Big Plans for 09-10?

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by BrianT103

Don't you mean NJ State Championship?

Shhh, quiet you.

[Sammy G]

So we are helping a local school get it's own FTC team started. They have an FRC team already, but I feel like marking it up as a win. Also, I get to bump the thread.

How do teams recruit new members the best? At a public high school, it is not seen as "cool" to be smart and on a robotics team. The name 'Nerds of the North' doesn't help either. I guess building the team reputation is another big goal for this year.

[McGurky]

We have problems with that on our team also, I always get the same response "Oh sweet that robot is awesome, I wish I could do that, but to bad I am not smart enough to be on a robotics team" People at our school think that the robotics team is more of a geek/nerd thing, and stay away from joining, and in turn we are having major membership shortages. We are trying to branch off and make the team look more cool by making the T-Shirt launcher, so Hopefully it will help!!!

[Rion Atkinson]

Recruiting for our team is considerably difficult as well sense we are a homeschool team. Yes we will gladly accept non-homeschoolers, but those of us that don't go to a co-op, go to a career tech. To bad that career tech already has a FIRST team(1561 "RoboDucks")..

If anyone has any ideas as to how we could recruit please, don't hesitate to tell me. We also have the "Not smart enough" problem..

[ttldomination]

I'm sure a quick search on that topic would pull up a large number of threads.

As for my goals: I would like to.
- Build a beastly VRC robot.
- Win the local VRC tourney in a dominating style
- Go to Dallas with minor changes.
- Win at Dallas
- Help out any teams with FTC
- Design this year's FRC robot
- Win P'tree Regional
- Win Palmetto Regional
- Win World Chamionships

Achieve total World Domination.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Formerly Famous

Recruiting for our team is considerably difficult as well sense we are a homeschool team. Yes we will gladly accept non-homeschoolers, but those of us that don't go to a co-op, go to a career tech. To bad that career tech already has a FIRST team(1561 "RoboDucks")..

If anyone has any ideas as to how we could recruit please, don't hesitate to tell me. We also have the "Not smart enough" problem..

Hey,

We have the same issues, and we send out emails to local co-ops that we are a part of and those we aren't has worked pretty well, not to mention inviting our friends to meetings. Any questions, just PM me. Good luck!

[Trent B]

My personal goals for the team

09-10
-Provide for a more organized pit
-Provide for a more organized tool/parts system to make cleanup faster and finding the tools we want and need easier
-Provide a better solution to CAD (drawings of parts) so the CAD is actually used in the assembly
-Provide a more organized system to charge our batteries

10-11
-Part numbering system classifying parts to what they belong to as a whole (so bolts will have a certain system so you can find the right size easier) as well as custom parts will have a numbering system to where they belong on robot

[VEI Dude]

In this, my second year, I know of a lot of areas of our build process/organization we can improve, and though I've got all intentions of fixing these, it sometimes seems like we're fighting an internal battle to try to get FIRST promoted. See my other post with the strong FCAT blackout mandate from the school district.

Still, I've opened discussions with a handful of other schools in the area to start clubs/teams there, but other than the "sounds great" statements, interest has been less than stellar. I know the dollar figures tends to scare some of these folks, so the discussions are now along the lines of forming clubs, and jointly going to competitions. We'll see how it goes.

As for more recruits at our own school, we're going to do some robotics "activities" in the cafeteria etc during the day to spark interest. We've noticed that most don't know we have a robotics club and even walking down a hallway with a control system sparks interest with questions like "we build robots at this school?".

We've not run into the "not smart" problem. Actually we're run into the problem where students think they know too much . We make our students smart -- Last fall (and now beginning again this fall), I started doing little 10-15 min tech sessions at each meeting on topics such as fastener types, using plastics vs. metals, basic electricals, adhesives, pneumatics, etc. I know this was helpful to many students later when they knew what 6-32 meant and why they needed a machine screw rather than a sheet-metal screw, when someone said "this wire looks too thin to drive a motor", and someone else knew that a drill bit wasn't working because it was a masonry bit, etc, etc.

This year, I've got Win XP (vs. my traditional Win2K+Linux dual boot), so I can run the provided CAD software, Labview, etc.

Cheers,
-Neil.

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by Sammy G

How do teams recruit new members the best? At a public high school, it is not seen as "cool" to be smart and on a robotics team. The name 'Nerds of the North' doesn't help either. I guess building the team reputation is another big goal for this year.

Some ideas on NEMO Resources page under "Students"
http://www.firstnemo.org/resources.htm