What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?

[bdaroz]

Originally Posted by marshall

Can you elaborate more on what you'd like to see in such a manual? This might become a project for our team.

Sure.

Speaking from my team's experience, we got into it knowing the goal was "build a bot", and we received copious amounts of grant money to start up and compete - to the point we didn't need to worry about sponsors or funding (to a level). The game manuals gave us a good idea how the game and competition worked at a technical level, but...

At our first event:

* Food - We knew we could order from the venue (expensive) but we weren't prepared for how hard it would be to get food in (and have a place to eat).
* Judging - How to interact with the judges, our first pair of judges looked to us like just another team scouting (what can your robot do?). The second pair asked more questions, but both times were were under the gun coming off the field and due to queue up almost immediately. (Our student that was to be our PR face was in the stands to make room in the pit for an urgent repair.)
* Pit - We had a few folding tables, a tool box, a 3D printer, and some pare COTS stuff. No banners, "tent", and our robot cart was... well.. rookie. Some cheap and basic ideas on what *AND HOW* to bring stuff to the venue would have helped. (Taking a step further - the "basic rookie team pit kit")

* If we qualified for worlds we were terrified. We didn't know if we'd get the rookie award, or if we'd be able to go, what it meant, how many could go, how much it would cost, or when FIRST would need the money. (FIRST Team emails were going into SPAM folders, we found later) In short, if it happened, we were massively unprepared. (Thankfully it was a week 3 event, so there may have been hope.)


After the competition (we did well by our standards, but didn't get any Worlds-qualifying awards)....

* Now what? - Between April - January what do we need to do?
* Financials - Being so financially supported as a rookie team, we have little understanding of what level of support a 2nd year (or later) team could expect. Do we need to chase down local companies now? A lot? A little? What might a 2nd year team budget look like?
* Engagement - Keeping in mind end of year testing (AP / NYS Regents / Finals, etc) what should we do to keep our students engaged, and to what level? And starting in September?
* Goal Ideas - Some rookie teams are happy they got a bot on the field, others had higher starting goals, but what would some 2nd year goals be for a "typical" team?
* Off Season Events - I know about them because of CD, and some interaction with other local teams (not a lot of off-season discussion in week 3, but...)

Beyond the bot:

As a rookie, until we hit competition and started seeing the Chairman's Award presentations and really started interacting with other teams, everything beyond the bot was pretty well lost on us. (And to be honest, rightfully so for our team our first year). As we look to years 2+ even just a bulleted list of "inspiring" ideas that other teams have done, outreach, etc, to give teams something to look to and build off of.

Granted, this was just our experience, but if you decide to take this on and want more info or to discuss, let let me know. Thank you!