school support

[MichalSkiba]

We don't have much support either. We're a relatively small team with a core group for construction, programming, electronics and so on of about 10 ppl. We have a few more ppl like darren (nice website, www.mcirobotics.org), but not much else. Although our principal is very supportive and helped facilituate the trip to houston, we are, in the eyes of everyone else just another club at our school (partly becuase there is little interest). For the most part, the team is run and maintained by students; hence the 100% student built robot.

We also don't have alot of money, probobly because we only have 4 sponsors (TDSB, NSK, Wardrop and Thompson Terminals). Our school gave us $1000 (probobly enough to buy a burger in the states, lol j/k) which is the most that any club got.

We were very suprized to hear that we have qualified for the finals because we had never expected to go to them, the cost were out of the question. But, as it turns out, its not too bad as we are now only paing a few hundred Canadian dollars for 4 nights at Hyatt along with a bus ride.

Just out of curiousity to school who get a large amount of financial sponsership from various firms; do you guys find that the more the sponsor gives, the great control it has over your team with respect to the involvement of sponsors? (ie. we gave you $50,000 and we want a good robot so build this and this according to these plans?)