When Do Meetings Start for Your Team?

[Joon Park]

Our high school is an eastern high school, so the schoolyear starts on the first week of September. But our team doesn't actually start meeting until at least a month after that.

How is it for your team? What month do you start school, and do you start meeting as soon as school starts? If not, when does your team start meeting?

[Jon Stratis]

Our meetings officially start only a week or two after school starts... which means, pretty soon! I guess it's time for us to figure out what we'll be doing this fall...

[Jimmy Nichols]

We have Leadership meetings and all team meetings periodically throughout the summer. When school starts, this week, we will typically have an all team meeting for returning students to discuss recruiting, which occurs during September. We have already scheduled 3 days a week through November starting the first week of October for Fall training.

[daniel_dsouza]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Our meetings officially start only a week or two after school starts... which means, pretty soon! I guess it's time for us to figure out what we'll be doing this fall...

Same here! Looks like we'll being doing FLL again this year, and also participating in the VEX competition.

[ttldomination]

Our team has a pretty good set up for starting up the program and bringing it in sync with school, and it usually happens in the first 1-3 weeks of school starting.

The goal in the first 1-3 weeks is to get the rookies in. There are been emails flying around about plans for the fall VEX event and off-season FRC events, but until the rookies get in, there's not too much to do.

The first meeting is the veterans meeting (1-2 weeks). Returning veterans are asked to come to a meeting where the goal is simply to work off the summer social rust, let the summer high-fives settle, and get people on the same page as far as the rookie presentation and general season guidelines.

The second meeting is the rookie meeting (held one week after veterans meeting). New members and a select number of veterans are asked to put on a show for the new members, at which point new members are fed with information.

After the rookie meeting, the team settles into a routine. The VEX teams are formed and everyone focuses on that until competition.

- Sunny G.

[ebarker]

August, 2003

[jwallace15]

Our school starts the day after the US holiday of Labor Day, and the frequency of our team meetings changes throughout the year. Officially, our team functions year-round (with miscellaneous community service projects, fundraising opportunities, etc.) During the summer meetings are spread out, perhaps once a month (with optional meetings for our pit crew before and after demos to do a little troubleshooting and adjusting). September consists of full team meetings every other week. October usually has weekly meetings. November and December are the months when our meeting count picks up- with semi-weekly meetings. January and february after the FRC kick-off: if you are on our build team, you will be working 5-6 days a week, sometimes 7. After the ship date, we have 3 meetings a week until worlds. After worlds, we go back to our summer schedule.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Team 1058 meets weekly throughout the summer and twice a week starting in October. That is also the same time we invite freshman to join our team, so I guess it is a really the "start" of our year

[kiasam111]

Our team meets at least weekly all year round. We don't really have an off-season, it's just busy all year round!

[JaneYoung]

We've begun meeting for the 2012/2013 season and we're very excited about it. We're challenging ourselves and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it all rolls out through the semesters.

All the best, teams!

Jane

[DevinW]

School starts the 5th. We have some mentor-officer only meetings about 3 weeks in, after 2 or 3 weeks of those we start having full team meetings again. (This will be my first year year from the beginning of the year, this is how it was explained to me.)

[HannahF]

Our team has been meeting off and on all summer. We will begin having regular meetings again as soon as school starts. Hosting an offseason in October means we have to hit the ground running as soon as school starts the first week of September to make sure everyone is back and on the same page.

[Taylor]

We're goofy. We just started a "balanced calendar" schedule - our first day of school was July 31st. (we get 2 weeks off for fall and spring breaks; our school year ends on May 31.)

We just had our callout this past Wednesday. We'll meet Wednesday evenings during the offseason, when school is in session.
Our first project is building a float for the homecoming parade, on September 14th.

[quinxorin]

We don't have a start date - our team meets every Wednesday throughout the year, including summer. The only Wendesdays we don't meet are the two over Christmas, the one over Thanksgiving, and the first Wednesday after our last competition of the year (usually).

[waialua359]

Ours started in the summer of 2008 when we implemented a year round program.
With VEX and FIRST, there really is no "start" and "end" date.