Contacting a FIRST Team

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

So, from what you're saying, if someone new wishes to mentor a team in their area, the FSM is the perfect person to contact.

However, this isn't really noted in an easy-to-find place on the FIRST website. Heck, even I didn't know that connecting new mentors to teams falls under the FSM's purview.

- Sunny G.

Unfortunately the FIRST Senior Mentor program is not widely known, but yes connecting potential mentors with a suitable team is one of our duties. At this point the link that Kathie posted is not up to date with all the new FSMs. Since the program has rapidly expanded in recent years there have been discussions of how to increase awareness of the program. In the past there were just a handful of FSMs so it didn't make sense to promote it nationally (or in Canada) because so few areas were served.

[protoserge]

http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on is the closest thing I've found and it's quite laborious to get results (hint: FIRST, can you make it easier to keep form submission and re-query?)

Search for Florida teams...


And find out what awards they got, but no way to contact them.

This is a prime location for the aforementioned contact information to be applied. At the very least, a team website would suffice. Perhaps FIRST can provide hosting for a team contact page that simply uses a generic web contact form that forwards to the TIMS contacts and masks replies much like eBay and Amazon. Most domain names will forward the email to other services (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.). A web form with a recaptcha would go a long way to preventing spam submissions.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by stinglikeabee

http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on is the closest thing I've found and it's quite laborious to get results (hint: FIRST, can you make it easier to keep form submission and re-query?)

Search for Florida teams...


And find out what awards they got, but no way to contact them.

This is a prime location for the aforementioned contact information to be applied. At the very least, a team website would suffice. Perhaps FIRST can provide hosting for a team contact page that simply uses a generic web contact form that forwards to the TIMS contacts and masks replies much like eBay and Amazon. Most domain names will forward the email to other services (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.). A web form with a recaptcha would go a long way to preventing spam submissions.

There is a spot for team website on the same page as the events attended and awards. Of course that requires the team to have a website, submit it to FIRST and actually keep up on the payment of the domain name. Even if they have a website they may or may not have contact info listed.

[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

[Greg Hainsworth]

Totally agree.

I went through the FIRST website to find nearby FTC/FLL teams to partner with and hopefully form some lines of communication. No contact information (sometimes not even a school name) available on the website. I did my best sluething and called a few people only to find out that the teams are inactive and no one knows anything about them.

I went to FIRST to ask for help in identifying which teams were active and which were not. I got a form response back basically telling me to go through the website to look up teams... which was where I started. I couldn't even get a list of team numbers that were active in the last 12 months.

Not every team has a website (FLL and FTC teams seldom have that).
I know there might be privacy concerns but even passing my contact information through to them would have been sufficient for me. Hard for me to unite with the FIRST teams around me without support from HQ, and they hold all the information.

[Tom Line]

There is absolutely NO reason FIRST cannot implement a double-blind system similar to Craigs-list where you can click on a team and send an email to their head mentor through the First Website.

It is troubling that basic communications systems like this don't exist.