Quote:
Originally Posted by kazzykaty
If you are looking to recruit new people for your team from a highschool or technical school, the best way would be to put up a little table presentation during all of the lunches. [...] People listen better when there is food involved.
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I totally agree.
Whenever I've started a new FRC team (or helped established ones recruit), one of our big events is to create a buzz about a program we call "Robots At Lunch", with posters, announcements, etc. The poster will have a big splash with the title, and an image of at least one awesome FRC bot that will be appearing.
At lunch, have a space for running the robot around. If it is possible to set it up so that others can SAFELY operate your robot in a small area (possibly by temporarily slowing down all drivetrain and payload maximum speeds in software, or making sure you have a DISABLE dongle box attached and a team member's hand on the switch), give new students a chance to take the controls for a few minutes. You won't believe how well actually getting the chance to DRIVE one of our bots works to whet their appetite for robotics.
Newly formed teams (that won't have their own FRC bot yet) should invite another nearby team to bring their current robot in for both lunch, and to tour the Science wing classes, to drum up interest. Many teams' school will gladly excuse a drive team pair of students for one day to help establish another school's team.
On the same day as "Robots At Lunch", you also pre-arrange with each of the science wing teachers to show off the robot for 10-15 minutes to their class, and work up a schedule. Along with the robot, bring in a 2-5 minute video and a LCD projector, (or a tape if their classrooms are already set up for this), so that you can show some contest (and build season) highlights. If you don't have any footage, borrow some from other teams. FIRST also has promo tapes for this purpose too, so contact HQ to get a copy, and edit up something from that source material.
Don't forget that a HUGE opportunity is to recruit at your highest JUNIOR HIGH grade as well, to create buzz with the incoming students! Sometime BEFORE they select their fall classes in their new HS, run the above demo through the JHS science wing (and/or lunch room), and take names! This helps bootstrap your recruiting -before- they walk in the door, and get hit by all of the sports teams and OTHER clubs. The JHS demo set typically occurs at most of my teams somewhere in the April/May timeframe. This timing works out well, because it means you take your -current- competition robot around, right after the competition cycle.
(Yes, this doesn't help right NOW as it is September, but be sure to add this to your annual calendar as a TODO for later this season, to help start building NEXT year's team.)
Please let me know if this helps.
- Keith