[Ichlieberoboter]

Originally Posted by Boltman

Any way in your area to recruit more mentors in key aspects of a robot season? Then students can choose what area to focus on that they enjoy.

Yeah! We found a new teacher at our town's elementary school with prior experience as a FIRST mentor to help us out next year. We also have a parent that is an engineer that wants to help out, a college student that was previously a programmer from a different team, another ex-FIRST mentor from another team, and 5 alumni that said they will try to help out if they can next year. We've been looking for a lot of mentors because this is obviously really important. We're looking at getting enough members next year to split into sub-teams and having at least one mentor per sub-team.

Originally Posted by hutchMN

I would love to work with you one on one if you would like, just message me your contact details if you want that. There are a lot of workshops in MN design to take your team to the next level; one of those workshops is put on by 2502. 2502 went in depth on how they analyze a game on kickoff, how they pick a strategy for the season, and how dynamic that strategy is throughout the life cycle of the game. I know GO FIRST puts one on, and I also believe 1816 does as well.
Also, 1114 has some great resources on their YouTube channel. I would highly recommend watching them.

Thanks! We would for sure be interested in trying to attend one or more of these events. I'll PM you our team e-mail account that my friend and I take care of.

Originally Posted by gblake

And I have a couple of questions for you. They are similar to some of the questions other folks have asked.

• If you separate Robot performance from the other topics, are you
  • asking how to make a better robot; or
  • asking how to create a team that is an excellent FIRST team that, OBTW, has building a sweet robot as one of the rewarding and inspirational things the team does each year?
• If you are asking about building a better robot,
  • is it because you think it will be fun, rewarding and inspirational, regardless of how the tournament(s) unfold; or
  • is it because you think that the current robot-building part of your team's activities can be more efficient without drowning out all of the other good stuff you do; or
  • is it more because you just want a banner/trophy because winning every once in a while is a nice dose of positive feedback; or
  • is it because of some other reason?

I am definitely asking how to create a team that is an excellent FIRST team that, OBTW, has building a sweet robot as one of the rewarding and inspirational things the team does each year. We want to make a sustainable team that has more people involved that are passionate and really put a lot of time and effort into the program. We really want to change the atmosphere in our school to be more excited about and involved in FIRST and STEM. We also, however, are definitely trying to improve our robot so we can get opportunities like advancing to champs and competing in elimination rounds.
Thanks!