Contact with NASA teams (254, 118, etc.). Urgent need!

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

It's not a done deal yet, and assuming everything falls into place it'll still be the fall of 2015 at the earliest, so don't get too jealous yet.

FWIW, all we did was put together a single page, 5-year vision for serving the school and community, and send it out to three or four people in positions of influence in our school, district and community. I never figured on it being funded but they came back right away. Hope this might encourage some folks to seek funding for their FRC dreams too.

Just having the very remote possibility of that happening for you are better chances than the Majority of FRC teams

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

Just having the very remote possibility of that happening for you are better chances than the Majority of FRC teams

I don't know that your point is true.

He raises a great point, they ASKED for this. They REACHED out to others to see what was there.

Many teams (and people, in all aspects of life) complain that XYX isn't there for them, but at no point have they really TRIED to make it happen for themselves.

[Wetzel]

I high school in our district was being mothballed, and we asked facilities about having access to just the gym as a practice facility for the 10 DCPS teams. We were told no, the entire building is getting shuttered and we can't have just the gym available for you.

A few weeks later they offered us the secondary gym at a elementary school elsewhere in the city, and we now have a full time practice field with an exterior door that each team has a key for. Until we made a proposal, they didn't know that we wanted a space like that.

You can't get what you don't ask or build the relationships for.

Wetzel

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

Just having the very remote possibility of that happening for you are better chances than the Majority of FRC teams

It's hard to say. Every team is in a different place, and all of us have up and down years or decades. We had a long streak (our first eight years) where our entire budget was the entry fee, and we usually had to scrounge that up. We built most of one of our robots out of a used doghouse.

It does appear to me, though, that there may be room for optimism for many teams (or for STEM projects in general) based on a few factors, such as the boom in fracking.

I really hope I'm not coming across as a jerk. Right now we're building our robots using the school wood shop, and our actual build room is the attic which until this summer was wood shop dead storage. My good friend in the district lost her team entirely (and her job) when they shut her school down and moved her to another school, where's she's trying to start over almost from scratch in a large closet. We really want to create a place where every team in our district and area can benefit. Hopefully it pans out, and I also hope the best for all the teams. FRC is an amazing experience, at whatever level of funding.