Summer meetings

What does you team do during the summer? From what I heard, our team shut down during summer in the past, but I'm hoping to change that this year.

Thanks!

[legogeek24]

We don't have regular meetings during the summer, but several events are being coordinated via email for this off-season. Meetings are on a as-needed basis usually, but during the weeks leading up to our robotics summer camp, for example, we meet every day in preparation. It's pretty much all dictated by what events are going on and what needs to get done. I do think that regular meetings are a good idea for a competitive team though. There's so much more to learn than what can be accomplished in just the 6 weeks! However, we've still done very well without a true offseason, so it definitely isn't necessary.

[Mark Sheridan]

We pretty much run weekly meetings every Sunday or Saturday. They are all optional but its mostly to give students who want to participate more during the build season a chance to learn and develop skills. Often its just mending old robots. However, this year we have a list of a few projects including a new drivetrain. A lot of these projects were planned with the expectation of students leaving from time to time during summer vacation. We are putting a lot of effort into training more students to use CAD this summer.

[rsisk]

We meet every other week to work on the robot, prep for off season, plan fund raisers, training, etc...

Up until this year, we met as a team around December until early April. It's pretty obvious to us that is not nearly enough time together to make a team.

[EricDrost]

MORT utilizes the summer for leadership training. Our student leaders meet regularly with our head mentor and our leadership coach to make sure that students have the necessary tools to run the team during the upcoming preseason, build season, and competition season.

We also use the summer for projects like CADing and building drivetrains, etc.

[Ninja_Bait]

We'll probably be doing a lot of planning and preparation, too. Our lab closes over the summer, so we have barely any machines or tools. It looks like CAD, software and scheduling is on our plate for the summer.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

We have a few demos planned, Taste of Chicago, IRI (practice and rebuild), moving the playing field (maybe), a school board meeting, possible 4th parade, the usual.

[Brandon Holley]

We meet regularly still (at least once a week) and work on a host of items:

-Robot repair (current and old)
-Chairmans
-Planning our off-season event (Beantown Blitz)
-Demo robot(s)
-Planning for the next year
-Fundraising

and much more!

-Brando

[Peter Matteson]

We usually shut down after our end of season banquet in early june until September. We will meet ot prep the robot for any off seasons we go to and do some fund raising opportunities that pop up but not have official meetings.

[MagiChau]

This summer we are building a public relations robot.

We have some volunteers going to the library for this activity day for little kids.

We demonstrate the season's robot

I helped intiate having meetings to train for next year's build season every 2 weeks on saturday during the summer for things like programming and designing.

[rachelholladay]

We normally have an offseason outreach/chairmans event at least once if not twice a week. This includes visiting camps, thanking sponsors, Take-your-kid-to-work-days, volunteering, etc. In addition we have our own camp coming up in late June. Twice a week for two hours we have training classes on Animation, CAD, Website, etc. given by the most experienced student (or rarely a mentor/alumni). WE dont get as much building done in the summer due to the set up of our build location. However, in the fall before build season, we meet once a week to clean up the space, do beta testing and small build projects.