What does your team do before FIRST season?

[65_Xero_Huskie]

There are off-season events and other robotics related things to do.

But im looking for things that your team does to get ready for the season, such as team-building and activities. If your team doesnt do anything can you explain why?

Our team usually does a team building exercise and does many events as a team to get to know the team before FIRST season, but this year we havnt done anything except for a few fundraisers. Any ideas?

[Master Dictator]

Our team hold workshops showing future team members on the basics such as pnuematics, electronics, driving of the robot, and programming. Beside off-season events and fundraising not much else to do.

[Josh Murphy]

Originally Posted by 65_Xero_Huskie

There are off-season events and other robotics related things to do.

But im looking for things that your team does to get ready for the season, such as team-building and activities. If your team doesnt do anything can you explain why?

Our team usually does a team building exercise and does many events as a team to get to know the team before FIRST season, but this year we havnt done anything except for a few fundraisers. Any ideas?

Well first of all there is OCCRA which you know about. We also have team meetings every Tuesday after school for about an hour or 2. We have parties like Halloween, Christmas, Birthdays, and most of us either go bowling together or play football on Saturdays and Sundays. There is also about 15 of us and our team is only 23 this year that stay after school everyday to work on something like the mill, lathes, welding, drill presses, band saws, and all of the common machinery just to practice before the season starts, so we all know how to do it. The machinery is readily available in our shop I don't know about your team but it's an idea. We also have been cleaning and reorganizing(REALLY NEEDED IT) but it will be organized for when the season starts. I have done nothing but clean for about a week and a half with about 5 other members. Just some ideas

[Billfred]

In addition to doing a small food drive before Thanksgiving (a regular project of the team's--if you come to Palmetto, bring some canned goods for the local food bank), 1618's been focusing its efforts on understanding the pneumatics system. It's been a learning experience--to my knowledge, the team has never used pneumatics in competition. (What's worse, 1293 hadn't incorporated pneumatics since 2004. Talk about flying blind! )

[Donut]

Our team has had problems utilizing the Fall well in the past; of the past 4 years 2 of them we've done virtually nothing worth while, largely because plans were made and then fell through since no one took the time to organise it well.

This year we made a t-shirt cannon, held a few intro workshops, held a "presentation" meeting for administrators and parents, had some random team building activities, and outlined club rules and what it's like. We also ran a few fundraisers. We still plan on painting our crate and looking at past year's designs with the remaining time.

We don't meet much in the Fall, only once a week and 3 or 4 weeks this fall we had no meeting due to odd school/teacher schedules. Half the club is in either ROTC or Marching Band, and there are other Fall sports/clubs represented as well, so we try to avoid doing alot in the Fall simply because no one has the time. It's also a nice break for the teachers, who have to do so much in the Spring they need the rest.

We don't do off-season competitions, there aren't any here in Arizona and club members are in too many other things to miss school during the Fall for out of state events.

I have to say from seeing what's happened the past 4 years, if you don't have most or all of your Fall planned out before school starts, none of your plans will work.

[Lil' Lavery]

Our falls vary slightly from year to year, but the common factors are typically training in various sub-groups, "mini-bots", shop training, and a couple team building activities. We also end many meetings with mini-lectures on various things team members should know (motors, gear ratios, proper outreach behavior, how to order parts, etc.)

[Alan Anderson]

I don't understand the question. Isn't it always FIRST season?

Before build season, we do shop work and prototyping and planning and practice and have instructional sessions. We refurbish the fancy light ball that we built and run for the city of Kokomo New Year's celebration. We take a more relaxed attitude to doing things while there's no competition robot to be designed and assembled.

[EHaskins]

My team has one meeting sometime in December to decide when we'll be meeting.

Some team members have certain things they are working on during the off season, but we don't do much other than fund raising (and thats only 2-3 mentors).

[Daisy]

Originally Posted by EHaskins

My team has one meeting sometime in December to decide when we'll be meeting.

Some team members have certain things they are working on during the off season, but we don't do much other than fund raising (and thats only 2-3 mentors).

This year, we utilized the team's vex kits. We left one for the FVC team, and the others were used for creating something functional. The first challenge was making a base that is both fast and durable, and the second was using one of the FVC softballs, and being able to control it around a track. The setup of having two different challenges, with a competition at the end of each, allowed for some of the rookies to better understand what is going on, and gain some excitement towards FIRST in general.

Daisy

[AJ R]

Our team (1714) uses the Mivwaukee vex league to get new team mates up to speed. We also do small projects like animations, programming, and work on different drives to see what areas of intrest team mates have.

[Kingofl337]

while ( First_Season_Active() ); //Infinite Loop
{
// Insert FIRST Activities
// Work on New Version of easyC
}

[chris31]

Raise money, have small workshops, talk about cool things to do, teach programming and have a few meetings.

[James1902]

this is our teams first off-season so we are kinda playing it by ear. We have alot of community service and outreach stuff going on and we keep trying to build something of use (like a t-shirt cannon) but nothing yet. We are also trying to organize alot of fundraisers so we don't have to worry too much about money over the build season

[Mike Starke]

I don't think GRR's FIRST season ever stops. It runs all year long....

[Joe J.]

Lightning Robotics' runs a few various team building activities:
Student interviews for new and returning students
Introduction to FIRST
Introduce Subteams & Leaders
Parent Meeting
Robocode Competitions
Ping- Pong ball Challenge
Straw Tower Challenge
Trivia
Meet in subteams
Various other team building activities
Build & Competition Season overviews
Holiday Party