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Unread 05-07-2010, 14:16
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EricH EricH is offline
New year, new team
FRC #1197 (Torbots)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Rookie Year: 2003
Location: SoCal
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Re: FAHA: How to Make Things Enjoyable Again

I'm going to say that it's time for the team to take some time off. Not a regular competition season, mind you, not yet--that's for if the following idea doesn't work.

But, find your nearest off-season competition and go there to volunteer as a team. There's no possible way to win the event then, so anybody who thinks winning is necessary to have fun or enjoy the event is going to walk in thinking that there is no way to have fun and enjoy the event.

What they should find is that the event is fun, even though they cannot win due to not competing. That's when you talk to them and give the "it's not all about winning" talk. They should take it much better after volunteering at an offseason (and, as another plus, there won't be as much complaining about the volunteers!).

No offseason in the area? No problem, find an FLL, FTC, or VRC event near you, or have the team volunteer at the closest regular-season event that isn't your home regional next year.

Failing that, take a year completely off from official FRC competition. Instead, take the six weeks and build a robot that does something else, or build one for use in offseasons. Test out new and crazy drive systems, elevating devices, manipulators of various stripes, all that sort of thing. (For that matter, if you're still reading this, you might want to get to work doing something like this anyway...) One, it'll help you later. Two, it'll help show the fun you can have when you've all had one too many Mountain Dews at some time after 10 PM, the robot isn't working yet, and ship isn't for another week, but you just have to finish this one thing and the code for it is still compiling.
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Past teams:
2003-2007: FRC0330 BeachBots
2008: FRC1135 Shmoebotics
2012: FRC4046 Schroedinger's Dragons

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