Question for Everyone

[Chris]

Team 151 has always changed its name from year to year. The last three years for example our names have been

'99 Team UFO
'00 Team R2k
'01 Team Low Rider

However this year we are deciding on a team name that will follow us from year to year like Team Chaos or The Aztech's have.

Out idea is to become the Bae Systems/NHS Wild Cards

To the best of my knowledge this name is not taken, however with 600+ teams i'm not sure, has anyone ever heard of another FIRST team with that name? If so any suggestions for a different team name?

Chris
Team 151
Http://team151.tripod.com

[EddieMcD]

The closest thing is Team #5: Robocards.

I pulled that from my vast knowledge of FIRST teams (OK, so I looked at the yearbook ).

[Elgin Clock]

Originally posted by Chris
Team 151 has always changed its name from year to year. The last three years for example our names have been

'99 Team UFO
'00 Team R2k
'01 Team Low Rider

However this year we are deciding on a team name that will follow us from year to year like Team Chaos or The Aztech's have.

While you are on that topic, how many other teams have changed their names throughout the years and how has it affected your overall, say; recognition from year to year?

Team 237 has had three different names for three different years. While we have been the Sie-H20-Bots as a constant official name in past years the team name has been; The Black Magic Team; which apparently someone thought to be offensive, The Sunseekers; which members thought to be not really related to robotics but voted on it anyways; and this years name was T.R.I.B.E. or Taking Robotics Into Bolder Experiences. But It is kind of hard to show team spirit for a team named TRIBE with out offending or stereotyping a certain culture! So I guess this year we might have a bran new name to add to the list!

Anybody else have this problem?????

[GregT]

Hopefully my team will change it's name this year

[Robby O]

On team 108, in my senior year, I had moved to change the team name, but encountered a LOT of problems with that from the engineers. I had felt that constantly labelling SigmaC@T with a mere double digit at the end every year was getting annoying, it reminded me of a bad sequel or something. They were upset that it took them quite some time to develop that name, as previous years we had been mixed nuts and technocrates (which is pronounced like socrates, not Techno Crates) and the sigma was something quite meaningful to motorola and the cat being dillard's mascot.

Not to mention that changing your team name every year kind of makes you loose your identity. Teams forget about you. Teams that keep thier name are remembered: Chief Delphi, Wildstang, X-Cats, etc, everyone remembers and knows of them. So I reasoned that changing the team name may not be required, but it is possible to have a different team and robot name. And If im not mistaken, both are announced at competitions.

This idea was shot down as well, but I look at it this way. When a company, say CarCo creates a new product, they dont call it CarCo2001, they give the product a new name, Sportron. While the company name stays the same, the product name changes. Robots being the product of teams, thier names should change as well. Not only is it refreshing, but allowing the current team to bestow a name upon the new robot that they helped to build, would make everyone feel as one. It may sound silly (oh yes, silly indeed very silly. So silly it may need a spanking. Yes! A spanking! A Spanking! No, no stop this, stop this at once and get on with it. Get ON WITH IT!)... err, as I was saying, but hey, it's almost like those team building activities. Something that everyone agrees upon and can identify with, while keeping the team identity.

Bah, hope my frazzled mind helps.

-Robby O ---> oshortwan@hotmail.com
FIRSTanimators Moderator
firstanimators@yahoogroups.com

Changing team names is definitely marketing driven. So you have to consider just where you stand now from a marketing perspective.

Do you have an established "Brand"? Is that brand associated with reliable robots that perform well? If so, you probably wouldn't want to mess with it. If your current "brand" is associated with unreliable barely functional robots then a name change might be a very good idea, especially if you have reason to belive you'll do better next in 2002.

Since your team has had three names in three years they probably don't have much brand identity. So it wouldn't hurt too much to change now, unless you did really well last year and want to be remembered.

We've kept the same name for several years now. We find it really helps with recognition. Changing the name of your robot has much less impact on recognition. Of course we tend to use derivatives of the team name for the robot (ie B2K or BeachBot 4.0) so it may not make that much of a difference for us.

[Mike Martus]

Your name is team recognition by others.

Several years ago, a time long past, I fought hard to get the rules changed to keep the same number each year. FIRST was issuing new numbers each year at that time.

We all know who these famous teams are by their names and numbers......

111 Wildstang
1 Juggernauts
71 Beatty Juice
45 Kokomo
Naval Undersea warfare
61 Baxter
HexCaliber - one of the greatest robots ever!
Gailforce
Boston Edison
67 H.O.T.
65 Huskies
33 Killer Bees


To name but just a few...what are the others you want to add to this list?

[Mike Soukup]

Originally posted by Mike Martus
To name but just a few...what are the others you want to add to this list?

You're too humble Mike, you can't leave 47 Chief Delphi off that list.

Mike