Team 4057 STEAMPUNK’s new tagline this year is “Gearing up for a STEAM powered future.” During this preseason, the old team name was overhauled and replaced with STEAMPUNK. This allows us to emphasize the acronym STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics. Why emphasize art? We have found that in past years, our team has excelled in artistic areas such as choir, band, orchestra, dance, graphic design, creative writing, photography, video editing, theater, and clothing design. Along with these aspects, the creative outlet that FIRST provides for so many students and mentors has become a key aspect in the creation of our new STEAMPUNK identity. Team 4057’s new character allows us to further embody the mission of FIRST.
The year that the Team 4057 was founded, in 2012, 4057 competed in the Autodesk Oregon Regional in Portland and the Galileo Division in St. Louis. At the Autodesk Regional, 4057 ranked 11 with a record of 8-3-0 and earned the Rookie All Star and the Highest Rookie Seed. At Galileo Division, with a record of 3-6-0, 4057 ranked 58th. This was a truly inspirational experience to the founding team members; for them to take in all the incredible achievements of more advanced teams striving for a goal that almost seemed impossible at first. Get it, at FIRST? One can imagine the things that teams competing at the Galileo division had pulled off seemed like miracle to the 4057 rookies. To accomplish in only six weeks the design, fabrication, and assembly of the robot is just stunning. Yet FRC teams do just that and further every single year. In addition to the build, FIRST teams design a pit that they will identify as home during competition. They market an image to accurately represent their team’s ideas and values. They design t-shirts and handouts for events. They even fundraise and recruit during build season, though most of that is done preseason.
So, how do teams uncover time to get all of this done? The answer is dedication. Every year, since the rookie year in 2012, 4057 personifies an inspirational amount of dedication. We proved this in 2013’s competition, when we earned the Judge’s Award at the Autodesk Oregon Regional for scoring 100 points independently (an immense improvement from our rookie year), and again in 2014 and 2015 when we won two Chairman’s awards and an Engineering Inspiration. The simple action of attending meetings shows that team members care enough about the team and the message we expose to the community that they would sacrifice time they could be spending partaking a sport, doing other extra-curricular activities, or even completing homework. But members of 4057 don’t just attend meetings! Outside of build meetings, members congregate to work on t-shirt and pit design. On our own, members coordinate fundraisers and events with little more than input from mentors and coaches. Even the Chairman’s essay and video are done at least fifty percent on team members’ own time. Dedication is one of FIRST’s most valuable assets; without it, Dean Kamen never could have founded the program itself. Dedication is only one of the principles of FIRST culture embodied by team 4057.
As discussed in last year’s Chairman’s essay, our team utilizes the simplistic yet familiar linked triangle, circle, and square that compose FIRST logo to visually represent the values of Team 4057. The triangle represents people; students, mentors, and sponsors. The circle exemplifies the FIRST program; one semicircle for gracious professionalism and the other for Coopertition. The square embodies the team’s performance in various areas; four aspects for four sides. The sides are managing, marketing, manufacturing, and competing. These are our the things we must do effectively as a team. Another way in which our team must be effective is leadership. In the past four years, we have focused on developing and perfecting an effective leadership structure. Every year, the team is distinctive and has original needs, but we’ve come up with a system that requires minimal adjustment from year to year. In our system, more experienced team members lead less experienced ones, helping them to mature and learn from FIRST. This leads to an analogy to that of the Jedi and the Padawan. Even though the Jedi still has much to ascertain, he/she takes on the Padawan to instruct them in every way the Jedi is able. Eventually, the Padawan matures into a Jedi and takes on a Padawan of his or her own.
This summer, we held a Leadership Boot Camp for those students interested in taking on leaderships roles. This consisted of second-year students and above. After completing the camp, the students were eligible to occupy leadership positions. The mentors and coaches then met to choose which leader would best do which job, based on strengths, weaknesses, and amiable characteristics shown during the camp and previous seasons. One of our team members formulated a list of leadership roles, with a categorized hierarchy. The project manager and assistant project manager are like the president and vice president. The next biggest jobs are the secretary, treasurer, safety captain, and business manager. The business manager oversees the fundraising lead and marketing lead. The marketing lead oversees the social media lead, website lead, and design lead. The secretary oversees the publications representative, event coordinator, communications lead, lead scout, and welcoming lead. This year, though, those all ended up being the same person. Many other leads can also be linked into one job, granting the system the perfect amount flexibility for future years.
To team 4057, community outreach is of utmost consequence. Because STEAMPUNK is a county/locational robotics team, meaning we aren’t tied to a specific school or organization, all the people in the area who are interested in FRC simply join our team rather than pioneer one at their school. However, lack of interest in robotics is not the case here in the Klamath Basin. Almost every elementary school has an FLL team, there are at least two FTC teams in town, and robotics classes have been added at almost every high school in Klamath Falls. Being the only high-school level robotics team, all of the Junior FLL, FLL, and FTC teams in the area eventually feed into STEAMPUNK. This makes recruitment of younger FIRST affiliates immensely important, because we set the precedent for what a member of FIRST can mature into. The gravity of this obligation cannot be stressed enough. It is through mentorship of younger teams, summer robotics camps, community activities, and robot demonstrations at local school that 4057 accomplishes our mission to nurture the next generation of FIRST and encourage them to progress through the FIRST program. From FLL (where students learn rudimentary engineering and cooperation), to FTC (where students have access to a wider range of materials and resources and must learn from past mistakes to make effective choices), to FRC (where higher level engineering and team management take things to a whole new level of ingenuity).
Recruitment to FRC in the high school community is also vital to the team, for the same sense as the juvenile community. In addition to students recruiting their circle of companion and acquaintances, we recruit new team members by visiting high schools, touring the robot, giving engineering presentations, and inviting high school students to our team’s events. We do a public invite for our bag and tag party every year, so that our peers in the community can see what we accomplish each season. The uniqueness of 4057 being a locational team gives us a more diverse scope of recruitment and a better opportunity to knit the community together via FIRST. We do enlistment activities in every school in Klamath Falls and on websites or social media. Having members from multiple schools genuinely gives the team independence when it comes to recruitment, because we aren’t exclusively targeting schools that feed into our secondary high school, as other teams bound to individual schools must do. We also help other FRC teams by hosting a yearly kick-off party. Essentially, we invite all of the FRC teams in Southern Oregon, old and new, to congregate together and pull an all-night party. We play video games, card games, and board games. Then we all gather and watch the game reveal the next morning. Not only is the kick-off party a great way to build inter-team bonds, but it also serves as a way to really get rookie teams started on their FRC career. Along with the kickoff event, our team strives to involve and inspire rookie teams in the competitive environment: providing them with all the aid and support necessary during competition.
United as a community, STEAMPUNK works hard to embody FIRST and to lead, by precedent, our peers and younger members of our community. We have resolved to do everything in our power to make our community a better place, and to contribute to FIRST’s efforts in making the world a better place. One team cannot revolutionize the world alone, but many teams can. That’s what FIRST is; many teams cooperating to become a society of the men and women who propel the world towards positive change. Team 4057 holds true that, just like your team is what you engineer it to be, the world is ours to innovate. With advancements in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics, FIRST can motivate people to engineer the world into the place they want to see it become. This is how 4057 is “gearing up for a STEAM powered future,” and we aspire to carry the rest of the world into it alongside FIRST.
Whether or not you use wheel weights, if you're running a wheel at several thousand RPM, you'd better have an effective containment system to protect the outside world in case something spontaneously disassembles itself. - Alan Anderson [more] 
