2005 PRESEASON: Who's doing What?

[Jay H 237]

Other than our constant year round fundraising we have a "rebuilt" website that will go live sometime shortly. Our biggest project right now is moving our stuff to a corner of another room (electronics lab) because the school took our storage closet from us to change it into a classroom. The storage closet we had is about the size of a one car garage, while the new area is like a walk in closet. Our stuff is no longer secure as it was before and if we lose the corner storage in the electronics lab our team will have no storage available. This is also forcing us to get rid of extra team stuff and parts we were saving. This is just another chapter in our on going battle with the school/BOE. Earlier this year Elgin had cleaned the closet and decorated the walls with all our old side panels off our robots, that will all be history shortly.
Some members of our team are also working getting the Haunted Graveyard set up.

[Jaine Perotti]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

Other than our constant year round fundraising we have a "rebuilt" website that will go live sometime shortly. Our biggest project right now is moving our stuff to a corner of another room (electronics lab) because the school took our storage closet from us to change it into a classroom. The storage closet we had is about the size of a one car garage, while the new area is like a walk in closet. Our stuff is no longer secure as it was before and if we lose the corner storage in the electronics lab our team will have no storage available. This is also forcing us to get rid of extra team stuff and parts we were saving. This is just another chapter in our on going battle with the school/BOE. Earlier this year Elgin had cleaned the closet and decorated the walls with all our old side panels off our robots, that will all be history shortly.

ouch. The new place sounds worse than our spider farm. I'm sorry this is happing to you guys.

Right now we are mostly orienting the new members of the team. Tommorrow is our first mandatory parent meeting, during which we will explain the program and give out forms that need to be signed, etc. We are also working on a parent handbook.

Another project of ours is rebuilding reggie 3 (03 bot) to be a small ball handler, modeled after team paragon's robot (but w/o the 2x gripper...we just don't have time for that) to give practice to the rookie members. We are also repairing the Housywhatsit (04 bot) from the damage that occured at River Rage (none of this is serious, just routine stuff).

Of course we are doing the obvious fundraising, which is our main priority now.

We are also getting very excited to attend Bash at the Beach!

[811SmallFry]

We are hosting a Lego Competiton soon, so we're in full gear for that. We also have our parent/ freshmen/ newbie orientation meeting coming up, which we're preparing for. Despite the fact that we haven't had the meeting yet, we do have new members in already, so we're giving them basic training.

[Lisa Rodriguez]

Team 173 is:
-fundraising, as always
-having mechanical workshops once or twice a week (they will start in october)
-particapating in bash at the beach (oct 2)
-creating/refining a handbook
-co-sponsoring/helping run a LEGO regional in the town's middle school
-Hosting a Travis Fox Hypnomania show
-recruiting and introducing new members
-updating the website
....that's all i got for right now, i'm sure another team member can add some
we're busy, to say the least

[Amanda M]

We always do tons during the preseason. Last summer we had our two week LEGO League camp, we're mentoring 8 lego league teams, we're planning a combo FLL FRC competition for december. We have a lot of public appearances and workshops we put on, and this year we're building a new machine shop. It looks like we;re gonna be busy for a long while.

--Mandy

[dubious elise]

We are prepping to host our first ever *and hopefully annual!* Cooney Robotics Golf Tournament as well as setting up dates and times to go to local schools to raise awareness for FIRST and the FIRST Lego Leagues by doing some hands-on demonstrations with the Lego League kits from last year. We have about 25 "active" members now and are recruiting to have about 40 members by December.

[shyra1353]

Team meetings for 771 havent started yet (It's only the second week back to school. They should be starting soon). But, some of us grads are mentoring the FLL teams we have at our school. As for me, I am organizing the FLL tournament on Nov 13th at the school too.

[DCA Fan]

Team Meetings
Summercamps
Organizing Shop
Fundraising
Lego League
Robovations League
Exhibitions

(and oh so much more!)

[Daniel Brim]

Originally Posted by DCA Fan

Team Meetings
Summercamps
Organizing Shop
Fundraising
Lego League
Robovations League
Exhibitions

(and oh so much more!)

Not to mention designing a drivetrain and getting our robot ready for the SCRRF Fall classic

-Daniel

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by DCA Fan

Team Meetings
Summercamps
Organizing Shop
Fundraising
Lego League
Robovations League
Exhibitions
(and oh so much more!)

