Quote:
Originally Posted by Or 2230
Hello there FIRST community 
Recently, our team, that traditionally had 30-40 members, has faced a new problem: 40 new students signed up to our team, which makes us a team of 70 students.
Our team never had any process of deciding which students can join our team and which can't, because of the fact that we believe that everyone who wants to join FIRST should have the opportunity to do so.
What do you guys do in your teams? Do you sort the students or do you have a team structure which is capable of having this amount of students? |
Good luck.
Before the 2011 FRC season, 2220 had almost precisely the same thing happen-- and then continue happening until now. Explosive growth is a marvelous thing.
In my experience, the number one thing that keeps momentum going on growth is keeping everybody busy. Offseason projects, a second robot, lots of different prototypes, focusing on training and CAD, and capitalizing on individual students' interests are all things that feed into that. If you use your excess human resources wisely, you can get more sponsors, start a lot of FLL, FTC, or VRC teams in your area, and raise awareness for FIRST and STEM programs massively.
Brainstorm different activities and projects that your team can do to keep people busy. Think about the size you want your build team to be, think about whether you want to build two robots, split up what might have been a "robot manufacture" group into "drive train," "manipulator," and "electrical" groups, etc. Figure out what all your new people (and current people) are interested in doing, and then reevaluate-- an excess of electrical might mean exploring doing some fancy lights on the competition robot, or focusing on making very neat wiring this year.
Team 2220 ended up iterating through a series of stuctures-- in 2012, we tried having a bunch of internally competitive groups working on our manipulator. This was not particularly effective and resulted in a lot of friction, so we had to emphasize logical prototyping and CAD in order to keep everyone interested and functional. We also started focusing on tight project management-- when you have so many people, there are no excuses for not meeting your deadlines. We also now do a lot of off-season engineering competitions (internally), and funnel new students in 7-10th grade into our FTC program, which has grown from 1 team in 2012 to 16 this season.
If you have any questions about that, feel free to PM me and I'll put you in touch with some of the mentors on the team (they have a bit of a different perspective; I was a student during that time).
Again, good luck. A large program is both a gift and a curse.