Button Making

[PureMachine4]

How many teams have their freshmen/ 1st year attendee(rookie) make buttons before other team members? or hows your method of button making?

[Aignam]

Team 25 has a spirit crew, appropriately named the 'Volcano Crew' for our Hawaiian theme. They are responsible for the production of giveaways, mascot costumes, noisemakers, banners, and generally the promotion of team spirit at the events. The crew consists of members from varying grades, and is an essential part to our presence at ever FIRST competition.

[Blocker-9]

What is a team required to do (not counting the robot)?
How are other teams getting people to join FIRST Robotics?
What advise would other teams give to a Rookie team?

Stephanie Blocker
Team #1415

[Aignam]

Originally Posted by Blocker-9

What is a team required to do (not counting the robot)?
How are other teams getting people to join FIRST Robotics?
What advise would other teams give to a Rookie team?

Stephanie Blocker
Team #1415

This might be a conversation best left for 'Team Organization'. But, I'll give it a shot...

Teams aren't really required to do much more than play a robot. You can choose to be as active or helpful as you'd like. It all depends on your view of FIRST and your goals as a FIRST team.

Team 25 approaches schools within our region with students, demonstration robots, demo videos, and just an overall impressive array of interesting and captivating information. We try to get the students and teachers as excited as possible, showing them different ways that they can be on the road to FIRST in no time, and helping them get past difficult problems, such as sponsorship and school participation. Team 25 also demos in public areas and at conventions as much as possible. Just get the word out, be interesting, be fun, be sincere. Let them known the immense dedication required for a FIRST team, but also let them know how incredibly rewarding of an experience it can be.

Advice to a rookie team:
Keep your head up. Play the game to your best ability. Learn from your mistakes, learn from others. Take in as much as you can this year. Utilize local mentorship possibilities to their fullest extent. Mentorship is the key to FIRST.

[Pin Man]

I Love Buttons!!!

[Beth Sweet]

Our button making is left up to our group, the Chairman's Group. It's probably our secondary function but anyways...

We have everyone who has them submit design ideas and then we vote on the ones that we like. This year we have buttons for each group of our team (Animation, Chairman's and Engineering), a "game button," and a surprise design.

Then, we have button parties. And button parties are rather amusing... We all come over to my house, eat popcorn, watch chick flicks (yes, there are guys that we force this upon too!) and use the button makers to make mountains of buttons in the middle of the table. Just have fun with it!

[Jen Peters]

Buttons are awesome! This is our 5th season and we bought a new button maker this year. It's so much better than our old one and we make them twice as fast with little to no error!

In the past we have only had one main button, may two per year. Last year we started our "underground buttons" that were made in very limited quantities. This year we've gone button crazy! There are at least 5 designs and there will probably be more before Great Lakes.

[Kiwi_queen]

Originally Posted by Aignam

Team 25 has a spirit crew, appropriately named the 'Volcano Crew' for our Hawaiian theme. They are responsible for the production of giveaways, mascot costumes, noisemakers, banners, and generally the promotion of team spirit at the events. The crew consists of members from varying grades, and is an essential part to our presence at ever FIRST competition.

*sigh* it was tough for me to let those who didn't graduate last year take over for me in button making. but at least i still got to design them...and I have taught my crew well! yay Volclano Crew!

[Pierson]

How many buttons do you make for each regional? For Nationals?

This is our first year doing buttons, so how many should we order if we are going to a regional and nationals?

[Mike Heinowski]

About 1500 per regional and 2000 to 2500 for nats.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by Akuu

About 1500 per regional and 2000 to 2500 for nats.

Holy Cow! I was told by past button maker 500 per regional, 2500 for nats.

I haven't had luck with buttons since I've been there.

FINALLY this year we're going to have buttons *crossing my fingers waiting for the button maker*

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Akuu

About 1500 per regional and 2000 to 2500 for nats.

That sounds about right.
We are also encouraging our kids to come up with their own designs (so long as they are tasteful and in the spirit of FIRST). Some day we'll have to make complete sets of all of our buttons to give away as a package.
We're also trying to make t-shirts to give away as well.

[Mike Heinowski]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

That sounds about right.
We are also encouraging our kids to come up with their own designs (so long as they are tasteful and in the spirit of FIRST). Some day we'll have to make complete sets of all of our buttons to give away as a package.
We're also trying to make t-shirts to give away as well.

we do this too but then we normally end up with 60-80 designs but for some reason not this year.

[Redhead Jokes]

[quote=Koko Ed]That sounds about right.
We are also encouraging our kids to come up with their own designs (so long as they are tasteful and in the spirit of FIRST). Some day we'll have to make complete sets of all of our buttons to give away as a package.[quote]

Aughhh, setting the bar higher. Your post sparked a conversation between my husband and I. He pointed out that you have that many buttons because of different designs. Which reminded me our graphics guy created something very cool last year (haven't asked if I can reveal it) that we have yet to make come to fruition - it has to do with buttons.

Then my husband pointed out that some years ago he was at a computer convention where Microsoft had numbers on all their buttons, and if you found a matching number, you won a prize, so people were wearing 20 Microsoft buttons, and trying to find the match. He said it was the greatest marketing thing.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by PureMachine4

How many teams have their freshmen/ 1st year attendee(rookie) make buttons before other team members? or hows your method of button making?

Last year we had mr button locally make our buttons. DISASTER!!! misspelled, didn't deliver to our address day before competition as promised...I refused to pay and he didn't argue.

FINALLY this year we'll be getting a
Button Maker

Make the freshmen make the buttons? Mmmm...smacks of our team a couple of years ago. Our version is find something to do, and you may find yourself making buttons.