Team sizes?

[Alex Salomonsky]

We have had at most 40 students show up, and I hate it. I'm a veteran member of this team, and one of only like 7-8 who have been on the team since our rookie year, while the team is increasing every year. These people get in the way, half of them I want to hang or smother w/ a pillow. Then constant arguing has set us back, plus the teachers kicking us at at 4:30 everyday has us still w/o a robot that can power itself. we are unable to organize the team, and we still need to build an arm for our bot, with only a week left, on top of that, our "head" teacher hasn't even made contact with ITT, who mentored a helped us last year. I loved it much better when the first year had like 10 people, when I loved this competition and being with a bunch of guys and girls having fun, now this year just flat out sucks.

[greencactus3]

Originally Posted by Smrtman5

Our team has about 13 members. Most of us show up all the time and usually work hard. However, we dont have any outside help. Our two mentors are teachers at our school (one mostly gets in the way, anyway). For those teams above with small #s of students, do you get outside help or is the work mostly done by the students?
Just my oppinion, but i think its a lot more rewarding to know that a group of students came together to build a robot.

i guess we'd definitly fit into the small teams with only 10 people. us, we have one mentor. a teacher from our school.. very helpful in many ways, but not much experience in stuff like this... and thats it. the rest is students whether they work or not is another matter.
yeah, our team is definitly a student-run one.

[shyra1353]

we have 9 students on our team ... 2 teachers who have recently (in the past two weeks) become a little bit involved .. and 4 mentors/engineers ... we work really well together ... most of us students show up to meetings (anywhere from 6-9 at a meeting). we joke around a lot and know a lot about each other personally ... some of us are connected outside of the team as well which helps.

as to which i like better .. i like a team of 10 because you become really good friends and as a result more gets done .. i was on a team of about 20 last year .. and i think that thats the maximum there should be because after that1 (and even then) some people are just sitting around

edit/ it also depends on how your team is organized .. our engineers used to have a rule (when there were 13 people) on the team, that only 6 could show up at a time because any more would be less productive and they were not able to watch over 13 of us at a time ... this might be a good rule for some of the larger teams (40- 50) people to enforce but maybe with 12 people instead ... but then again it all depends on your team

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Our students participation determines grade since this is a for credit class, for all quarters. The entire team meets on Monday nights to get weekly assignments, work on projects and the mini competition (fall through December) and give and get sub team weekly reports during robot season. We have 75 registered students, but we don't have perfect attendance. During build, test and practice, sub teams meet several times a week. Electrical and mechanical give support during practice. Playing field does most of their work early on then start on the shipping container. We take a skeleton group to our first regional. The second is the Midwest regional held close by so all the team can come. Then we take 30-35 students to the nationals. Each of the sub teams is given a certain number that can go and it is up to the adults on the team to make recomendations. The teachers have the final say based on a variety of factors like attendance, fund raising, participation and grades. We try to get each of the subteams working closely with mentors and the students get a chance to see what it is like to work in a corporate environment. Large teams do get uncontrolled at times, but the students do get a chance to experience things they would not have a chance to otherwise.

[Arefin Bari]

there are about 60 students on the roster for the team... in average about 30 shows up... build time 15 shows up... but still the students are involved with lot of other work on the team...

[Pierson]

There are 40+ in our roster... Roughly 30 show up to work. The nice thing about having a larger team is that we have 5 people dedicated to graphics. 4 dedicated to marketing. 2 dedicated to electrical. 7 are leadership (though they also fall into those other categories.) The remainder of the people are builders, machinists, or odd-job doers.

Technically our team has 33 members - but that's only technically. I think there are approx. 8 on animation, 6 on PR, and the rest on Build. 4 of us overlap (me, Eric C., Vincent, and David) overlap on more than one group. In Build, only maybe 7 - 10 at max actually "work" - I know that there are a couple of team members that have never done anything at all.

