[Jon Stratis]

My thoughts for rookies:

1. There's a month until kickoff. Go read last year's robot rules! A lot of them don't change from one year to the next (wire gauges, pneumatic safety rules, etc), and being familiar with them now will help when you read the new ones in January.
2. Read the rules carefully. Do it every night for the first week, then twice a week after that while you're building just to make sure you don't miss something.
3. Follow the FRC Blog, e-mail blasts, the Q&A, and team updates carefully! You never know when a rule is going to change, or something might be said that will change your interpretation of the rule. While the Q&A and team updates are the only official source for rule updates, the blog and e-mail blasts will usually clue you in if there's something big being changed.
4. Do some brainstorming and figure out what you'd like to build. Then dial it back some. Don't try to do too much! It's better to take an approach of adding capability as time permits. Taking an "all or nothing" approach usually means you end up with nothing!
5. Before you build anything else, get your drive train together and working! Get a piece of plywood and toss on the control system so you can drive it around. This is a HUGE hurdle to get through your first season, and if you can just drive around you'll be as good as (or better than) most rookies out there.
6. Watch your size and weight! The KoP chassis WILL require some cutting to meet the size requirements. Building a robot to big or too heavy are the two worst things to do - The first means a re-build at competition (for gross violations... sometimes you can jigger things to fix a small size issue), and the second means removing whole parts from your robot to get under weight (trust me... you can't expect to lose much more than 1 lb by drilling holes in things!).
7. Get a hold of a local (or even not so local if needed) experienced team, and don't be shy about asking for help!
8. Pre-inspect your robot before bagging it, so you know ahead of time what you'll need to change/fix at competition.