Contacting a FIRST Team

[Joe Ross]

I've heard that the TIMS main contact can look up other teams main contacts in TIMS (assuming that the other contacts have opted in). This helps team to team communication, but not outsiders.

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

I've heard that the TIMS main contact can look up other teams main contacts in TIMS (assuming that the other contacts have opted in). This helps team to team communication, but not outsiders.

Yes, this is true. And it's also not accessible from the time Championship ends until FIRST decides to open it again for the following season. The downtime has gotten shorter in recent years, but it's still a pain when you want to contact someone from XXXX team to ask them questions, but the one place you might be able to go to is not available for months on end.

I'm ok with the restricted access to team contact information, but it needs to be something that is available year-round.

[JohnBoucher]

You can search the members area here on CD by team number to see the most active poster on a team.

It would be helpful is all teams had a presence here.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

You can search the members area here on CD by team number to see the most active poster on a team.

It would be helpful is all teams had a presence here.

While that's true, there are a number of problems. It's entirely possible that someone has both email and PM shut off, the most active poster hasn't been around the team for a while or on CD for a while, etc. And, of course, not all teams are on CD.



Speaking of CD, I wonder if CD's email system, or a derivation could be applied to FIRST's site. All emails are site-generated, but don't reveal email addresses unless a reply includes one.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Building a strong network in your community is not easy.

Getting to know you're RDs and Senior Mentors helps. Another option is to hold events and sign people up for those events, you build a pretty good database pretty quickly.

I have even gone as far to just go around at regionals/off-seasons and ask teams to sign up on a list so we can contact them in the future.

I like the idea of a contact link on every team's page. It should be simple enough to implement.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Building a strong network in your community is not easy.

Quoted for truth. While I've been lucky enough to easily acquire the main contacts for all our area teams, sometimes they just don't respond. We're hosting an off-season in roughly a month and still quite a few STL area teams haven't registered. Hopefully we see more of a response with school starting up, but it's still surprising to me how hard it has been to get a response from some teams in our area.

[Bluman56]

Originally Posted by MechEng83

Yes, this is true. And it's also not accessible from the time Championship ends until FIRST decides to open it again for the following season. The downtime has gotten shorter in recent years, but it's still a pain when you want to contact someone from XXXX team to ask them questions, but the one place you might be able to go to is not available for months on end.

I'm ok with the restricted access to team contact information, but it needs to be something that is available year-round.

I (Lead Mentor #2 on TIMS) am currently trying to get in touch with two local teams but I cannot find any menu to get to where I could look up teams Lead Mentor contact information. I remember this existed in 2015 before the big website change. Does anyone know how to get access to this page again?

[sysdes]

It's tough to find much by going through the first web site. Your best chance would be if the team has its own web site with reasonably up-to-date contact info. Best way I know of to find the web site is www.frclinks.com then in the box type w/XXXX