In our first year, we had less people - and almost everybody worked, which was really nice. Now in our third year, most of us that come regularly and work are those same ones how joined at the birth of the club. We also know each other really well (inside and outside of the club), which lets us work really well in the team. However, it does make us sort of defensive to new members. (I'm guilty of this too.) In spite of that, anybody who works hard and will give anything (time, effort, etc.) for the team is always accepted, no matter how big the group becomes.

One of the problems with such a small "core" group of members is that most of us will graduate next year (one of the core graduates this year). Some of the new members are fusing into the core, but after next year I really don't what's gonna happen...

[tribotec_ca88]

Team 1382 has 26 students and about 10 mentors (engineers, teachers, & school staff). All students show up on a regular basis (daily) although some of them stay longer than others and most show up on saturdays and sundays...But there are days when there´s not much work and about 15-20 people are actually doing something useful...(the other members are there, however, they will usually be playing tetris or pinball )

I think around 30 people overall on a team is a good number to have because the work is well-distributed & it´s not as difficult to communicate w/each other.. Team 1382 is split up into 5 groups:
6 students - marketing/public relations
3 st. - autodesk inventor
4 st. - 3d animation
6 st. - mechanics
7 st. - electronics & programming

[JakeGallagher]

We have about 30 students on our team, with about 10 who are there most of the time. We also have a bunch of mentors and others that are there for us all the time too. I'd say that of the few that are there all the time, there are maybe 4 that get a lot of work done. And, I have to admit, though I'm there a lot, I'm usually in the way. It's just the way I am.
But, just because we have a bunch of people on our team doesn't mean we get a lot of easy funding. I think pulling teeth is easier than getting a freshman to put a good effort into fundraising. It's even worse sometimes to get the upperclassmen to get it done too.
I'd say the biggest Pro to having a big team is when the meetings happen, there's always someone there who you can bounce ideas off of and if you need help with something (whether it be homework or something else) there's almost always a team member who knows how to get it done. For the most part, our team is one big, happy family ^_^ lol. Seriously though, we're always there to help each other out.

[Alex Pelan]

Hmm.. well we have about 30 members, 10-18 who come regularly and we do pretty well, workwise. Unfortunately, we also have 16 seniors (16!) who make up more than 2/3 of that 10-18, which does not bode well for next year.

[Astronouth7303]

Originally Posted by Alex Pelan

Hmm.. well we have about 30 members, 10-18 who come regularly and we do pretty well, workwise. Unfortunately, we also have 16 seniors (16!) who make up more than 2/3 of that 10-18, which does not bode well for next year.

You have it easy. We have 8 people you had an active part on the robot, plus 3 mentors. 6 are seniors. I'm a freshmen AND the programmer AND have the largest commute. Something tells me I will be taking on additional responsibilities next year...
The roster has 13 students and 4 mentors. Anyone still around next year is going to do A LOT of recruiting.

[Vivelation]

41 students, 5 or so mentors, 1 alumnus who's always there (he's kind of a mentor but kind of not), 1 teacher

of the students:
about 8 on animation
at least 3 on electronics
2-3 on Chairman's
at least 5 on website
most everyone (except for animation people) helps w/robot

Most people usually show up during build, but this year, not as many people were there. The majority of students actually work and get things done, but there are a few who don't do much, and they get in the way, and then you want to whack them to see if they'll work on something.

Next year, we'll be in some sort of hole, seeing's how 16 members are seniors this year. The year after that, the team is going to need to do a lot more recruiting because there will probably be at least 20 seniors next year(which will be at least half the team).

[Aaron Knight]

Team 891 has about half a dozen regulars, total of 10 students overall. Can't seem to get all 10 to show up to any one meeting, tho

[Hinkel Y.]

Team 188 has around 25 this year (Plus a few great mentors), and most of them are extremely committed (especially the niners this year). But I don't think it matters on how many members are on your team that counts, it's the amount of commitment that every single members shows with the enthusiasm they show.

We've got 9 people, but everyone shows up to every meeting, so everything goes smoothly.