**FIRST EMAIL**/Senior Mentor Conference Call Monday, September 20th

[Mark McLeod]

Greetings Teams:

Our FIRST Senior Mentors will be hosting a conference call on Thursday, September 20th, at 8 pm EDT. The featured topic will be "Fall Development Strategies" and will be led by Senior Mentors Fredi Lajvardi and Alan Cameron. All team mentors are welcome.

The call in number is 1-800-503-2899 and the access code is 6663906. There will be 100 lines available. For those unable to participate or procure one of the 100 lines, the call will be recorded. We will forward information on how to access the recording after the call.

Please Join Us!

Go Teams!

[Mark McLeod]

Greetings Teams:

If you were unable to join our FIRST Senior Mentor Conference Call led by Senior Mentor Fredi Lajvardi and Alan Cameron this past Thursday, September 20th, a recording of the discussion is now available at https://www.callinfo.com/archives/playback.jsp?id=o2u7ovd3

Please note the recording will play in a Flash file format. If you do not have Flash available on your desktop, click on the following URL for a quick and simple download: www.macromedia.com/software/flash/

To recap, the topic covered during the call was Fall Development Strategies. We want to thank all who participated and contributed to making this discussion a success.

Go Teams!

[Mike Martus]

Can or will anyone write a short summary of the conversation.... many of us do have full time jobs, family and a life.... no time to sit....

Facts, just the facts with a little flavor thrown in for good measure.

[Gamer930]

I just listened to the first 55 minutes while writing my mass media paper and they talked about (in no particular order):
- Introduction of everyone
- Vex kits won't be used in FTC in couple years (don't invest in bunch of them)
- Presentations to Companies
- Send letters to everyone even if you get a lot of rejected and keep hitting them year after year
- Send thank you to your sponsors (Include t-shirts as gifts)
- Catapults are good way to get cable and news channels to events (can launch eggs, pumpkins, extra fruit cake from Christmas)
- Send "pit passes" to sponsors so they feel special and it will invite them more to actually come and interact with the team when they attend competition
- Do press releases even if they are short
- Have a website and make sure you sponsors are all over it
- Include your website in all publications
- When attending competitions have a parents/interested persons list so you can sent updates Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night

I will listen to the other half (was a 2 hour talk) this afternoon.

Note: I did write this list after listening so I forgot/didn't include much of it. I will when I listen to the second half take notes as listening

[Gamer930]

- President Circle more information coming out soon by e-mail (1-2 weeks). will have a lot of information including how to write a team manual and how to do have a successful season. Will be a directory of links from the FIRST website
- Building a cart is great off season project
- Train on old robot during the off season (Perfect the old robot)
- Maintenance on old robots
- Don't build a robot that does everything
- If school administration is being restrictive go in front of the school board and use the words: NASA, Math, Science, and Technology.
- If problems at high school level try hitting Middle School Teachers (they are more crazy)
- ChiefDelphi mentioned bunch of times

Great conference call overall. I a lot of useful information