I Was curious to know what were teams doing right now during there Preseason, Beside fundraising.
How Many people on your team are currently “Active” and what are they doing?
Well, our team is working on the team website. 
And we are also looking for a new building to have our workshop / playing field in. Other than that not much, although we are deciding on what regional(s) we will go to. 
Every thursday this month we have held leadership training courses to encourage leadership on our team. Now not everyone can be leaders so those who showed leadership qualites were asked to attend. However our first team meeting is October 7th where anyone interested is welcome to come. And for those whom choose to stay we will have skills training to teach anyone just about anything robotics. And thats what team 836 is doing untill the season begins.
Well, there are about 10 or so active members on our team, and right now we are sending letters to old and new sponsors to see our standing. As far as other things go, we’re trying to recruit, and have meetings about what regional(s) we are going to go to, and about nationals.
We also are most likely going to assign groups and work out our schedule, since we plan on changing it around this coming season. =)
Excellent idea for a thread!
In a Sparky first, we are highly active right now. We have numerous robot focused and non-robot focused work going on right now. More on some of that latter on in the season.
Like what?
well…team 73 is taking apart one of the robots for parts and doing a mock 6 week build…another robot to play last years game…this will teach new students what the 6 week period is like as well as give them an opportunity to get used to the new team structure this year
as an RIT student i am planning 5 or 6 seminars for new teams. we are expecting 8 new teams in Rochester and we are hoping to teach them what first is all about as well as getting rid of the shell shock of the 6 week build period
we are also still working on stuff for the regional…as always
Be patient, we are working. It’s not even close to done yet. I wish to give you a final product rather than a bunch of semi-done stuff.
Ok, here’s some inside info. Remeber you didn’t hear it from me, woah, oopss…
-Sparky384.com v2
-Sparky 1-5 working
-State Fair
But that’s not all. Do some seaches through the forum with my name. There are hints in what I ask for help with.
Right now we are refurbashing our site and starting up our fundraising.
We’re changing up some things for pre season so we’ll find out in November.
Besides working on sponsorship and collecting cans, 573 is getting a website together and participating in OCCRA (yeah, tubies…!). Most likely we will be presenting the robot at both schools’ open houses in November, as well.
Other than our constant year round fundraising we have a “rebuilt” website that will go live sometime shortly. Our biggest project right now is moving our stuff to a corner of another room (electronics lab) because the school took our storage closet from us to change it into a classroom. The storage closet we had is about the size of a one car garage, while the new area is like a walk in closet. Our stuff is no longer secure as it was before and if we lose the corner storage in the electronics lab our team will have no storage available. 
This is also forcing us to get rid of extra team stuff and parts we were saving. This is just another chapter in our on going battle with the school/BOE. :mad: Earlier this year Elgin had cleaned the closet and decorated the walls with all our old side panels off our robots, that will all be history shortly.
Some members of our team are also working getting the Haunted Graveyard set up.
ouch. The new place sounds worse than our spider farm. I’m sorry this is happing to you guys. 
Right now we are mostly orienting the new members of the team. Tommorrow is our first mandatory parent meeting, during which we will explain the program and give out forms that need to be signed, etc. We are also working on a parent handbook.
Another project of ours is rebuilding reggie 3 (03 bot) to be a small ball handler, modeled after team paragon’s robot (but w/o the 2x gripper…we just don’t have time for that) to give practice to the rookie members. We are also repairing the Housywhatsit (04 bot) from the damage that occured at River Rage (none of this is serious, just routine stuff).
Of course we are doing the obvious fundraising, which is our main priority now.
We are also getting very excited to attend Bash at the Beach! 
We are hosting a Lego Competiton soon, so we’re in full gear for that. We also have our parent/ freshmen/ newbie orientation meeting coming up, which we’re preparing for. Despite the fact that we haven’t had the meeting yet, we do have new members in already, so we’re giving them basic training.
Team 173 is:
-fundraising, as always
-having mechanical workshops once or twice a week (they will start in october)
-particapating in bash at the beach (oct 2)
-creating/refining a handbook
-co-sponsoring/helping run a LEGO regional in the town’s middle school
-Hosting a Travis Fox Hypnomania show
-recruiting and introducing new members
-updating the website
…that’s all i got for right now, i’m sure another team member can add some:D
we’re busy, to say the least
We always do tons during the preseason. Last summer we had our two week LEGO League camp, we’re mentoring 8 lego league teams, we’re planning a combo FLL FRC competition for december. We have a lot of public appearances and workshops we put on, and this year we’re building a new machine shop. It looks like we;re gonna be busy for a long while.
–Mandy
We are prepping to host our first ever and hopefully annual! Cooney Robotics Golf Tournament as well as setting up dates and times to go to local schools to raise awareness for FIRST and the FIRST Lego Leagues by doing some hands-on demonstrations with the Lego League kits from last year. We have about 25 “active” members now and are recruiting to have about 40 members by December.
what do these leadership trinaing courses cover? our team might be interested in adopting a similar practice. any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!
Well, in addition to Fall recruiting and training, we will be setting up FLL teams, mentoring rookie teams, working on a DVD, visiting classrooms, and holding a team building event. We also go to many off-season comps and demonstrations. (see schedule below)
But the main focus of our Fall is our 5th annual off-season competition “RAMP RIOT 2004” to be held in our circle gym. (If you are interested, check out details at www.team341.com or email me) The preparation for 28 teams takes all Fall.
Oh we also start each Fall with absolutely no cash. That always keeps us busy!!!
Fall Schedule
10/2/04 -----------------------Bash at the Beach, Old Lyme, CT
10/23/04 ---------------------Duel on the Delaware, Salem CCC, Salem, NJ
10/30 & 10/31/04--------------NBC-10 Tech Expo , Ft. Wash. Expo Ctr.
10/30/04--------------------- NBE Competition, North Brunswick, NJ
11/11/04 & 11/12/04 ----------Ramp Riot Field Construction, WHS Circle Gym
11/13/04----------------------Ramp Riot 2004, WHS Circle Gym
Team meetings for 771 havent started yet (It’s only the second week back to school. They should be starting soon). But, some of us grads are mentoring the FLL teams we have at our school. As for me, I am organizing the FLL tournament on Nov 13th at the school too.
Team Meetings
Summercamps
Organizing Shop
Fundraising
Lego League
Robovations League
Exhibitions
(and oh so much more!)