Taking the plunge. . .

Our team took the the plunge 3 years ago, Fall of 2010, when I joined as a freshman and said we weren't good enough. It wasn't just me, but my friends as well all agreed that we were not competing at the caliber of teams like 254, and 971. Noobs to FRC, we didn't know too much, but we knew if they could do it, we could as well, and the current team of 8 people (3 of which were mentors) didn't think so ("Don't have the money, they're funded by NASA, etc etc). So, I decided that the mediocre job we were doing wasn't good enough, and set out to learn as much as I could about this "FRC" in which I had joined (Start: My 10 posts a day on CD period) so I could make my team better. 3 years later, we're starting to make a name for ourselves, and have rebuilt the team's culture. We're not quite the hardcore dedicated to robotics only team I'd like us to be, but we've gotten far from where we started as a 5-student club where mentors had to build the robot so that the team would have something to work with by our 2nd match.

What caused the change? A group of (good looking) students who didn't like the current regime and wanted something better. Sorta like how history goes. In our case, it was all students pushing for the change, but in most cases, it takes inspired mentors to do so as well. Inspiring mentors is harder than it seems. Trust me, I know.

[dellagd]

That is a very interesting thought, and personally I believe it comes when your team gets the drive to win. While CNC tools and the such make that easier, it is worthless if the team isnt willing to actually design and build to the design of a well thought out and ambitious robot. The problem is, is that it takes the vast majority of the team (at least if your team is under 30 or so members) to have the will to change for the change to happen. Its alot harder I believe with a smaller team. For example, if you have 100 members, everyone coming in twice a week may be perfectly fine to produce a great robot, but the same does NOT go for a 20 person team (Unfortunately). You have to put in the time to accomplish your task, and I think when people start Wanting to come in and work all the time, you can have a great team. A half effort on time will produce a half as good robot.

My team is beginning to change, and this is my freshman year, second year on the team, and I must say, I am quite excited (And one of the pushers behind it). Compared to previous years, we produced a top notch robot in 2012, so Id expect the trend to continue. Id love to see 2607 reach its potential. This year, we have people in every area that really have the drive to win, and I think that could really make the difference. I guess we'll see.

Motivation of other people is a hard thing to do.

[Brandon_L]

Our team is in the middle of this change right now, and its a bit overdue if you ask me.

the past 5 seasons have been mediocre at best. We started our rookie year pretty strong with plenty of support, but after that we were left in the dust in both amount of help our team got, funding, everything. One of the teachers quit the team, and all the other help we got seemed to vanish leaving us with just one mentor. Took him 4 years, props to him, but he finally had enough. He dropped out of the team this year and we're taking this as a reform opportunity, with the help of some local teams its been going good so far.

Were not looking to do anything crazy like win 10 regionals in the next few years, our goal is pretty easy if you ask me. Just consistently participate in eliminations, something we've only done once.

[MARS_James]

I really feel that you have to look at this from two different perspectives when did you decided to compete as a robotics team and when you decided to compete as a FIRST Team. What I mean is that a FIRST Team competes for The Chairmans Award since it is the highest award out there.

In terms of the robot for us it kind of happened on accident to us. In 2005 our rookie year we won an off season event, Mayhem at the Museum. It really invigorated the 12 members for 2006 when we went with a risky design and had a huge boost, we made it to the finals by beating an alliance of tough frc veterans (233, 190, 744).

My freshman year was when we became focused on being a FIRST Robotics Team, with our first team captain graduating the new team captain was NOT a robot builder so his focus was not on the robot and it showed with us receiving the Regional Engineering Inspiration Award, and Regional Chairmans Award in back to back years.

Unfortunately after that year both robots and outreach took a huge drop off after that due to funding and build location but we finally are making the come back to both.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by dellagd

Its alot harder I believe with a smaller team. For example, if you have 100 members, everyone coming in twice a week may be perfectly fine to produce a great robot, but the same does NOT go for a 20 person team (Unfortunately).

I believe your notion of "more bodies = better robot" is simply not true. Many very successful teams each year make do with relatively smaller teams. A 100 person team is much more difficult to manage than a smaller team because engaging 100 people is just that much harder.

Originally Posted by dellagd

You have to put in the time to accomplish your task, and I think when people start Wanting to come in and work all the time, you can have a great team. A half effort on time will produce a half as good robot.

Now I can get behind this statement.

What really drives strong teams is the culture (this is true for strong companies as well). If the culture is there to allow people to innovate, learn, grow and FAIL along the way while striving for excellence at every opportunity, the rest will take care of itself. The team will grow in size because that passion will infect the team members who will spread it to their friends who will spread it to their friends, etc. Establishing this culture is something every company in the world tries to do and many of them fail to remotely achieve.

Originally Posted by dellagd

Motivation of other people is a hard thing to do.

You've just nailed one of the strongest themes of a professional career, motivation. Excellent managers are ones that can ignite passion in their employees. This skill is very hard to find in people, however I have seen many people with this skill involved in FIRST.

-Brando

[SarahBeth]

We're in the process of change ourselves.

This is the first year that 157 has gone from a build season only team to a full year team. We're definitely having our growing pains, but its something that the kids have wanted for a long time and they're beyond excited that this is happening. We right now are running into the challenge that our school is going under construction so we're getting pushed out of our build space and into a smaller space - so the fact that we've got time right now to be organized and know what we have and what we have to move (everything) after build season is a giant help. We couldn't have done this with 2 weeks between build season and when we need to be out of our space.

Anyway - we know this year is a build year and we'll see what happens, but we don't see us going anywhere but up. Its really gratifying seeing our students take charge with just a little bit of guidance, not be afraid to share their ideas and want to be leaders. They're super excited about the outreach too and getting our team known into our community, which is awesome.

[Siri]

This is a good question, as right now we're fighting to stay "plunged" with nor permanate space in which to work. Our transition to plunge-ness was also split into 2 phases, though I split them into technical and student leadership rather than technical and non-technical.

We started in 2005 as a very small, back-of-the-classroom, only-during-build-season team with hand-selected students, mostly upperclassmen. Most of us tended to take a lot of leadership naturally, because the teacher only selected those that did. After a teachers' strike separated us from the school during the 2008 season, we stopped the hand-selection and upperclassmen preference. This was in part because we basically didn't recruit in the chaos and in part because we did absolutely terribly in 2008.

The survivors were determined to fix it in 2009, and we took our technical "plunge". This was mostly on the part of our lead engineering mentor with a few remaining student veterans. This small scale worked alright for a while, but as the team started to grow (without the historical vetting process), the student population got younger, less experienced and less assertive, and mentors started to play a bigger role. We recognized this, and in 2011 we took the organizational "plunge" to restructure and expand from a team designed for selected alpha upperclassmen to one that would be better at giving everyone opportunity and encouragement to grow. We're still plunging on that one (that's a good thing, right?) as our team continues to get younger with less technical background.