How to increase participation or create more meetings?

[Bomberofdoom]

Just for clearing some stuff before I start, I'm asking the question, not answering it. sorry.

A little intro, my name is Nir Levanon, I'm currently the team leader of the no longer-rookie team, team #2230 Zcharia's Angels. I have no expirience in leading(or atleast I believe so) and I first decided to join FIRST because I would have something to do with my expirence in programming. Later on, I figured who was in my team and I thought that I should lead the programming team in order to assist other students in programming while leading it.
I had the chance of asking to be the team's leader before the kickoff event, but I have decided to let the students from the higher grades to lead because I had thought they had expirience in leading or robotics. Apparently I haven't known them well enough.
I had no clue how the programming in FIRST worked and as the leader I've decided to explore about it before everyone else in my team, so I let them go to their other teams and work over there while I've prepared my explaination of programming in FIRST. The explaination went quite fair but there were parts that I still haven't understood in that time too, so I've asked each team member to search and try to understand certain parts in the programming, such as understanding where do we write the autonomous mode and what should we write, about certain items that we might've needed to program on them(which some later seemed to be unnecassary). When the testing part time came I've tried to spread the work, but some were short, some were too long, some where too hard for certain students and some of the students asked to leave early because they had nothing to do and from all the pressure of that day I haven't realized they had something to do but only later. But that pressure came from the fact that I had too many memeber in my team and some didn't want to work and some weren't sure what to do and were waiting for my explainations which I couldn't provide because of pressure from other issues.
Evantually, the final code was written by 2 people from 5 people who were first assigned to the team: Me and another member, which mostly he did (and it embaresses me).
What I've concluded of my leading roll in the programming group was that I wasn't prepared for almost anything and I wasn't able to calm myself enough to distinguish the important from the unimportant.

I've started my team leading roll in the last days left till the competition event, after we realized in the last days that we were missing alot of students to complete the robot and to detrmine robot drivers and we all agreed it was the team leader's responsiblity, and I've tried to take things into hands towards the competition but the mentor helped and assigned students to talk with her about subjects towards the competition and I've interfeared in one of the times and made a mistake.

So now, after the competition, I've spoken with my team a bit, and we're about to do an offical season-closing team event, where we will go over some of the important issues in our team.

In the meeting we had before the one to come, I've asked my team what is the team's goal in their opinion so I could manage those stuff and they told me some of their ideas but told me that as the team leader, it's my job to determine those.
I don't want my personal judgements to go over the team's goals and create a team based on my thoughts, but a united team with shared thoughts and I want to find those right thoughts we all agree with in our team.

Another thing that came up in the meeting was that participation was missing. Some think it was because a lot of students didn't understand the meaning of FIRST and it's requirment to be dedicated to it. How do we make people more dedicated and to participate more?

(Sorry for the long intro)

In the past weeks, I've been talking with my team friends at school and I thought that they wouldn't think of talking about FIRST, but surprisingly, they did, and I have the feeling that they want more participation, more meetings, more fun and I want to give it to them soon. But how? What kind of stuff can we do?

Just to state, we all live in diffrent cities and learn in one school in one city and sometimes it's hard for people to reach certain events.

*Edit
iI'm also posting this message because I've seen alot of people joking and chitchating about the fact that they don't have a lot of meetings or they're just anxious till the next meeting*

What kind of stuff can we do to create more meetings?

[JBotAlan]

Originally Posted by Bomberofdoom

What kind of stuff can we do to create more meetings?

Shortly after our last event, our advisers got together and came up with a list of summer goals. For instance, we're trying an experimental drive system, a different style arm, and I have a lot of programming work to do. Basically, all of the items that we did not have time for during the season we're doing now.

Also, we are doing demonstrations--that's one of the requirements to be a returning student. Each returning student must set up a demonstration and a fundraiser to make $200 for our scholarship fund.

Between the actual robot work, cleaning the mess of a shop, and outreach, we have a fairly busy summer.

I'm sure someone else has more ideas than this...
JBot

[Bomberofdoom]

Shortly after our last event, our advisers got together and came up with a list of summer goals. For instance, we're trying an experimental drive system, a different style arm, and I have a lot of programming work to do. Basically, all of the items that we did not have time for during the season we're doing now.

Well, that's programming stuff, and that requires only certain people, not everyone.

[Cuog]

You may want to ave a meeting with the whole team(or as much as you can get to attend) and see what sorts of things they saw that they found interesting at the competition. Also have them think about what sorts of projects they would like to do over the summer. Have a small group that wants to work with you on learning the programming. Then see if there are any students that would like to work on making a new drive platform perhaps something holonomic, you can search CD for plenty on all these different drive trains. I'm sure there are many more things that your team will come up with that they want to explore. Just give them this opportunity to try it and I'm sure most of them will jump on it.

