My team is nowhere near yours, (Georgia is a long ways away from California) but I can definitely give you advice for communicating with the team members/parents as well as general advice.
- The team mostly uses GroupMe to plan/ tell people when meetings and to discuss FRC-related news, since (most of) the team is near their phones all of the time. It works well because it works on all platforms (phone/tablet/laptop) and can even just be a MMS group message for people that don't have the app. It also works well at and traveling competitions to communicate since it is quick and easy to send messages and locations in the app. There is also a parent GroupMe, but it's used just for competitions.
- Emailing major updates works well for parents, since they check their emails often and etc.
- Google Calendar is good to use for events/meetings.
- Getting parents involved is not as complicated as one may think; simply invite them to attend the first few meetings and ask where they want to contribute. Most of the time, they really do want to help, but just don't know where they could help/ how to approach asking about it. Inviting them to any events, off-season or on-season, will also foster a want to help the team. We never explicitly invited parents to the competitions until worlds this year, and know they have wanted to become very involved.
- Take advantage of your off-season! Our team hasn't and we (at least I) regret it. You can use this time to come up with a budget, do your fundraising/ sponsor-finding, t-shirt designing and printing, and teaching students all about wiring/programming/mechanical stuff to prepare yourselves for the on-season.
- Don't try to do everything. Get really good at a couple things thing and then move on to the rest!
I wish your new team the best of luck and know that we're all jealous of your awesome location!
