[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Amy33Amy33

How do you guys prevent freshman from quitting right at the beginning of build season when meeting frequency increases, and how do you continue to benefit members who cannot meet every day of build season? Also how do you schedule build season to still build the robot and prevent member burnout? If you don't do this, how do you manage a culture of attendance where members come to meetings and multitask? Do you divide the days that different sub-teams meet to increase focus (loud sub-teams on Mondays, quiet sub-teams on Thursdays?) Do you have an attendance requirement for lettering, or an accomplishment requirement? What has and hasn't worked for robotics scheduling during build season? What secrets do you have for keeping on deadline?

Wow, there's a lot to unpack here. Now, I don't have all the answers to your questions, but I'll try to help as much as I can. Hopefully some of this will be useful to you.

Originally Posted by Amy33Amy33

How do you guys prevent freshman from quitting right at the beginning of build season when meeting frequency increases, and how do you continue to benefit members who cannot meet every day of build season?

You can't. Some people will inevitably need to leave. Life happens. That being said, you can minimize this by having clear expectations set out at the beginning of the year-- to attend competitions means X hours of work during build season, to be on the build team means X hours of work during the off season, etc. Clear expectations and creating an investment in the team are your best ways of keeping people around-- and these can work together. We naturally put value on things we invest time in. Getting people involved with a variety of interesting things from the get go can help with this.

In reference to your second part, most teams don't meet every day of the build season. If that's the expectation of all your members, I can see why burn out might be an issue. That much time isn't just an investment, it's a sacrifice.

Originally Posted by Amy33Amy33

Also how do you schedule build season to still build the robot and prevent member burnout?

My teams have had a couple approaches to this. My senior year in 2220 was one method of this: extend the build season. Build two robots and plan to iterate all the way through championships. Combine that with hard deadlines and goals-- moving drive train by week 2, a feature-complete robot week 5, etc, and that was 2220's best robot ever.

Option two (what 2667 did this year) was to consciously (or rather, unconsciously) keep things very simple. Building a simple robot in 6 weeks is much easier than building 2826's Depthcharge in 6 weeks.

Another part of this is being very cognizant of what your skills are. If it's going to take your CAD girl six weeks to figure out how to do an elevator, that might not be your best bet. The more quickly you can design and iterate the better off you'll be. If your team has a "signature" drive train, I'd suggest practicing designing one to specs very quickly. But I digress. The important parts here are either extending your time, decreasing your complexity, or increasing your speed. It's the golden triangle.

Originally Posted by Amy33Amy33

If you don't do this, how do you manage a culture of attendance where members come to meetings and multitask?

It comes back to investment. If people want to be there and feel like their time is being used well, they'll be there. If they feel like there isn't anything to do, or they're wasting their time, they won't be.

Some teams keep task lists-- when you don't have anything to do, you take something from the list and start working on it. I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds like it might be a good idea for keeping people aware of what tasks are left to do.

Originally Posted by Amy33Amy33

Do you divide the days that different sub-teams meet to increase focus (loud sub-teams on Mondays, quiet sub-teams on Thursdays?)

For my teams it's always been more a question time/work left to do. And our senior year we had up to 150 people meeting in the shop at once, so things got crowded. If it works for you though, I don't see why you wouldn't try it.

Originally Posted by Amy33Amy33

Do you have an attendance requirement for lettering, or an accomplishment requirement?

Yup. It's very important to make sure these requirements are very specific and clearly communicated. We had a situation this year that we were able to defuse easily due to our clearly spelled out policy.

Originally Posted by Amy33Amy33

What has and hasn't worked for robotics scheduling during build season?

This is something wholly dependent on your situation-- what your mentors' schedules look like, what your students' schedules look like, what your relationship with your school is. It's all highly conditional.

Originally Posted by Amy33Amy33

What secrets do you have for keeping on deadline?

There is no magic bullet. There might be a team that runs completely on schedule, but I haven't heard of one. Something always goes wrong. It takes an entire team of effort to keep anywhere close to schedule.