An Unusually Small Team...?

[andyhoyt911]

There are currently 5 competent people on our team, due to 12 team members just had to go and graduate on us last year. Does anyone else have this small of a team, and if so, how did YOUR team get the job done? All of our abilities are rather scattered, one of us can KIND OF program, one of us can wire, one of us can KIND OF machine, and yeah.

Are we alone out here?

[Deacon Blues]

I believe 1464 has two members as of right now, but they'll probably get more once the school year starts.

We have, I think, 8 returning serious members with 3 of them being PR folks like me. But again, recruitment.

Edit: The way we have it spread out now, I work on PR, another guy does the website, five people actually do robot work and we have another all around guy. It works out ok, but we're losing two awesome engineers and a lot of the PR staff since they graduated.

[andyhoyt911]

Originally Posted by Deacon Blues

I believe 1464 has two members as of right now, but they'll probably get more once the school year starts.

We have, I think, 8 returning members with 3 of them being PR folks like me. But again, recruitment.

So glad we're not the only ones. Any ideas of how to get kiddos to join our not so mass army of robot builders?

[jgannon]

Because our team consists only of juniors and seniors, and because you have to be in the robotics class to be on the team, we get a whole lot of turnover each year. I only had three returning students last year, and I think I'm only getting four back this year. It certainly makes it more difficult, but not impossible. It forces a lot of people to have to do a lot of learning, which, all things considered, is a pretty good thing. Best of luck with your rebuilding process.

[Joe G.]

We are just like this, one member of our team literally built our 1 robot ramp singlehandedly, another the base and electrical system, and another the entire arm and endeffector. We just don't have any other members who come by more than once a week.

We managed to build a half-decent robot by using many off the shelf parts, as well as a lot from the kit, meeting at least a little every single day, keeping the robot at one of the dedicated members' house so that they can work on it in their spare time away from meetings, and recieving some help from other local teams.

[Deacon Blues]

Getting members is just a matter of getting the name out along with the benefits of joining, like college application material, first hand engineering and business experiences, getting out of school to attend a few regionals, etc. Make sure not to make it seem too tech intensive, because I know we had a large PR group who helped keep morale up and money coming in. Future business types can actually learn about dealing with sponsors, advertising and all that sort of thing. Just make it seem fun and catering to many interests.

Most of our the new members we're getting our people who wouldn't naturally be interested, but who members know and talked to about how awesome it is. Our future wiring guy is the brother of our old art designer who loved coming to our meetings.

[DonRotolo]

Aslo, remember that the season starts the first day of school, not January. Do things around and in school to build a little excitement - even just posters all around the school like "join the robot team" 1st meeting Tuesday at 3:15 in the technology room...

Hey, all you need is for five people to show up, and you have doubled the team! Also, get the teachers involved, especially the science areas, they might be willing to give the team a plug (a mention in class).

Don

[Nuttyman54]

Recruit like there's no tomorrow. Show of the robots at any school activities you can: Back to School Night, PTSA meetings, school rallies, sports games, wherever you can get a spot to get students interested.

Once you've gotten interest, make it easy for them to contact the team. 5 returning members, while not a lot, is certainly enough to make a good leadership team. All you need are eager new students!

[cooker52]

We are planning on expanding our team. Our team is a small one, but no where near as small as yours are. We are planning on using periods in our school day at the beginning of the year (tomorrow) called activitie periods where clubs can join up and where most people will go to random clubs just to get out of class to recruit a few more people. Then for a longer term version of recruitment, we are going to try to start a Lego League team or vex team for younger students so they will have more interest in joining in the future.

So what I'm trying to say is to start recruiting in a small way like at your High School, then try to start a yonger team like Lego or Vex to get students of a younger age to be interested in joining in the future. You might also want to try to go to a middle school and recruit 8th graders for next years team. These are based off of what we are going to do. I hope you will find it useful.

[Billfred]

In 2007, 1618 brought seven students, a PLTW teacher, an EE, and a marketing major to the Palmetto Regional to some degree of success.

What would I cite as things that helped us do well?

1) Cut back. All 1618 had this year was the robot--no WFA nomination, no Chairman's submission, no FLL or FVC teams, nada. I wish we could do more, but sometimes it just can't be done with the number of folks on board.

2) Have good people. We didn't have many folks qualify to travel, but the ones we had were aware of our limitations and what had to be done--and they delivered. There is no substitute for having a group of people willing to bust their humps when needed.

3) Know that your other limits have gone nowhere. You can't fundraise particularly well with seven kids and three mentors, something that influenced our robot design--the arm structure was mostly angle aluminum, PVC pipe, pegboard, velcro, and laminated paper. Keeping that simple allowed us to keep most of the fabrication (everything except the printing and bearing pressing) in our shop, which kept the kids we did have busy.

