[GeeTwo]

Honestly, we've found that once you're at competition, there are only so many people needed. If you've got plenty going to competition (as we do; we're less than an hour drive from our regional), make sure that everyone has exactly one job. The various "competition departments" are: driver team (includes at least one from programming, and one or two spares so we train for next year); pit work crew (includes usually two from mechanical, two from wiring/pneumatics, and one from programming); chairman's (about five who go to the chairman's interviews, and otherwise schmooze up our robot and team); scouting (who trawl the pits, sit in the stands to record points scored, and brief the drive team between matches); and spirit (the ones who don costumes, wave flags, play instruments in the opening ceremony, and/or have really loud voices). We are also probably going to add a "pit talk" crew this year, who are people who have certified that they can speak clearly, and really understand how our robot works. This will take a bit of pressure off the pit work crew from having to answer questions.

During build season, the number of people we can usefully employ is much larger, and mostly limited by our facilities. Once most of the robot build is done, we pass most of the mechanical and wiring crews who are not involved in one of the competition departments over to building the pit (programming is usually busy right up to the night before competition tweaking something).