Jeff,
1511 would be happy to come down and help out... we could give robot demos, and/or I would be willing to give you all the documentation I used to start our team up here in Rochester (based off my lessons learned from founding 229!!). The only issue with robot demos is we would likely have to do it on a school holiday or a weekend, as it would be enough of a trip from rochester, and our team meetings are tuesday nights as well.
I may have a few contacts at Lockheed Martin, and I do know that they have teams elsewhere (locations/numbers escape me). Aren't/weren't you guys BAE recently? or is that another plant... I get mixed up with all the buys/mergers.
And this is really short notice, but if you can get anyone interested, come up to Ruckus October 29th. We can let some of your kids drive our bots around, and they would get to see a live competition!!! Entrance is free! Im sure we could even find you housing if you needed it. 229 will be down too, so you can show them the team you were on too!
As for the leadership, the way we did it last year that worked well was we had mostly adult leadership as you suggested (mainly me, supported by the Harris Engineers), and this year we are transitioning to 90% student/10% Adult Leadership... The first year is hard to have students do a lot of the leading, as most dont know anything about FIRST. What we did do, is each subteam had a mentor & student leader, and thats where they got the flavor for leading to start up this year.
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Originally Posted by Martinez
What I really want to learn is:
Are there any FIRSTers in the Binghamton Area looking for a Team?
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Im not sure about FIRSTers, but like I said, I might have some LM contacts
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Originally Posted by Martinez
Any teams in the Greater Binghamton Area, or elsewhere, willing to help us out?
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Like I said, we can help you out with whatever you need
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Originally Posted by Martinez
How did your team first get started and what did you do to get people excited?
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I have a lot of documentation on this, and am working on a "power rookies" document based off of this. But reality is, talk it up, do any recruiting you need to (USE robot demos!!), then try and train your team in what they need to know for build. But FIRST can be as much or as little as you want, depending on when you start, so just do what works best for your team! But real competition is the way to get them really psyched... I dont think my team "really" got it until we held the Pre-ship Rally... this is why you should really try and bring a bunch of them to Ruckus!
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Originally Posted by Martinez
Anyone have advice for a potential team where most haven’t heard the name FIRST before?
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Hmm, Clarkson, middle of nowhere... yeah I think Ive covered that
haha. At Clarkson, I first obtained sponsorship (of course I told them I would only go there if they would let me start a FIRST team my freshman year... so it was recruiting for them!). Then I went out recruiting mentors. I put up posters, signs & sent emails. We had an info session night with free food (free food is key!). We then built up some ideas, and went to the schools to recruit students... more posters, signs & another info session with food. At the schools its easier because you can get teachers to help you target students. At the info sessions, show videos, do a presentation, have a robot to demo (I dragged 176 up to clarkson to help out). You will hook them
The other nice thing about binghamton, is even if LM cant give you a ton of money, you have plenty of business around you and can do a patron drive to get more money.
Anyways, please let us know how we can help... 1511 "the old rookies" at your service!!