Pre-build season activities

[Dan Petrovic]

It's less than 10 hours a week for any given person, but for the team as a whole, once the training starts up, there is something going on every night and sometimes concurrent with anotherthing. It could get up to a total of 20 hours a week for the entire team.

Last week I spent about 7 hours involved with FIRST things. Two meetings for getting the rookies' hands dirty with Vex and one meeting for getting rookies familiar with the controls of our robot for River Rage.

Training is a very good thing. You don't want to take the time to train people during build season when you can do it prior to build season. It doesn't allow for much free time until March of next year, but everyone benefits from it.

Edit: I voted less than 10 for me individually while it should have easily been over 100 hours from now until Kickoff for the whole team. I didn't read the question carefully...

[Chief Pride]

actually, most of our team still meets every day! o.O

[T3_1565]

our team meets twice a week on tuesdays and thursday. We started on the week after school started. We are busy training people on the do's and don'ts of FIRST and prototyping some wicked design plans for everything!!

[Alan Anderson]

The TechnoKats have had team meetings once a week since school began. We've also had some extra shop cleanup days and robot drive practice sessions, a late-night bonfire party, and a very long day at the Autumn Robotics Competition. Our upcoming plans for the next few months include holding software training sessions, refurbishing our practice field, doing the annual overhaul of our New Year's drop ball, going to a corn maze, rearranging the shop space to accommodate a new mill, etc. I expect we'll set some specific project plans at our meeting this afternoon.

[synth3tk]

Heh, our team is really small, and the mentality shows. No one wanted to do anything outside of FIRST season even after I offered to take care of organizing the events and activities. The teacher did just start a robotics class this school year, so we're hoping that more students show interest, then maybe we'll start doing off-season stuff.

[T3_1565]

Originally Posted by blakcheez

Heh, our team is really small, and the mentality shows. No one wanted to do anything outside of FIRST season even after I offered to take care of organizing the events and activities. The teacher did just start a robotics class this school year, so we're hoping that more students show interest, then maybe we'll start doing off-season stuff.

haha us too! We have meetings, but that doesn't mean we get much done in that time. I have actually found this year that all of our new guys/girls are showing much more interest and attention to what is being shown that in pervious years

Horray for us!

[synth3tk]

ROFL!!! That's good to hear! I've got like this whole dream team in my mind. Course it's also about other people too. I guess, since it's this whole "team" effort kinda thing. But I feel that we can be a better team than we were. Still had fun though, can't deny that.

[T3_1565]

oh yeah it is loads of fun. And I always find that people get hooked after they complain about the fact there are so many meetings and blah blah, and "I wasted my weekend" etc etc. when we are done competing people are always like "OHHHHH This is a Robotics competition!!! This is sweet!! let's build EVERYTHING!!!" which ends up being too late lol.

Thankfully as I said, the rookies are showing some spirit this time around! Without the mindblowing experience of a FIRST competition.

[synth3tk]

The other, much bigger, problem is that our school administration is... a bit... "stingy" with the funds and time spent in the building. I can't seem to get us a warehouse or shop outside the school to work in, and that stops us from attending other events. I would've loved to sign us up to help a pre-rookie team for Brunswick Eruption and other cool things. But during the regionals one of the board members came down and met us, talked, and watched a little bit, and he said he'll talk to the board about helping out some more. Either way, a team's a team, and in the end, it's better than nothing.

[T3_1565]

yep the team is still alive which is a good thing! our rookie year (2005) got us our own classroom for that year only. We lost our team for 2006 due to lack of teacher interest, and now the team is back and we share a classroom with a programming/ engineering class (half the classroom is computers the other have has work stations to, say, repair computers).

So we understand the problems with the higher ups! lol but we are proud that we are still alive and kicking and ready to show everyone what we can do! this pre-season is huge in comparision to previous years (last year more importantly)

[JaneYoung]

We compete in a fall competition called BEST. It is not FIRST related but a lot of the training, development, etc., meshes nicely with FIRST training/development. It is an intensive build/program and demands a lot out of a team. The hours accumulate easily.

Edit:
Things I like to see worked on with each new season approaching:
- shop safety and understanding why things like closed shoes are important.
- we have learned that fundraising and outreach are on-going. They can be done well during the summer months if students/parents are interested. There is usually a group of returning members that stay interested and will work with you. If doing these in the fall, we try to have big impact with a little bit of time. The students have to focus on school and other activities.
- team building. Anytime an opportunity arises, it is awesome to have a team building exercise available. An evening of fun and team building is good.
- student brainstorming in the area of development they would like to work on. We're learning this year how valuable and time well spent this is.

[GaryVoshol]

Weekly meetings in the fall, so students get to know each other and general topics can be covered. Programming, gears, drivetrain, arms, etc. Not everyone is there every time, but then not everyone is there every minute of build season either.

A few social activities were held.

Several fundraising events have been held or are planned - cold calls on local businesses, a bowl-a-thon, restaurant nights, etc.

Over the summer, about 7 or 8 students helped with a 4-week LEGO camp.

[3dude_2231]

we're don't really know at the moment, how things would turn up
but we are hoping to maximize the number of pre-season-meeting,

but as our team is mostly constructed of newbies, we need to find the balance:
not to lose their excitement, but with it not to lose precious time.

I'd say we would have some 20 hrs of newbie-guidance (or "refreshment time" for the "veterans")
+a few hours of strategy-planning for those guys who know how FIRST games usually look like =]
at the beginning of the season we would unite both groups.

[Pavan Dave]

*Sorry I voted wrong. -- I understood the question as "How many hours a week/day on average does your team meet?"

We spend sessions of three to four hours (aproximately six) to learn FLL and get familiar with the LEGO kits. Aftewards we mentor FLL teams and help out, host, and run, the BEST tournament and the FLL tournament.

On an average week a student spends between 5-15 hours depending on the requirements for elementary school they are mentoring but sometimes more or less depending on if we are working robotics tournaments.

We don't do much FRC work until January though.