Petition to start things that inform, inspire, educate and de-confuse the public

[Tungrus]

Some good and constructive thoughts. We as FIRST teams must be proactive and positive at the events. Yes, many mentors and drive teams will be stressed out, but we need to start somewhere. We can be proactive and train our teams about event etiquette would be first step. We can have few team members as un-official ambassadors who can volunteer to interact with visitors, especially those who seem to be a bit lost (possibly very first FRC experience) and explain to them what FIRST/FRC is about. Explaining game rules is a challenge, save it for later and when you do, give a brief summary instead of all the rules. If you end up watching a game with them, point something interesting that happens, like co-op, can burglars, alliance team work (one team stacking and other team capping etc, the dynamic factors).

For our team, before every event, we talk about event etiquette, including not talking when a guest speaker is talking, greet volunteers and thank them etc.

There will be no perfect solution, but we all can start somewhere.