What to do in the off-season

[HannahF]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Honestly, about 75% of what we do as a team is during the off-season.

Hahaha my team is the same way. The "off"-season is a great time to work on stuff you normally can't accomplish during build and competition seasons. One of the team's mottos is " A new season starts the moment an old season ends, so new ideas never go out of season."

Some of the things the firebirds will be doing this off-season:

-Host an end of Year Team Bonfire
-Learn CAD
-Make buttons (No matter how many we make during build season we always run out )
- Modify past robots to shoot candy
- take modified candy robots to a local 4th of July parade
- Attend Local off-season competitions. (We had a blast at PARC! thanks 222)
-Visit retirement homes with our robot
-Have strategic planning meetings.
-Clean our shop after four months of intense use
-Visit our sponsors and give presentations about our past season.
- Go to local girl scout summer camps and give robotics demonstrations
-work on our website
- Hold a recruitment picnic to meet girls who are interested in joining the team
- Hold seminars to teach incoming members about different aspects of the team
-Start FRC rookie teams
-Hold seminars to teach new FRC rookie teams about robot components and team building
-Pack and send parts to our team in Ghanna
-Start and continue to Mentor FLL teams
-Build an off-season community service robot
-Raise Money for the American Heart Association,(we drive the robots in the Philadelphia Heart Walk.)
-Visit lcoal schools to teach kids about Heart Health with our heart-bot "tinman"
-Hold two fundraisers

Hahaha not to mention the fact that all the rising seniors on the team ( including me ) have to write colleges essays and fill out applications this summer/fall. Needless to say I am going to be very busy this off-season.

[ttldomination]

Let's see...

Let plan to:
CAD
Build a robot
Demos at local science summer camps
Present to some local interested companies
Prepare for off-season event. (This is huge for us cause we get to attract new members with competition early).

- Sunny

[kenavt]

From what I hear so far (I haven't been able to attend a team meeting lately):

• TARDEC competition
• MARC competition
• IRI competition
• Kettering Kickoff competition
• Dawgbot (a small bot using the NI control system that is mostly a programming project to design autonomous stuff (tracking down soccer balls and bringing them back mostly)
• New battery cart
• Perhaps the Stairmaster (which cannot die, it's been around for two years) that can lift things up the stairs in our one of our sponsor's machine shop to our loft workspace)
• The 503 party June 18th
• Other LAN parties/get-togethers that haven't been arranged yet

[Zach O]

Originally Posted by kenavt

From what I hear so far (I haven't been able to attend a team meeting lately):

• Perhaps the Stairmaster (which cannot die, it's been around for two years) that can lift things up the stairs in our one of our sponsor's machine shop to our loft workspace)

The Stairmaster is actually used to move the robot up and down the stairs without having people carry it. None of the machines downstairs would be able to fit on it (with the previous designs that we have).