[FTC]: Starting a team

[sba_nerd]

I am trying to start a team at my school (St. Basil Academy) and need a lot of help! If you can help me please respond.

[Akash Rastogi]

Sure, what exactly do you need help with?

First off, start talking to teachers and school administration. Show them all about the program and FIRST's mission statement. It would be best if you create a partnership with a physics teacher and also have a parent mentor.

www.usfirst.org

get back to us after you talk to them. Good luck

[sba_nerd]

i started talking to my science teacher but she is an earth science teacher and doesn't know a lot about physics. I think i can talk to the physics teaher and the chemistry teacher who is the science department head tomorrow. I printed information from the FIRST website and stuff from the Upper Darby team site. Thanks

[sba_nerd]

Also my older sister was the president of her team and so was her boyfriend. he sent her his VEX kit and i think im just going to give that to my school since they both dont want it

[Akash Rastogi]

That would be a great start, definitely get the heads of departments involved. It will show more significance than just teachers. If there are upcoming VEX competitions (search on FIRST's site) then I suggest roaming around those with a couple of interested friends.

If you need more help, contact me with a PM or post it up here. I can help you as you go along.

[sba_nerd]

i looked up upcomming events in the area and im thinking about checking them out. Also i mentor my grade schools lego leuge team and at the compition there was a VEX compition in the autitorium right next to us. my friend and i watched it and it looked so fun.
i only know of three people in our entire school that seem interested but there are probably others. how should my school go about getting more people interested?

[KathieK]

The PA tournament will be held this weekend in Weatherly - http://www.weatherlyrobotics.org/ - if you can make it to the tournament with some people from your school it would be great!

[Akash Rastogi]

I would suggest having an official announcement made first. Then if you can get something made out of that VEX kit you were referring to before, set up a little demo at the school or public library. You don't necessarily have to have a lot of kids (sometimes people can even get in the way). The public libraries can set up rooms for you to display robots and this has helped us spark interest in both FRC and FTC.

I'd like to help you out more. What is your school's name, location and what grade are you in? I'll try to contact teams that are close to your area and see what kind of help we can set up.

[sba_nerd]

St. Basil Academy, Jenkintown PA, and im in 9th grade
when you say have an official announcement made first do you mean like at school

[fredliu168]

You should go see Driven Robotics

http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=Br...6&ie=UTF8&z=10

They have a very good program and always has an incredible team that made it to Atlanta every year including this year.

http://www.drivenrobotics.com/

[ManicMechanic]

One important thing to remember is that next year, FTC will probably use a different robot system, not Vex . Vex plans to hold competitions, similar to Bridge Battle, but they will be independent of FIRST. Some teams will choose the new FTC robot system and go with FIRST (system not yet announced), others will choose to go with Vex, and some well-endowed teams may buy both sets of equipment and do both competitions. Before you invest in any equipment, you'll need to decide on which direction you plan to take. If you decide to go the Vex route, here are some resources for beginners:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2019
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2029

You don't necessarily need to recruit a lot of team members to have a successful team. Ten is the limit for a team, and I've seen good FTC teams with as few as 2 members. If you only have one robot kit, it's hard to have more than 3-4 students working on the robot at once. If you have many more students than that, they'll probably just be sitting around unless they're channelled into doing something else like working on T-shirts, website, CAD, publicity/fundraising, or journal writing. You can get more members involved if you have more kits, but you have to have the funds for those extra kits.

Best wishes for a successful team!

[sba_nerd]

today i talked to the administrations people incharge of new clubs and teams. they said that we need at least six people to start a team do you think having that many people will have a negative effect

[basicxman]

you dont have to start a team at your school persay, im a one man team started by me alone, a thirteen year old kid who is not representing his school with his team! i even got a sponsor, scout around for a sponsor, even do some fundraising, gather up some friends, register, order parts (wait for next seasons kit), and build some wicked robots!

[fredliu168]

I've been on a one man team and on a team with 10 members. Both teams are/were extremely sucessful, which shows it doesn't matter how many members your team has to be a sucessful team.

6 members is definitely a good number for a team.

[sba_nerd]

alright thanks