Most active/popular team roles

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

Mechanical team is always our biggest. We tend to have a lot of students that want to machine and assemble the robot.

Our fastest growing team has been the fundraising team which until about 3 seasons ago didn't really exist because we tried to keep within the budget given to us by a couple of corporate sponsors. Adding a 2nd regional back into the mix and trying to up our game has demanded more funding.

This year I believe we have the most new students on electrical/programming.

Similar for us.

Mechanical has always been the largest group of people.

New students on our team this year appear to be drawn towards electrical/programming.

-Brando

[FOmar$357]

Well...to my team? Machining is the most importent role so everybody goes for it snce 90% of our robot parts comes from the machine shop! and tends to get the most respect.

[Alpha Beta]

They are all highly valued positions, but when the rookies came on board this year we had a larger than usual amount who wanted to learn programming. The exciting thing is the majority of them are willing to put the time in to get up to speed with LabView.

Those who have been on the team for a while realize that we tend to put at least one member with programming experience on the drive team to help analyze any system faults.

The programming team also has great influence on what gets built. They have to understand how every system works and what sensors are needed for good control.

At our off-season event in November I was encouraged by how many students were interested in scouting. I think they caught the vision of how much influence that piece has on our success.

We do great PR work, but there is still a struggle to get student ownership over the print materials. We're starting to get more students to realize that awards and financial grants are won based on both the merits of the team and in our ability to communicate that to others.

All in all, you get what you celebrate. The more we celebrate the under-served parts of our team the more students step up and make that part great.

Mostly our kids want to be important to the team, to have an impact on the final product.

[Jon Stratis]

It's hard to really say which subgroup is most popular with us... they all seem to get new recruits fairly easily. We come up with a project for our two-week summer session that lets them work their way around to each subgroup, and then have something to take home and keep (this year it was a simple little driving robot that would turn when you clapped). That gets them a little exposure to every group. In the fall, we tell them to start thinking hard about which group they want to be in, and we try to give them more real-world exposure working on the previous year's robot. By the time we get to the build season, everyone's decided where they want to go, and we ask that they stay in that subgroup for the remainder of the season. So far, we haven't had to do any shuffling around past that - the subgroups have ended up good sizes without any extra effort.

I'd say the absolute most popular are those groups that get to actually "do" stuff - electrical and mechanical. At the end of the day, they can look at the robot and point to what they did. It's not really the same with programming... and for us, "everyone" is on the PR team (as PR is more or less separate from actually building the robot, and at competition a lot of your PR comes from the pit crew), although we only have a few people dedicated to it.

[TofuRama]

Build has been the most popular with our team since it's the most hands-on and the one that most new recruits have felt comfortable with. This year programming has definitely been the most active since we have scheduled more programming sessions for the off-season compared to build and electrical.

[CNettles11]

We keep the technical subsystems around 3-5 people each but, we allot more manpower to the nontechnical subteams because those things are generally harder/more tedious than hands-on work. We ARE a robotics team, and geeks usually lack social skills needed to get sponsors.

Originally Posted by CNettles11

...geeks usually lack social skills needed to get sponsors.

I'm sorry, I don't usually do this, but I felt the need to.

I am a "geek", and have earned our team $5500 within the last month, and I'm working on more! Not all geeks lack social skills! Wait, I take that back. I barely know any geek that lacks social skills! Have you seen us at competition, or showing off our robot? I'd say when it comes to social skills, geeks are just about the most social people I know! I'm not saying every geek in the nation is an outgoing go-getter, but a large percentage are, and that number grows greatly with FIRST robotics.

Please get more information when using words like usually to describe a group. Some may, but that doesn't mean all do on a regular basis.

Thank you.

[CNettles11]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I'm sorry, I don't usually do this, but I felt the need to.

I am a "geek", and have earned our team $5500 within the last month, and I'm working on more! Not all geeks lack social skills! Wait, I take that back. I barely know any geek that lacks social skills! Have you seen us at competition, or showing off our robot? I'd say when it comes to social skills, geeks are just about the most social people I know! I'm not saying every geek in the nation is an outgoing go-getter, but a large percentage are, and that number grows greatly with FIRST robotics.

Please get more information when using words like usually to describe a group. Some may, but that doesn't mean all do on a regular basis.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, OUR geeks lack social skills. It's one thing for us to talk to people we know but, when we try to get sponsorship, we tend to lock up or turn red.

Originally Posted by CNettles11

I'm sorry, OUR geeks lack social skills. It's one thing for us to talk to people we know but, when we try to get sponsorship, we tend to lock up or turn red.

Don't worry! FIRST will take the jitters right out of you! (I know, it worked for me!)

[davidthefat]

What a great question. I honestly do not know. I have been stuck in my own bubble that I am not aware what most people are interested in. Sure, there are those who are clearly doing certain jobs, but a lot of the others, I have no idea.

[ttldomination]

So I would say that everything is a little popular for different reasons.

Programming - Students have this notion that programming will detail long nights filled with hacking and interesting schemes to take over the world and stuff. Many don't even get past the fact that they have to learn a programming language and they end up on mechanical.

Mechanical - Many students join mechanical because they want to build the beauty that stands before them. They want to walk into the shop empty handed and walk out of the shop having just built a 120 lb robot. Many don't realize the work required to design components, to think 2-5 steps ahead, and ultimately deal with failure. These students often end up quitting the team or taking a back seat role.

For the most part, mechanical is popular by the number of students involved, but a significant number of them are screw turners. We've recently had a growing number of students who take part in the actual design creation and critiquing process, which leads to better build quality and greater interest in mechanical.

- Sunny G.