In this, my second year, I know of a lot of areas of our build process/organization we can improve, and though I've got all intentions of fixing these, it sometimes seems like we're fighting an internal battle to try to get FIRST promoted. See my other post with the strong FCAT blackout mandate from the school district.
Still, I've opened discussions with a handful of other schools in the area to start clubs/teams there, but other than the "sounds great" statements, interest has been less than stellar. I know the dollar figures tends to scare some of these folks, so the discussions are now along the lines of forming clubs, and jointly going to competitions. We'll see how it goes.
As for more recruits at our own school, we're going to do some robotics "activities" in the cafeteria etc during the day to spark interest. We've noticed that most don't know we have a robotics club and even walking down a hallway with a control system sparks interest with questions like "we build robots at this school?".
We've not run into the "not smart" problem. Actually we're run into the problem where students think they know too much
. We make our students smart -- Last fall (and now beginning again this fall), I started doing little 10-15 min tech sessions at each meeting on topics such as fastener types, using plastics vs. metals, basic electricals, adhesives, pneumatics, etc. I know this was helpful to many students later when they knew what 6-32 meant and why they needed a machine screw rather than a sheet-metal screw, when someone said "this wire looks too thin to drive a motor", and someone else knew that a drill bit wasn't working because it was a masonry bit, etc, etc.
This year, I've got Win XP (vs. my traditional Win2K+Linux dual boot), so I can run the provided CAD software, Labview, etc.
Cheers,
-Neil.