[jpetito]

Richard- Good comments and suggestions all.

Number three of your post is something we're promoting as well, though the new teams in our area struggle with skills, having no experience with them during the regular school day. In our area (Los Angeles) public education is mostly a wasteland when it comes to technically-based hands-on learning, and our biggest effort is to teach students during what educators call "flipped" time these kinds of real-world skills.

Mentors too sometimes have little conversance with "make it" skills, though expert with design, systems, and the conceptual underpinnings of making a machine play the game well.

I'd like to know how many teams have late spring/summer build seminars to keep the skill-building conversations and motions in play, previous to January.

One added recommendation: more off-season FRC events, locally based and sponsored, that support 30 to 40 teams across maybe two days, that will promote the skill and knowledge base, and transfer the team institutional memory. A focus for the off-season gig would be on inviting newer teams to play the game one more time, helping them along, with expert teams sending their expert people, but not necessarily their machine, to help out.

One more thing-- make the off-season game cheap and local, with minimal awards and junk.