season competitions, they are great tools for recruitment and promotion.

Some of the things we've done recently off the top of my head:
  • Open House demonstrations (allow potential new students to drive the robot and learn about the team)
  • Club rush booth/demos on campus at all three schools that make up our team
  • Middle School demonstrations - we travel to half a dozen middle schools that feed into our three schools to do demonstrations and let the kids drive - they love it!
  • Non-profit organizations - demos/presentations nearby after-school tutoring centers that focus on providing technology access to underpriveleged youth
  • Storage Hunters TV show - yep, our 2012 bot and practice bot are going to be "discovered" on an upcoming episode of the show
  • Pep ralies - our pep rallies are held in the theater, so we have the robot on stage (we typically don't drive it, but we show an exciting "pump-up" video)
  • Basketball games - since this is the first time we have a basketball-playing robot, we've arranged to do a halftime show during a bit game with our main rival school in January
  • Middle school workshop - we invite students from surrounding middle schools, boy scout troops, etc. This year over 100 kids showed up to participate in workshop sessions to learn about the team

A pretty large number of our outreach is geared at middle-school age kids because it's a powerful recruitment tool for our three high schools.

We promote the team pretty heavily within our schools too - regular segments on the school TV network, we bring the robot to random events like Food Truck Feasts, fundraisers, etc.

This was probably a broader answer than you're looking for, but I wanted to make a few points. When explaining the team to your school community, you have to get over the hurdle of "what is robotics? Is it like battlebots? why don't you put a chainsaw on it?" It will take a while for the community to understand what you do, for us it took about a year. Now that everyone knows basically what the robotics team does, we focus on getting more detail out there - what roles are there on the team? Why should students join? We want to explain that you don't need prior experience to join, that their are opportunities to learn and practice business and creative skills in addition to engineering.

My advice: bring the robot to every event you possibly can within your school community. Get some professional banners, pins to hand out, etc. Just focus on getting the word out there and make sure students who are interested have any easy way to sign up and start getting team emails, information, etc. We typically run these recruitment efforts during August-September and have our "fall kickoff" in late September or early October (naturally, team members from the previous year have been continually working year-round, but this is the cycle on which we typically induct new members). For us it is a bit late to have students joining now, but there's no reason they can't and we still have a few trickling in. You have a couple weeks before Christmas break, so make the most of it in terms of promotion.
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