Expanding a Robotics team

[xitaqua]

Hello,

I co-lead a team of professionals that had build a "demo robot" using the same kit as of 2008 Competition. Our robot is called the Croc-Bot and we take to schools and community events to bring awareness of robotics to the youth.

The team has 30 folks - participation is around 65%. This is the first time we have done this, and we plan to start a "new team" this July and hopefully participation will improve. Those that participated by attending a certain number of meetings, giving a certain amount of time to the project performed a valuable task to the team got a "certificate". But those that did not get a certificate are still considered a valuable part of the team, they just have not had an opportunity to participate.

I also mentor a FIRST FRC Robotics Rookie team, and I would say we have around 10 kids participating out of 17, giving us roughly same percentage of participation.

The key is to understand who is participating, and make it visible - so you know where you are and also can set a goal of where do you want to be.

My recommendation is try to get 30 individuals and begin tracking it.

On both the demo team and the rookie team we had posted on the wall the names of the team members and scheduled meeting dates of the team, and as team members come to attend they put a "check" on the day they have attended.