4) Look forward. In the time after Palmetto, we hatched a few schemes to help grow the team, and make sure they stick with the team on through to build (the problem that put us in our position last season). We'll see if they stick.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by andyhoyt911

There are currently 5 competent people on our team, due to 12 team members just had to go and graduate on us last year. Does anyone else have this small of a team, and if so, how did YOUR team get the job done? All of our abilities are rather scattered, one of us can KIND OF program, one of us can wire, one of us can KIND OF machine, and yeah.

Are we alone out here?

First off, DON'T underestimate your skills. No one expects teams to have a professional student programmer or machinist. Corry has produced some excellent robots during the past few years, and though your team is currently smaller, you have watched and experienced all that has gone into making those great bots. You and your teammates have more experience than you seem willing to accept credit.

As a school based team, the obvious first choice to build the team-base is within your own school. However, if you are not able to get to your "critical mass" of students, see if the administration will allow students outside your system to participate (private schools or home-schooled students).

One year at VCU, we met a home-schooled team who each built a robot component independent of each other. It was only immediately before shipping that all parts were brought together for the first time and assembled for competition. An interesting communications concept to deal with the large distances that separated the students, and a significantly more difficult challenge than most of our teams face.

Second, spend as much time as possible during the fall to improve your own skills and train new students. If possible, attend off-season events, even if you are not competing, to familiarize your new students to the FIRST culture. Walk around the pits, and have them discuss with teams about how their robot is built/programmed. Get SPECIFIC! Why did they use a dual lift instead of a ramp? How did they build their combo Ramp-Lift? Etc. Off-season events aren't just for gameplay, they should also be a training session for new students and rookie teams.

Finally, if you find that you do need assistance with skills, reach out to the FRC community. One of your neighbors, whom you have traveled with over the past few years, Team 291 CIA, is listed as "Willing to Mentor" on the FIRST website. Mentoring Teams are not only looking to help rookies, but also to help any established teams that need assistance. There are many programming questions that will end up here on CD, and often there are a number of suggestions/ideas to solve the problem. Your team's resources extend far beyond your school, make effective use of them.

CRT has been one of the fun teams to watch at the Philadelphia Regional the past few years, and I expect they will be again in 2008!

[Tottanka]

We had 3 members last year, and we finished 6th ranked in our regional, with semi finals.
In aim High we were 5 memebers, finished 4rh, finalist award.
This year we are curently 1 member team + a few who graduated.

We have good ideas of recruitment which i suggest you to try.
We have a prsentation we will make at the begining of the year, explaining what First is, what kind of people we are looking for etc.
We also show the robot at that presentation, show the highlight video from Rack N Roll, and maybe Aim High too. We give about 5 people from the crowd the chance to drive a robot and see how it is. We were also thinking about doing a simulation of a meeting in which we bring up ideas for a certain part of our robot. In this meeting we talk to the crowd, asking it to give us ideas, and we see how it works. Eventually we will show them the solution our team has found to the problem, and maybe that will get them more excited. The basic idea is to get the crowd excited about Robotics, and make them wanna join.

We also, for the first time ever, organize in Israeli Off season event right in our school gym. We are inviting everyone to come andd see how a First competition is like, and in this event we will have a "Register-to-our-Team" desk for those who are interested. Hopefully it will bring more members.

Hope it helps =]

[JaneYoung]

All of these posts are good ones to refer to as you move into your year.

Teams definitely build on their strengths year to year and this will be true in your case. You may be down in membership but you have another year of experience under your belt. Experience will help you. You know what the team needs to do to get through the year/the build season and the competition. Look at that closely, decide what needs to stay and what needs to go, and create/define the year '08. It isn't going to be '07 or '05, it is going to be '08.

Good luck with it, you guys are awesome.

[Bharat Nain]

Along with what everyone said, you still have a lot of time. I hope the 5 of you can trust each other. Come up with a plan to recruit more people and decide on what you want to do this year. As Billfred said, if you don't have the man-power, don't submit WFA, Chairmans etc. However, if you have a reason to really really submit WFA, I'd say look around for someone who likes to write and wants to be a part of a team. I have found that simply putting posters all over the place is not always helpful. However, if you could spread the word of what kind of people you are looking for, and what is in for them, then you have a higher chance of recruiting people. Go on the USFIRST site and print out the different scholarships available. Make sure the college names and scholarship amount is visible. This surely will catch the interest of academically inclined students. If you end up with only a team with 10 also, and you all somewhat know how to perform each job, just do your best. You're in robotics, you are smart enough to figure out how to build, wire and program a robot. Just use common sense and you'll be fine. Good luck.

[JesseK]

Just as feverishly as you recruit more students, go recruit some mentors who can communicate to students AND help you with the tougher problems. You might also find along the way that you have some companies willing to not only throw some engineers your way, but also perhaps a few sponsorship dollars as well.

Without proper guidance, you may very well end up with a group of genetic-algorithm-following amigo bots rather than the team you had in mind. (bad memories from college, don't ask)