Too large of a team?

[santosh]

Our team next year will have 140+ members. This year we had 84 and honestly didn't know what to do with all these people. Freshmen usually join robotics to build a robot because they don't know all the aspects of robotics and what FIRST and the Chairman's Award is about. So when we put them on teams such as Lego or Scouting, they drop out of the club.

Now our numbers are going up. This time we will try and make a larger point of what FIRST and Robotics is about in the hopes that we can keep all of our members. We are trying to enter more engineering contests and other things like that. But is there anyone out there who has experience with large number teams that could help us in better organizing ourselves.

Right now we have a scouting team, outreach comittee, fundraising comittee, technical team, FLL Mentor team, Jr. FLL Mentor team, VEX robotics team, FIRST Build Team, Promotional Team, and a BEST robotics team. With all these teams, it is still hard to keep people interested and active.

Jr. FLL, VEX, and the Promotional team are all new this year, But we have no idea about how to make sure that we keep all these people. It may even be 150+ kids that join the club next year.

Please help us in finding out how to keep our club solid with this many people.
If there is another thread jsut liek this, sorry. I searched and found threads about organization, but none that dealt with organization of teams with large numbers. Thanks

[Joshua May]

How about sending some of those members out to us, we've got about 15.

Perhaps it would be possible to split to two teams? I'm not sure about this, especially when it comes to the aspects of money and room, but it's an idea nonetheless.

As of know, I can't really see anything else your team can do () beyond what you have, sounds like a great progam, though.

[unapiedra]

Wow!

I don't know how many of those are really advanced (robotics wise) but there are always college type robotics competitions or even professional competitions like the DARPA Grand Challenge (too late for this year but start building, this will take you a year).

I totally agree with Josh distribute your students to other teams... We sure would like it!

If you have the money (which you can make with that many students) you can build two robots. I am not exactly sure what the rules say for this, so you might not be able to switch those during the competition. I think about this like that: Have either two identical robots, that would enable you to make changes without risking anything (especially during competition) and even if one of them brakes -- you just take another robot...
The other version would be having two different robots. This means you could have two groups in your teams work on one each. If you would co-ordinate it right one robot could be more offense and the other more defense (or what ever you need in next year's competition), one strong, the other fast...

Well, you see where I am going, think about it!

Or add a European Support team ;-)

[santosh]

Originally Posted by unapiedra

Or add a European Support team ;-)

Sorry, I forgot about creating this team. lol

[coastertux]

Team 1640 had the total opposite problem last year...not enough people. Anyways, sounds like too many. Try two teams like someone said above.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

You could create an application process that's required to join the team. The application wouldn't be used to turn students down, but rather to get a better understanding of what their interests are and what they would be good at. It could help organize the team into areas of interest to the students.

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by Ogre

You could create an application process that's required to join the team. The application wouldn't be used to turn students down, but rather to get a better understanding of what their interests are and what they would be good at. It could help organize the team into areas of interest to the students.

Applications are also a good way to weed people out. You can still make it such that everybody that turns in an application is accepted onto the team (which I am in favor of), but the simple act of turning in an application and actually putting the work into it will deter some of your "tag-a-long" people and give you the people who really want to be there.

In all, don't fear the large team, use it to make an even larger difference.

[K.Shaw]

Go to the link to get an idfea of a FIRST Application this is what we use. Team 237's Online Application

[Beth Sweet]

Well, first off, the phrase "is our team too large" or "how can we reduce the size" indicates that there is some issue with team size. Are some of these students not doing anything? Maybe that may be the determining factor. Are all 140 of these students from the same high school? How many mentors do you have? These questions may help you into splitting into two teams. If you want to stay one team, then I would suggest 1 of 2 options.

-Option 1: Dismiss students who are not doing anything on the team. With 140 members (or the 80 some you said you had this year) I can't possibly imagine that all members are actively participating. Tell them that you are glad that they were interested, but you need to keep only active students.

-Option 2: Have a team where only juniors and seniors travel. If your issue is with travel budgets (which I imagine that it is) then this would help. Allow all kids to participate in the build season but reserve travel privilages for juniors and seniors or those who have been on the team for 2 years or something.

Good luck and congrats on establishing a team that so many students want to participate on!

[sanddrag]

That is absolutely huge. Whatever mentor that has to deal with that number of kids deserves some sort of award or something.

Anywhow, I think your application/entry process is not strict enough. Making your team smaller can be a very wise move.

To me, one of the great things about FIRST has always been that unlike many other clubs/activities, it is not something people join just to say they did it or just to say they are in it or just to help get into college or whatever. People join and stay involved because they care, and because they want to learn and progress their skills. To me, it seems unlikely that all 140 people are in it for this reason. If there is anyone in it just to be in it, that is no good. Yes all colleges care about is how many clubs you were in in high school but to me it is useless if you are not a key member who is really devoted.

I would rather see you let fewer people be more involved and gain more from the program rather than let all these people be in it just so they can say so.

If you don't want to reduce the number of people, I'd say split into two or even three teams, or build two or three alike or different (probably better/more fun to go with different ones) robots during the build season.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

That is absolutely huge. Whatever mentor that has to deal with that number of kids deserves some sort of award or something.

I'm guessing that the majority of them aren't kids, and are mentors from GT who 1002 is partnered with.

If you actually have 140 dedicated people, good luck. I don't see any possible way that you can effectively and efficiently use all of them.