Contacting a FIRST Team

[KathieK]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

However, very recently I went through this process with someone who is new to FIRST. Someone who is looking to get involved and simply wasn't sure how to reach a team...

Not sure if you were working with someone who wanted to be a mentor or not but I'll assume you were...
Like Dana said, please become familiar with who your Regional Directors (RDs) and FIRST Senior Mentors (FSMs) are. We have greatly expanded the FSM program this year and most areas of the US (and some parts of Canada) are covered. It's the FSM's role to recruit event volunteers and mentors for all four FIRST programs in their area. I will not give out contact info per FIRST's privacy policies, but I will get some background info on the interested party and forward that to the team. I leave it up to the team to make the initial contact, based on their needs.

[Larry Lewis]

Certainly you could talk to your FIRST lead mentor for the area or your regional director for more information on what teams are in the area.

I know that some teams will put contact submission forms on their webpages. That has worked well for us over the years. Just make sure you put on a question to filter out spam.

Also we provide links to other teams in our area to help connect people to the team they want to contact.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by KathieK

Not sure if you were working with someone who wanted to be a mentor or not but I'll assume you were...
Like Dana said, please become familiar with who your Regional Directors (RDs) and FIRST Senior Mentors (FSMs) are. We have greatly expanded the FSM program this year and most areas of the US (and some parts of Canada) are covered. It's the FSM's role to recruit event volunteers and mentors for all four FIRST programs in their area. I will not give out contact info per FIRST's privacy policies, but I will get some background info on the interested party and forward that to the team. I leave it up to the team to make the initial contact, based on their needs.

So, from what you're saying, if someone new wishes to mentor a team in their area, the FSM is the perfect person to contact.

However, this isn't really noted in an easy-to-find place on the FIRST website. Heck, even I didn't know that connecting new mentors to teams falls under the FSM's purview.

- Sunny G.

[KathieK]

http://www.usfirst.org/community/vol...mentor-program. Because we are volunteers working for FIRST our webpage falls under the Volunteer section of the website. They are working on getting the page updated with all the new FSMs.
"Through outreach events, expositions and demonstrations they are able to attract new Volunteers, Mentors and Coaches to sustain and support both rookie and veteran teams."

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

So, from what you're saying, if someone new wishes to mentor a team in their area, the FSM is the perfect person to contact.

However, this isn't really noted in an easy-to-find place on the FIRST website. Heck, even I didn't know that connecting new mentors to teams falls under the FSM's purview.

- Sunny G.

Unfortunately the FIRST Senior Mentor program is not widely known, but yes connecting potential mentors with a suitable team is one of our duties. At this point the link that Kathie posted is not up to date with all the new FSMs. Since the program has rapidly expanded in recent years there have been discussions of how to increase awareness of the program. In the past there were just a handful of FSMs so it didn't make sense to promote it nationally (or in Canada) because so few areas were served.

[protoserge]

http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on is the closest thing I've found and it's quite laborious to get results (hint: FIRST, can you make it easier to keep form submission and re-query?)

Search for Florida teams...


And find out what awards they got, but no way to contact them.

This is a prime location for the aforementioned contact information to be applied. At the very least, a team website would suffice. Perhaps FIRST can provide hosting for a team contact page that simply uses a generic web contact form that forwards to the TIMS contacts and masks replies much like eBay and Amazon. Most domain names will forward the email to other services (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.). A web form with a recaptcha would go a long way to preventing spam submissions.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by stinglikeabee

http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on is the closest thing I've found and it's quite laborious to get results (hint: FIRST, can you make it easier to keep form submission and re-query?)

Search for Florida teams...


And find out what awards they got, but no way to contact them.

This is a prime location for the aforementioned contact information to be applied. At the very least, a team website would suffice. Perhaps FIRST can provide hosting for a team contact page that simply uses a generic web contact form that forwards to the TIMS contacts and masks replies much like eBay and Amazon. Most domain names will forward the email to other services (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.). A web form with a recaptcha would go a long way to preventing spam submissions.

There is a spot for team website on the same page as the events attended and awards. Of course that requires the team to have a website, submit it to FIRST and actually keep up on the payment of the domain name. Even if they have a website they may or may not have contact info listed.