First Meeting of the Year

[penguinfrk]

Recently, my team's been planning out what to do on the first meeting of the school year. While we have been meeting all through the summer, it will be the first meeting at school for a few months.

In the past, we've had a video playing as new members showed up, passed around an informational handout, introduced key leadership, did a 20-minute presentation, and then did a robot demo as members slowly drifted out.

We've found this not to be very effective. I think there are a couple reasons for this.
-Videos are not interactive engagement, it's passive.
-The physical barrier or distance between the new members and the veteran officers who are being introduced and speaking creates a psychological barrier. This makes unity difficult later on.
-People are bored during the presentation. Nobody is there to learn about how our team is organized.

We've set a target retention rate of 80% of new members between the first and second meeting. We've tossed around a couple of ideas for what to do at the first meeting. They've ranged from staging a normal meeting (and engaging new members as if they've been with us for months) to getting in a circle and introducing ourselves, answer icebreaker questions (i.e. favorite color) and explaining why you are in robotics and what you've gotten out of the program.

I was just curious about how other teams kick off meetings after recruitment. Any ideas? Much appreciated!