RUHS Robotics had their first club day, 22 signups. MCHS Robotics is going to do club day. RUHS Robotics is getting into the Spirit Rally for the very first time. The entire school is required to go. MCHS captain Ryan wants George to make a 1 min promotional video for MCHS's daily tv news show (***heads up George), we are making plans for our two new videographers to create a 30 min short film to submit to local film festivals. George has the new web designed, not yet uploaded to bcrobotics.org. George has NEMO web designed, not yet uploaded. (***heads up George) Talked to El Camino College yesterday at WESCON convention. They are so excited about Robovations, their facility being used, the first competition I think is 2 weeks from today?

[Alaina]

Well, I've been trying to have team meetings every week (before "club day" it was only veteran members. Now it's everybody).
Right now we're tweaking with Blondie and getting her ready for Cal Games.
We, erm, haven't really started on fundraising yet...Well, I've began writing a general fundraising letter...But parents are really good for helping with that. That's why there's going to be a parent meeting next week.

For the rest of the off-season I plan on having little "workshops" where the team gets together and learns about electronics, building, teamwork, etc. so we won't all be clueless when build season comes around.

75% of the team is made up of new members. So I kind of feel the obligation to mentor just as much as I, um, (insert verb for being captain here).
...captainate? captainize?

[SpaceOsc]

Originally Posted by Alaina

75% of the team is made up of new members. So I kind of feel the obligation to mentor just as much as I, um, (insert verb for being captain here).
...captainate? captainize?

I love that... tho id watch it.. they get defensive lol thats assuming our no longer a highschool student, if your a student tho Captainize away

[Anthony]

We (Team 900) have started up fairly early this year as we have been meeting for several weeks. We have been working on everything from recruiting to fundraising to explaining drivetrains, pneumatics, and other important aspects of a robot. We are writing letters, contacting parents and other methods of fundraising (as is everybody else I am sure). Recruiting has been a high priority thing as we rarely make it to the season with more than a dozen members, but this year we seem to be maintain 24 to 30 (we will see how long that lasts). However, we have been doing a better job of keeping the new students interested this year. Being only a two year school, it is difficult for us to maintain a strong large group of people. However, this year through all of the mechanical aspects we have been exploring, we are keeping the initial interest in tact. We have done everything from building Lego robots to dismantling transmissions from the past to explain how they worked, to explaining and designing simple pneumatic systems. We are also beginning to design an entire robot such that our Mechanical team and our CAD team can become accustomed to working together so when the season roles around we can get designs done as quickly as possible. We will also be designing a new transmission and drivetrain this preseason to give our new members the experience of doing it so when the season comes (and we actually know what motors we will be getting this year) we can quickly implement a drivetrain and transmission such that we can actually spend a significant amount of time designing features for the game (as opposed to spending 4 weeks of build time on drive systems as we have in the past).

We are also training new programmers and redesigning our website (like so many other teams. Also like several other teams, we have caught a case of the closet cramps as our school decided to pull all of our stuff from our former lab to redesign and rebuild our lab. The good thing is we get a new robotics lab, the bad thing is we have a closet so full of stuff that we can't even find our robot from two years ago. Hopefully the lab will be ready by the time the season starts.

Good luck to everybody this season though

Since WildStang is a class. the first semester we do projects, lego league competetions (for the freshamn and sophomores) and the juniors and seniors have an option of either reconstructing other robots from the past, reconsrtucting the playing firls area, and other things along those lines.

[suneel112]

461 does mainly PR stuff during pre-season. Whether we will go to Ford Sweet Repeat and/or Chief Delphi is still up in the air. One thing we are doing is Robot Fest. I would post stuff like crazy about it, but there is simply no information up right now. All I know is that it is at Purdue University in October. Some info is on the team page.
We also do CAD stuff, learning about machines, etc..., but this is my fourth year on the team, so all that is old news. I may try to better my skills at programming and driving for 2005. I have good ideas, both related to robotics and not, and that was pretty much a constant since I was young. I will probably improve my skills, and teach younger members how to CAD stuff up.
One thing we should do is learn how to weld and super machine parts (weight saving strategies).