Quote:
Originally Posted by EDesbiens
I'm already insane... Nothing to lose there  And I will stay with this new team... I'm quite stubborn I want to create my way, to do different from others... |
If you want to start your own team, there's nothing stopping you besides the negative comments you'll get here.
Don't let someone's bad attitude keep you from reaching your goals.
But, seriously, it's going to be really hard to manage a team as a student. Your #1 priority should be to find mentors and sponsors. If you want to be competitive by January, you'll need all the help you can get. Throughout this fall, you'll need to find students to join your team, which will be hard if you're in the same school as an already-established FRC team. If this is the case, start your team in another local school so that you have a large group of interested students, who aren't already on another team.
Connect with teams in your area, find elite teams your team can visit before the season, to show students and new mentors how a successful FRC team works. We recently lended our practice robot to a pre-rookie team, so they could compete at an offseason event. I'm not sure if there's video of it, but they competed at R2OC as team 9999 (although the robot was labeled 8338
) and did really well. Find opportunities like that. They are a great way to get your new students acclimated to the competition environment.
You'll need money and a shop, too. If there are any major businesses within 100 miles of you, schedule a meeting with their executives. Bring a really (REALLY) good sales pitch, you're gonna need it. Find grants, find sponsorships, find someone willing to let you use their workspace. Get all the money and resources you can get because it'll likely make up for a little bit of the people-resources you're going to lack in your first year. Now, I'm not saying money can make up for all of the human resources you'll be missing as a rookie, but money can help a little.
Also, you need to develop a stronger identity. I like the FRC-i idea, it has potential. However, it's very vague. It doesn't say anything about where your team is from or what you guys do. Therefore, you need to have strong core values and a very strong team identity to back it up. You say you want your team to do FRC differently, you want the team to challenge the normal process for an FRC team. Think- how are you going to do this? What normal aspect of FRC are you going to challenge? Especially in your first season, don't go and try out an entirely new drivetrain style, or something like that. Designing your mechanisms differently, or programming the robot in a different way will likely leave you with a completely nonfunctional robot, especially if you haven't had an off-season to refine the new idea. Hold off on that kind of thing until the team is better established.
What you're doing sounds awesome. It's daring and adventurous. Keep me updated, and I'd be happy to help in any way I can.