Your team's first events

[Jeff Waegelin]

When I was a student on 201, we always started the year with an informational meeting, then not too long after, the OCCRA season started. OCCRA is a local robotics league in Oakland County, MI. It's sorta like a smaller version of FIRST, with no corporate sponsorship and student-built robots. It was always a great way to get warmed up for the FIRST season. We'd use it to train new members and new drivers, and it was an incredible benefit, come January, to have the new members already experienced in robot building.

[tiffany34990]

our teams basically-- starts off by having a meeting with all the veterans and students interested in the team-- we have an informational meeting, introduce everyone and show when the meetins are-- the new rookies have a seperate rookies camp and veterans go to the pit and work on various tasks-- the rodeo up in orlando helps us out to show the rookies what we do and what a competiton is sort of like--they learn the game and even depends on situations they are given a chance to drive --thank goodness for robot rodeo it has helped a lot

[Bcahn836]

When school starts we invite new members to our meetings and give a demonstration of the past years robot. From there those interested come to the next few meetings and we figure out what their interest are. From there the veterans help train the new members in a certain sub team. If a new member does not like the sub team he or she chooses we place them in a different sub team until they find one they like. A few weeks later with the remaining newbies on the team that have put in the time are asked to come to an off season event. Each veteran is assigned a group of newbies and help them experience what FIRST is all about. Those brave enough we let drive under the supervision of the last years driver and also who ever wants to be human player. And whatever gets broken during a match we let the newbies fix using their training from the weeks before, under the strict guidance of mentors and veterans. After the event those who liked the experience become members of the team, and often invite their friends to join.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

As a general rule, we do an informal meeting, with bonding activities and some technical stuff and kinda introducing all the members to the various subteams and functions of the team. A lot of technical knowledge is taught during the first semester of the year and sometimes doing demos and stuff, but offseason comps are generally a lot of fun to bring newbies too. I promise to drag some to Sweet Repeat ^^.

[spears312]

For us the 2005 season sort of started just a month or so after nationals when we started having meetings for the next season.
Just yesterday some of us from the team went to the freshmen orientation to give them info on the robot and show it off to them. With in the first week of school we will have had our first meeting.
In a few weeks we will probably start work shops and continue that up till the kick off and also do other things in that time.