Experienced Teams' Advice

[sanddrag]

I haven't read the whole thread but in short, we see what all the students want, then we assign them what the team needs. Not everyone always gets what they want.

[robochick1319]

Believe it or not, this is a concern for even experienced/veteran teams. Every team has their own sort of style for handling this organization. I know some teams that have strict role restrictions while others simply have a come one, come all attitude.

It is important in these formative years for your team to determine what style best fits you. Flash 1319 has had a variety of styles as our team has grown over the years. One strategy that we implement involves pre-season work. By bringing students onto the team before Kickoff, mentors and students can determine what interests them. People will tend to gravitate towards certain areas. So come up with little projects or lessons to test people's interests. For example, you could attend off-season events or simply work on this year's robot to get it functioning properly for demonstrations.

Once the season begins, you can begin organizing individual work sessions for the groups (i.e. electrical groups, mechanical groups, programming, etc.) When you go to competition, the roles remain the same and hopefully students will be so immersed into their roles that they won't wander off aimlessly. I personally don't like restricting our students' roles. When I was on the team as a student, I was the safety captain, the operator, as well as part of the "pit crew."

If you have students on the team who are interested in organization and business pursuits, encourage them to work with a mentor to develop a team organization chart. Hope this helps.

[mathking]

Jengles, first off congratulations on the Rookie All-Star award and being the 5th seed. You guys looked great.

Second, as far as scaling, if you want to talk in depth about it we could probably arrange for some of your leaders and our leaders to get together to chat. (After Championships.) Either down at St. Charles or maybe at some sort of central location around campus. I am sure our team leaders would be happy to talk to you. Perhaps at the Connect A Million Minds Invitational in June if you will be there? (For anyone interested, my plug is at the bottom of the post.)

As others have said, you try to find out what kids want to do and try as much as possible to give them that, but keep an eye on what the team needs. I have found that most kids, if they are asked to switch to a different subteam because we think they have the talent to do well, are generally agreeable to the change. One good thing is that as the team gets larger, you generally have enough people to fill all of the critical needs. We try to recruit kids to fill needs. If we know a lot of electrical people are graduating, we will go out and look for kids in school who might be interested in it.

This is particularly true for the Chairman's Award / PR / Outreach people. Our current Engineering Director got recruited mostly because she was good at writing and speaking, she also turned out to be a really good engineer and our best CAD person this year. But she recruited her replacements for the communications team. There are kids who get enthusiastic about putting together and delivering presentations. We do get everyone on the team involved in those activities.

Also, we are planning to expand out training day (the one you guys came to at Coffman in December) this coming fall, with a veteran-focused training day earlier in the fall and then another for people new to first in December. Part of the earlier training day would be talking about strategies for organizing and recruiting as you scale up in size.



For everyone out there in CD land, the 3rd Annual Connect A Million Minds Invitational will be June 23rd. It is moving this year to Dublin Coffman High School (but will still be air conditioned) but is still be put on by our sponsors at Time Warner and the Central Ohio Robotics Initiative. There is information at www.growrobotics.org.

[philso]

Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink

Don't go overboard on the robot next year. A lot of second year teams (like ours) think they are seasoned experts and try to bite off more than they can chew (technically). Keep it simple and focus on building the team.

I would have to second this. The team I am currently working with won Rookie All Star two seasons ago. They made some strategic decisions in the design of this year's robot that are hurting them now and are very difficult to recover from.

Your trip to St Louis is a golden opportunity for you. Look through the "Robot Showcase" and "Extra Discussion" subforums and the tournament results. Make a list of the teams who are doing well and have well thought out robot designs. Make a list of intelligent questions that you would want to ask those teams (regarding team organization, robot design philosophy, strategy, etc.) Use the pit maps to find them at the World Festival, make sure they are not about to go for a match and ask your questions, listen and take notes. All of the top teams we have talked with have been very gracious and generous, sharing their experiences and ideas freely. If you are really lucky, an established team in your area will take you under their wing.

We let the students choose areas that they wanted to work on but we also made it clear, up front, that they may have to work in other areas.

[IKE]

Congratulations on the RAS. I am glad to see you are thinking ahead. I would highly recommend asking Ed Law (mentor 2834) for some advice on this subject. His team is now in their 4th year, and I think he would have a more relevant perspective than many of these teams that have been around for 10 years (not that you are getting bad advice, but most of it has little to do with growing pains).

I remember specifically his concerns when they had a lot of success their first year, and the 3X as many members their 2nd year (I believe they went from 8 to 24 members that year). They have since grown into a wonderful team. They consistently do well both on and off the field, and each year strive to do a bit more. In my opinion, they are a strong role models for rookie teams as they were a 100% pure rookie (no team members previous to FRC).

[DampRobot]

We do use a larger sub-team model similar to what others have mentioned on this thread. We have Mechanical, Electrical, Software and Spirit subsections (Spirit handles essentially everything that one of the other sections doesn't do).

We really don't have mechanism specific sections like others have mentioned. Instead, we specialize based on skills, not based on which part of the robot needs to be worked on. For example, the robot was CADed this year by a small team, and parts were machined by another "sub team."

I've found that this type of division allows people to become very knowledgeable about their craft, and still feel like they really contributed. While one person might take pride in designing the robot, others would feel that they contributed by writing all of the software or machining all the parts.

[Pun-isher]

From the years I've been competing, here's some mistakes that I've seen many teams, including ours, fall to. Once you become an established team (6+ years), you can be more tolerant to not following my two cents.

1. Never underestimate the power of KISS. Everyone wants to make the awesome creative robot, but especially at this young of an age, realize what you can do and do that very well. Then you can focus on the other factors.
2. It is unwise for the Baker to starve himself. It's harmful for both teams if you try to help others without having anything worthy and expendable to offer.
3. Many teams get easily impressed by the top tier teams and make the mistake of trying too many things in one year. Instead, dedicate one team-making component to one year. Start off with the drive train. This way, even if you hit a bump later on, you still have a reliable drive.
4. Whatever strategy you vote on, stick to it. Do not look back for too long, especially in Week 6. Which leads to the next point:
5. The best solution to a problem during competition is rarely the most radical. Commit and improve, not invent.
6. Avoid the oligarchy.