[FourPenguins]

Originally Posted by Bomberofdoom

How do we make people more dedicated and to participate more?

We have a saying that I've always gone by. "If you're not here, someone else is." Basically, you get out of FIRST exactly what you put in. The more you put in, the more you get out. If you don't want to work hard and don't want to work long hours, the team will find someone who does want to. (Your team might not be able to find such a person, but they don't have to know that)

[Kyle]

If you are looking for ways to make more meetings start making things over the off season, build different kinds of drive trains, tinker with different arm types and things like that. Make an out reach program where your teams go's into the community as much as you can, start fund raising programs. Make small competitions within the team, split it into two groups and have each one build something and see who dose a better job according to rules the team leadership makes.


And also, you are no longer rookie team 2230, after the Championship event is over you are no longer rookies, welcome to the vets club!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Bomberofdoom

Well, that's programming stuff, and that requires only certain people, not everyone.

Not at all! New drive: Mechanical, electrical, programmers. New arm: same crew. Only a few people can work on it, maybe, but that doesn't mean that other should be excluded. The only time that only one subset of the team (programming, electrical, or mechanical) is needed is when only that team is able to work on a project. Other than things like that, at least two subteams will be needed for any given task, say figuring out a new sensor or developing new concepts.

[Bomberofdoom]

Originally Posted by EricH

Not at all! New drive: Mechanical, electrical, programmers. New arm: same crew. Only a few people can work on it, maybe, but that doesn't mean that other should be excluded. The only time that only one subset of the team (programming, electrical, or mechanical) is needed is when only that team is able to work on a project. Other than things like that, at least two subteams will be needed for any given task, say figuring out a new sensor or developing new concepts.

Yeah, I forgot to mention this. Our school is transfering to another location and our equipment and robot has been transfered to "warehouse" untill transfer the stuff to our new lab(if our school will provide it). In any case, we can't use our robot or equipment to build new stuff on the robot. : /

[CWBWBN]

i think our team has alot of the same problems. on 179, we have very few students to start with, and a good half just join to get out of school on a few days for competition (and to have fun) but the drive to learn just isnt there with these students. i learned alot from team 1902 when i attended a few of their meetings. they have almost full attendance every time, and all the students have something to say. try creating small teams or "committees" of students to perform projects, like researching an advancement in technology, or working towards a goal like starting a local vex or lego team. then however often your meetings are, say once a week, have each "committee" give a progress report on their project. for instance, if you applied for the chairman's award, have a group of students work only on the tasks to be completed for that particular subject, and then report on what they've done since the last meeting. this way, all the students have an assigned project and there's nothing left undone.

this is just the way i've taken classes at school, and seen other teams meet, and it seems the most effective for everyone to learn from, in my opinion.

mch
<3

[rachal]

Originally Posted by Bomberofdoom

Another thing that came up in the meeting was that participation was missing. Some think it was because a lot of students didn't understand the meaning of FIRST and it's requirment to be dedicated to it. How do we make people more dedicated and to participate more?

(Sorry for the long intro)

In the past weeks, I've been talking with my team friends at school and I thought that they wouldn't think of talking about FIRST, but surprisingly, they did, and I have the feeling that they want more participation, more meetings, more fun and I want to give it to them soon. But how? What kind of stuff can we do?

My team had this issue too during build. Next year we're going to delegate more and do team building activities like mini competitions. During the 2006 offseason we prototyped a custom mecanum drive which was fairly successful, and the new members had fun driving it around

[Bomberofdoom]

We'd love to do all that, but we don't have the abilty to do so. We don't have a lab, our robot, our equipment...The only next time we'll actually WORK will probablly be mid-September and that's 4 month ahead.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Bomberofdoom

We'd love to do all that, but we don't have the abilty to do so. We don't have a lab, our robot, our equipment...The only next time we'll actually WORK will probablly be mid-September and that's 4 month ahead.

Programmers can think of algorithms, can't they? There's at least one simulator out there--I can't remember which thread, but it's in the National Instruments subforum here. Why not build a PID control loop?

How about fundraising? Or getting the word out and starting another team? You didn't say that it had to have to do with building the robot...

[team 1094]

on my team afther the competition we start planing for off season events like Iri,public appearances, work on skills for next year= practice animation,driveing,build test tools so you can test certain pars of robots,communtiy work projects,play around with new software to use for netx year.

[Kyle]

If you can't build anything at your lab then just go out as a team, go to the local park and have a fun time, watch a movie together or just hang out together and make some memories. The best team building activities can have nothing to do with robotics at all, just hanging out with each other can work just as well. If you cant find something for everyone to agree on then just do lots of different things to make everyone happy.