Am I the only person with this job?

[nobrakes8]

newsletters fell under the responsibility of the website team on my old team, however they were always given other stuff to do, which is why the website and newsletters were never done (except in 2005, it seemed everything went as planned, but that was the only time)..

Also our team did an hours system.. Where you had to do so many hours to go to be on the drive team (they figured if you're not there then you don't know enough about the robot to be on the drive team), and you had to do so many hours to go to the event on thursday, so many hours to go on friday, etc..

We'd always have like 3-4 students just hanging around with nothing to do everynight trying to accumlate hours... So like they always got stuck on the jobs nobody wanted to do since they really weren't part of any subteam.. One night they might be organizeing tools for us, another night they might be machining parts with loose tolerances so somebody like me could dedicate time to other stuff, maybe they'd go work on an old robot to get something working and do troubleshooting etc..

Those people ALWAYS turned out to be critical since without them important stuff wouldn't get done.. They maynot have worked on any particular critical part of the robot, but without their work the little stuff would never get done and we would have had lots of problems come ship date..

[Ken Leung]

Originally posted by littlefish180
I got to wondering the other day about something. It seems like most team have your standards duties for team members: drive team, animations, etc...my job on my team can be simply put as whatever no one else wants to do. Mainly, I do my team's newsletter. Do other teams even have newsletter and, if so, who writes and creates them? I just wonder if maybe I'm the only student with this job. If any other student does work on their team's newletter, let me know. I often have no clue as to what to include in it. Thanks!
~Angela who got chosen to do the newsletter b/c she got a higher grade than Ben in her one semester of journalism this past year

I think every position is important in a FIRST team, so don't say writing a newsletter isn't a "standard duty" for you team. There are all kind of position in a team: from the people who work on the robot such as the different components team, to the electronics team, to the animation team, to the chairman team, to the organization and public relation team... etc.

There are all kind of people who have important duties. Even if they are only cleaning up the shop by picking up nuts and bolts or only designing signs and banners for the team, or photographers who take pictures of the team, and even news letter writers such as yourself have something important to contribute to the tea.

So don't think your job isn't a standard duty in the team. You are as much of a FIRST person as your team leader or drive train leader are. FIRST doesn't just help the growth of engineers, but also help raise the general quality of all kind of people who participate in it. I know people who will never become an engineer, but they benefited from the FIRST competition a whole lot.

Now back to your question about the newsletter. You can always include daily progress of the robot of you team, and add some general reminder of the schedule your team leader decided. Talk about what's going on in the FIRST community as well, things like team updates, and topics that came up in the forum. Finally, include stuff going on in other teams, and include outside resources such as other team's database and scouting system, and report what happens in the regional competitions.

Those are only some of the ideas I have...

[Mike Ciance]

as my signature indicatates, i handle communications on my team. one thing i was looking at for next year was a newsletter. it's not such an unusual idea, i know the Thunderchickens have a newsletter, which they distributed each day in atlanta.

i don't think that you should consider yourself an oddjob on the team. you have a job, and when you are available you are given the extra little things that come up. that is how things go on my team, and it works pretty well. i do random jobs and scouting at competitions because my job is like yours, done away from the competition itself. so don't get down about your job, make the most of it! the newsletter is what you choose for it to be, use your power to make your job fun!

PS: I'm a journalist, JOURNALISM ROCKS!!!

[Steve W]

Team 188 has a newsletter that we send out to sponsers or potential sponsers. Lots of logos and info on team. If your team doesn't have one they should. Just think how much easier it will be next year when you approach a sponser and ask for money. They have been kept informed and they see their logo going around to other sponsers. Is this job important? You bet!!!! Never look at any job as if it were not important. Even the relished task of sorting screws, nuts and bolts is important. You can even learn from those jobs.

Someone find me a 8 - 32 x 1 1/4 bolt please.

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by Angela H.

Do other teams even have newsletter and, if so, who writes and creates them? I just wonder if maybe I'm the only student with this job. If any other student does work on their team's newletter, let me know. I often have no clue as to what to include in it.

I know ChellyZee93 did a lot of 93's newsletter - talk to her, she's good at that stuff.

[DCA Fan]

Well, our team is working on creating a newsletter for next year, right now we have email blasts from our mentors. On the team, my job is essentially anything that does not directly relate to the robot ie. Web design, graphic design, video, etc etc.

[Pierson]

As Captain... I do or lead in the doing of the "dirty work" fundraising, sponsor relations, some communications, promo items, banner making, etc...

