[AlexanderTheOK]

To chime in on the issue of not reaching enough potential volunteers and the advertisement of this need for volunteers, I'm one of those people that hasn't volunteered for a single event. I have friends who volunteer quite often. I personally didn't however because I simply thought that my time was needed elsewhere more than it was at the event...

Until I overheard said friends freaking out a week before my local regional, because there was no one to do x, y, and z at the event... Until I spent the entirety of the regional in the stands because the programmers had everything working nearly flawlessly and didn't actually need me to be free as a mentor.

I was, until the build season ended and events started happening this year, entirely unaware that volunteer supply was an issue. This is after 4 years, going on 5 in FIRST.

Of course now that I am aware of the problem I can be a part of the solution, for both offseason events and the next year.

The issue is however, that I feel I'm a part of a large group of oblivious people who might have the time and energy, but are simply unaware of the level of need. I'm going to be entirely honest. I don't read my email very thoroughly. There was likely an email asking for volunteers, but it got lost in the pile of emails that FIRST sends out that I frankly don't have the attention span to read.

So how do we get the oblivious shmucks like me to actually know about this?
That wasn't a rhetorical question, I seriously just don't know.

My best guess would be a more personal word of mouth approach to advertising the positions, talking to teams directly, and having the lead mentors of said teams place emphasis on this aspect of FIRST, but I suck at organizing things, so that's all this is, a guess. Maybe this is already being done, and I'm simply more oblivious than I thought. I don't know, the fact remains that people like me exist, and solving this problem could get areas closer to being able to support more small events.