Our week 1 of build season is pretty hectic. On day 1, we split everybody into 6-7 groups of 4-6 people and each group is in charge of a certain section of the manual we assign to them. Then, we take one person from each of those groups and create new groups, and they share out in their new groups what they've learned from their section of the manual. This allows for people to get a well rounded view of the game without have to read the whole manual themselves (granted, a lot of people on our team do that anyways!
) Day 1 we usually start to discuss the What? question: What do we want our robot to accomplish? We try to restrict the ideas of robots because that can get a little to hectic. Then we go to our gym and do a game simulation using people as our robots to get a feel for the game play. Day 2 is where we start to introduce the How Question: How do we want the robot to accomplish the Whats from Day 1. Everybody shares their ideas on a whiteboard, and we usually let the rookies go first so they don't get drowned out. From there, we assign people to prototype different sets of ideas and by the end of week 1, we try to have a basic design of what our robot should look like.