We used to have a newsletter, but that was discontinued after we moved to a two part website. a public and a private. The private is for team members, mentors. families, and sponsors. We have all news and a calendar there.

It has made information much easier to get out.

[811SmallFry]

We have a newsletter on our team. It is sent to the families of team members (we don't get to see them a lot, so this way we can keep them in the loop), sponsors, and our school. One person on the team does most of the newsletter, but if individual students want to submit articles, they are welcome. We try to have our newsletter come out regularly, about once a month, but, as i'm sure you all know, this is frequently impossible.

[Ben.V.293]

A senior on my team sent out an e-mail newsletter this year and it was great. He talked about the teams progress, what would happen at the next meeting, and made sure everyone knew about all the logistics of trips. I really appreciated the newsletter because it really helped to organize the team. They may not tell you but i'm sure your team appreciates your work so don't feel like your jobs not important.

Ben Van Selous

[RoboMom]

Wow, this goes back to 2001!.
I do monthly targeted email newsletters. Communication is a big challenge and these help. One gets sent to the school system people (principal, head of Tech Ed, school board, etc), one to parents, one to the team, one to sponsors. Sometimes they are all the same, sometimes vary. They are short, bullet format, easy to read, clearly labeled in subject line. They can also be printed out. We get positive feedback from these. I learned the hard way not to include all audiences in the same email, as there are many who don’t understand basic email manners, such as you don’t hit “reply all” to complain about something petty and send to the superintendent!

During the build, a student does engineering updates every other day, sent to the engineering mentors.

For example, the May newsletter will list the seniors and their plans for next year and any FIRST/technology/scholarship awards they received (the school system is VERY interested in this), the new officers, fundraising update, summer plans, and info about our visit to Lockheed Martin, a sponsor.

[KathieK]

One of the complaints we've had in previous years is that there was little communication on the team. This year I became the self-appointed "communicator" for the team. I take the minutes from each meeting and e-mail them to the student members and all adults (including parents) who wish to receive them. I forward the FIRST e-mail blasts. I send out the agendas for upcoming meetings. I send out anything else of interest to the team.

In addition, I send info on a regular basis to our sponsors, school administrators and local politicians.

I create a newsletter (tried to do it monthly) and e-mail it to our parents, sponsors and school administrators and also post it online because some of them have e-mail accounts that cannot read HTML e-mails. You can look at an issue here.

I have informed the team that I am gladly giving up this role next year and that it's an opportunity for one of them to step up and take (as I feel it should be done by students who have a different viewpoint than mine). So far, no takers...

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by KathieK

I have informed the team that I am gladly giving up this role next year and that it's an opportunity for one of them to step up and take (as I feel it should be done by students who have a different viewpoint than mine). So far, no takers...

Me too!!! But I'm not holding my breath

[ladydarkness13]

Originally Posted by Angela H.

I got to wondering the other day about something. It seems like most team have your standards duties for team members: drive team, animations, etc...my job on my team can be simply put as whatever no one else wants to do. Mainly, I do my team's newsletter. Do other teams even have newsletter and, if so, who writes and creates them? I just wonder if maybe I'm the only student with this job. If any other student does work on their team's newletter, let me know. I often have no clue as to what to include in it. Thanks!
~Angela who got chosen to do the newsletter b/c she got a higher grade than Ben in her one semester of journalism this past year

Don't worry, you aren't alone. I do the newsletter for the team too. Now one of the mentors wants to put it on the website, (grand more work for me) Generally we include what each sub-team is doing (electrical, programming, animation, machining, ect.) and maybe a current event that has to do with NASA or robotics. other than that we have a little spot near the bottom that has all the parent info like meetings, due dates and stuff like that. Good luck on you newsletter!

[Hershey]

Our team doesn't have its own newsletter. We get most of our information from each of our team meetings which are every day after school and from 9:30AM - 3:00PM on Saturdays. As for a person who does whatever others dont want to do, we have one of those...at least, he says he WILL do anything...

[Charley]

We don't have a newsletter, persay, but last year we had running info emails.

This year we're trying something new, where we have full team meetings every weds and try to colaborate between building, electric, programming ETC so everyone's on the same track. It's like a verbal newsletter.

Also, hopefully, we'll do a newsletter type deal at Reginals/Nat's to inform other teams about what we do, statistics, etc because last we came in 23 at Regionals, and we were about 16 in our division at Nat's and didn't get selected as an alliance partner... I guess we need to make a name for ourselves!