2005 PRESEASON: Who's doing What?

[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).

[skrussel]

Team 1037, The SCREAM Team is gearing up for the Sweet Repeat, as we are the hosts.

We have been learning programming with Bob Koehl since last May. Every Thursday, including all summer, 5 kids come to my classroom after school and work hard. Bob built a really excellent simulator board, with motors, sensors, etc for the kids to practice on.

This Saturday, we are attending the 1st Annual Team Ford FIRST "Sick Robot Clinic" in Taylor Michigan, where all the Ford teams are coming to get all the robots in good running condition for the Sweet Repeat. We share engineers, spare parts, and help each other get everything running smoothly. The teams attending besides 1037 are 184, 280 (TNT - the host of this event), 440, 301, 557, 1250, 1256, and a new Ford rookie team - not yet numbered!

Ford is also sponsoring a pre-season competition, in which we compete with our sister Ford teams on December 18. The competition rules will be announced Saturday at the "Sick Robot Clinic".

The students on my team have updated the SCREAM logo, and we're adding that.

Our new website is almost ready to upload, with lots of photos, and stuff from the past season.

[Kims Robot]

Well as a rookie team we have a lot of groundwork to lay, but I have to say, after our first all team meeting today our team is very excited!

Here is our plan for the preseason:
- In-Team Seminars: Electrical/Pneumatics, Robovation, Programming, Mechanical Design, Drivetrain, Tools, etc
- Rookie Team Seminars: hosted by other local teams?
- Mini-Competitions: Lego Robots, paper bridge, etc.
- Subteam Work: Electrical, Programming, Webpage, Business/Marketing, Fundraising, Awards, etc.
- Build a drive train and a mechanism (arm?)
- Produce an animation
- Produce a student webpage
- Fundraising
- Tours of our company

Check out our temp webpage for more info: www.penfieldrobotics.com (I put this together, so it doesnt count as student done, but is just serving info until they put one together).

We are meeting once a week starting next week, and will be having the subteams meet whenever they can.

If anyone else knows a starting rookie team, I have a ton of our documentation already that I can provide... I just have to get it all together as a usable format!!

If any teams have awesome fundraising ideas, PM me

[tiffany34990]

well S.P.A.M. has back again lots of our veterans-- about 30 something of us i dunno the grand final count and well we recruited tons of rookies so rookie camp and vets will be in the pit fixing up our old robot Twitch and keeping S.A.M. ready for the robot rodeo

we'll be doing fund-raising, community outreach programs and having fun always and some students will be chosen as the leaders--congrats to them on that and of course we'll be getting our website fully back from the server crashing down so eventually hopefully the forum on our website will be back some day

in FLL we have our team mentoring teams and in November we'll be having our Treasure Coast competition for the FLL teams

and well we'll try to do as much as we can in between all these great hurricanes