[GreyingJay]

We're a new team further complicated by being a community based team (no school or shop to call home base). Our team is about 2/3 rookies though the remaining 1/3 have done at least one season of FRC before and know the commitment levels required.

Our build space is the local community center/gym/pool. Our build time is limited by the hours this building is open - we booked 6-9pm on Monday, Wednesday, Friday evenings and 9-5 on Saturdays during build season. One additional complication was that since we were using open hallways, lounges, and storage areas to build, we had to build in setup and takedown time to every meeting. Tables, chairs, robot parts, drill presses, saws, all had to be torn down and put away each time.

We had a team meeting just before build season where we stressed how often we were going to meet. We did not introduce any rules about minimum commitment levels, only that we were tracking attendance and that leadership roles at competition would naturally be given to the people who have the most hands-on knowledge and experience, and that only comes by actually showing up and working. We also used the hockey/sports team analogy.

Our parents were very supportive and worked out carpools and other arrangements for students to come in multiple times a week. Attendance was generally good, but I think students were disappointed to sometimes arrive to find not much for them to do on a given day. This is offset eventually by the huge amount of work for them to do later, of course, but we will work harder next year at making sure projects are well defined so that we can schedule things better.

I think by the end of build season everyone was just plain getting tired, but everything sprang to life when they experienced their first regional!