[gblake]

It just struck me that it seems that our answers, so far, focus on creating exemplary teams. While those are certainly among the successful teams; they are only a small subset of them.

Now, I know all of the slogans about never being satisfied with anything less than excellence, etc; and I don't disagree in the slightest with an attitude of continuous improvement; but the fact of the matter is that unless you want to declare the vast majority of teams that have had a fairly long life so far, and that aren't in trouble right now, "unsuccessful", there are plenty of ordinary, successful teams.

And sure, successfully seeking to emulate an exemplary team is one way to keep the wolves away from the door; but A) it's not the only way, and B) given that a community's resources are usually limited, it might result in a detrimental overemphasis on just one aspect of STEM inspiration.

For example, what advice do we have for a community that is so successful at inspiring their best and brightest students to get involved in computational biology and genetic engineering, that having a robotics team in that community is unambiguously an important, but secondary activity?

Or, regardless of whether or not an FRC-style STEM team is the primary STEM activity for a community, who has some thoughts on how to smooth out the peaks and valleys in the life of a team enough so that the team avoids valleys deep enough to mortally wound them, while still enjoying "success" during the peaks, and during all of their middle-of-the-road seasons?

An analogy: Some people run to get to the Olympics, some run to beat their previous best, some run for their health, some run because they enjoy it, etc. Runners have all sorts of motivations, and are successful in many ways. In this analogy, let's not assume that anyone who isn't training/running with Olympic intensity, is unsuccessful.

Blake