Recruiting

[Not2B]

Drive the big, scary robot around at lunch. Let people try it out. Tell them YOU built it.

Then... while all the interested people are crowded around, go find the people looking from a distance, and go let them know that they too could build a robot. Something they can learn. Get the people on the edge - who might not even think engineering is something they can do.

OK - I made that up - we have the opposite problem. Money, Space, and Adults for one team, students for 3. But it should work.

[Zoheb N]

has anyone tried a pep rally? if so how did it go? what did you guys do at the pep rally?

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Zoheb N

has anyone tried a pep rally? if so how did it go? what did you guys do at the pep rally?

Soley for the robotics team? No. But we have demonstrated our robot during part of a pep rally before. People have liked it both times we did it, we usually get comments of "how the heck did you guys do that", "that was cool", or things like that. I'm not entirely sure how many people it convinced to join the club, as they've both been done towards the end of the school year.

In 2005 we used our robot to cap a few tetras out on a goal, mainly looking cool because we showed off that we could hoist a tetra 13 feet into the air and drive around with the same ease as when our robot is at the 5 foot normal limit. I wasn't there, but they also used either the 2002 or 2001 robot during its respective year to show off how much their robot could pull, and pulled a cart (don't know if it had wheels on the bottom or not, I'm pretty sure it did) with the entire offensive line of the football team on it. They would have pulled more but didn't have a big enough cart.

Currently a few of us are trying to think of how to create balls the same size as poof balls filled with something (t-shirts or other goodies) to shoot out of this year's robot for pep rallys or football games. It would require no modification of this year's robot, which would make it very simple to do. I just don't know what we'd want to use so that it wouldn't hurt people if it hit them.

[Zoheb N]

Does your school allow you to shoot things that fast at people??? Also t-shirts would be the safest thing

[gobeavs]

Our robot from Raising the Bar (2 years ago) hung on a basketball hoop rim during one of our pep rallies. That seemed pretty effective for getting a "wow, that's pretty cool" from everyone - don't know how many recruits we got from it though. Our team also helped at a local FLL event and were able to show our robot off. Hopefully that will bring some recruits down the road.

[anna~marie]

one organization:
FLL
get involved

[Beth Sweet]

We are also losing half of our team because of the graduation issue this year (fortunately it sounds like one or two may be coming back as mentors!)

For things like the lunch, can that be done at the beginning of next school year? Our mentor crew is out of town already for this summer.

While the FLL and elementary/middle schools are good, does anyone have any more immediate recruitment methods?

[RoboMadi]

Originally Posted by Beth Sweet

We are also losing half of our team because of the graduation issue this year (fortunately it sounds like one or two may be coming back as mentors!)

For things like the lunch, can that be done at the beginning of next school year? Our mentor crew is out of town already for this summer.

While the FLL and elementary/middle schools are good, does anyone have any more immediate recruitment methods?

That what happened to us last year. When we started we were only 8 people, but we recruited more and when the season started we were 30+

Here are some ways:
-have a car wash/donation event. While you guys are washing cars, ask one of your people to introduce them to your robot and let them drive it. We got a lot of home schoolers and freshmen because of this.
-Home GAMES!!.. take your robot to the home games and do like a shenanigan with it. Like the time we chased our principal around the track with or 2005 robot, during the half time. We also built a Basketball Robot, just for the sake of entertainment and using it to recruit more people.
-Morning announcements in school. DO IT!.... its slow but it will help
-After School event or during class event. this year before we shipped out the robot, we took it in the senior hallway and shot balls out of it. Whoever catches a ball gets a candy....

Thats just some of the stuff we did. We also go to the Museums and Fairs with our robot and recruit mentors and students from other schools etc.

let me know if you have any questions..

[santosh]

We are currently losing 8 seniors and from interest forms from the upcoming Freshmen Magnet class of 2009, we will be gaining 55 people. This will bring the number up to 149 people.

We do A LOT of outreach events and many kids from these outreach events transfer into our school district to take part in our club.
We have this thing called wildcat daze at our school where all the clubs and organizations have a booth. At this booth we always have a couple of FRC bots, a couple of FLL bots, and a VEX bot or two. This always attracts people. We also work with many local FLL teams. By getting to know these kids and mentors of a lot of teams on a personal level, we can recruit a lot of them into the next level.
We also mentor a few teams and the kids on these teams that are moving up to high school are ither coming to our school to join up and a few are going to their schools to try and get teams started there.

[lukevanoort]

We chronically have these sort of problems, our team varies from small to smaller, or larger, with a lot of people standing around talking. I'm personally out to build a T-Shirt cannon robot with our six years of pneumatics hardware and some random drive parts. (Triple rapid-fire launchers baby, two compressors a piece)

[Zoheb N]

what type of shirts are you guys talking about.. school shirts, team shirts,

[=Martin=Taylor=]

For the past few years my team has hosted an off-season regional competition at our school.

This is a GREAT way to get people to join, albeit very difficult to organize and pull off.

Leading up to the event we do a lot of promotion and advertising at school, handing out fliers and driving the robot in the quad... We also put the dates and times of when it is to take place in both local and school newspapers.

When the competition happens we usually have fabulous turnout. People who have nothing to do with robots/high-school show up just to watch.

Not only do we rope new members but we also sell stuff (which brings in a lot of money for the club).

[Pavan Dave]

Originally Posted by lukevanoort

We chronically have these sort of problems, our team varies from small to smaller, or larger, with a lot of people standing around talking. I'm personally out to build a T-Shirt cannon robot with our six years of pneumatics hardware and some random drive parts. (Triple rapid-fire launchers baby, two compressors a piece)

Actually I have thought of this T-Shirt cannon with a few designs from the web and I think that that would be a decent recruitment meathod at like a school Pep-Rally. On one of the old robots just put this "Pneumatic Cannon" on and fire t-shirts away.

Originally Posted by Zoheb

what type of shirts are you guys talking about.. school shirts, team shirts,

The awnser to that is Team Shirts so they know about your team and organization etc.

Pavan.
118 Electrical.

[joshsmithers]

alot of people dont know much about the team and just think were a bunch of geeks. (well, they're right) its our job to go out and show them that there is a geek hidden deep inside of them too. for instance, i got two my friends to join simply by telling how good they would do and asking them to come to meetings. it helps to encourage, remind, welcome and include new members.

WHAT OUR TEAM DID RECENTLY
our team tried hosting a booth at a semi-popular local event and letting people drive some pre-built vex's. we gained some intrest, sponsors, possible mentors, $76 bucks, and 1 team member. overall, it didn't work out too well.

-Smithers

[Cynette]

Originally Posted by joshsmithers

WHAT OUR TEAM DID RECENTLY
our team tried hosting a booth at a semi-popular local event and letting people drive some pre-built vex's. we gained some interest, sponsors, possible mentors, $76 bucks, and 1 team member. overall, it didn't work out too well.

That sounds like a success to me! You checked the box in 5 areas. And hopefully you had some fun as well!