Cybersonics Technology Team 103 has been producing a newsletter, called Tech Talk, since 2000. Typically, members in the communications/pr/marketing department produce the newsletter. I have been the editor for the past two years, though I am now training a few of our new kids to do this task. The articles are written by numerous individuals in all of our departments, though primarily communications/pr/marketing kids write them. If you want to check out our newsletter, you can find them on our website: Tech Talk
MOE 365 made team and sponsor newletters last year we are probly going to do some more this year also.
While I have never been on a team with a newsletter I have had rather strange jobs on different teams. In high school I was what we called the “rule meister” if you weren’t sure is something was legal or if you didn’t quite understand something in the rules I was the person you came to for clarification. I also cooked dinner for my team at least twice a week. When I was on team 86 I kinda became a “what if” chic. Since I really didn’t have the capability of explaining my ideas with a mathematical or physics basis I simply looked at other people’s designs and said, “what if this happens?” It was VERY aggrivating for most of the team but it was the only way I could explain my ideas, though it was roundabout.
this is a really old thread. it has been revived several times. does anybody realize that the person who started this has now graduated and is not on a team anymore? besides, there is a category for that stuff now: communications. that was added last year. (actually, i was the one who asked brandon to add that 
)
Our team writes a weekly update for our county’s newspaper. That is close to a newsletter.
- :yikes: Now I have an interesting job. Not only am I the programmer I am also the one responsible for getting all the updates from Cheif Delphi and then getting all the team updates from first. My main odd job on the team is to tell everyone the rules and make sure they relize them and when they do they tell me to shut up and leave us alone. :yikes: Our team is still really small and I am in the process of working on getting a news letter made up. Our mentor can be stupid at times and I have to fight through him. If we get a news letter it would be an update for us and the school and community. If anyone had any suggestions. Contact me at boy_scout72688@yahoo.com
James Bowers
Team 1243*
Actually, there’s one guy on the team that everyone hates. So we make him be everyone’s slave. It’s not too graciously professional, but everyone hates him, and we ‘can’t’ kick him out. But he comes in handy sometime when you ask for a tool, chances are he’s playing around with it. Actually, that’s one of the reasons why everyone hates him is because he’s ennoying and plays with the tools when we need them. Sometimes, our teacher yells at us how we should treat people with respect, but it’s funny telling him to go find a tool that we have and he spends like an hour trying to find it.
Not everyone will “like” everyone else on a team. But a team is just a mirror of what you’ll find in any work place. You’ll have to learn how to work with people of all types, including ones you 'hate". Maybe if someone asked him what he’s interested in, he could be given meaningful work to do so he isn’t always sitting around playing with the tools you need. Find out the reason he joined the team. He may have talents that you are overlooking (everyone has some area they excel at) - maybe he can be your Public Relations guy, or the Spirit person. Or the Team Safety Captain. Maybe he’s figured out a different way to look at the game, strategically. Maybe he’s just got one of those personalities that rubs people the wrong way, but like it or not he’s still part of your team. It’s time to make him feel a part of it.
Well, I don’t think our team writes newsletter(s), but we do make newspapers every year. On the other hand, though, it is a subteam. This subteam has a scale of 5-10 people in it that helps write about a certain topic for the newspaper. I’m not quite sure, but I do believe that it is somewhat similar to having to write a newsletter. It is pretty fun since you get to jump into your own team’s history in detail!!
our team has a newsletter, and i’m the editor. three times a year i bother people until they agree to write an article, and even -then- i only get three people, who write one article each and leave me to write at least three myself. then i put everything together, and edit it, and add pictures, and print copies, and fold/label/mail each newsletter. hahahaha i love my life. :rolleyes:
our newsletter is basically for public relations, but it does go out to parents so they can see what kind of community activities we attend. of course, we do have an email system for the team, so we all know about the next meeting/build session and how robot progress is going. we also have a daily log on our website that outlines what went on during any given day, in case someone missed a session.
that’s not my only job though, so it’s a bit different from your situation. i maintain the team website and the daily log, memorize the manual so people can come to me with questions about the rules 
, and make graphics/textures for our animation. robotics is -definitely- life!
our newsletter articles are on our website - go to http://shsrobotics.org, enter the site, and click news. 
We do indeed have a newsletter. A parent volunteer writes it, however. Included are mostly fund raising announcements and other things that need to be mentioned. Also included are spotlights of our mentors. Every newsletter one is interviewed, and placed in there along with a picture. Kind of like a, “Get to know your mentors” thing.
No, we do not have a Team Newsletter. We do have an email that we send out - with our accomplishments.
I suppose if I said I had a job it would end up being the guy with all the best ideas that everyone ignore. :mad: :mad: I think they need a steam from the ears smily or maby call it a steamy.
I totally agree with you there! lol. It’s so true! Or as my friend and I say, robotics owns my life 
haha
[quote=“boy_scout72688”]
- :yikes: Now I have an interesting job. Not only am I the programmer I am also the one responsible for getting all the updates from Cheif Delphi and then getting all the team updates from first…
I had a similar job this year. I worked on our Rookie All-Star entry, but I was also the communications person, so I kept our manual binder up-to-date.
We’re going to start a newsletter next year for the Tech & Engineering Club (the umbrella club) which will probably be quarterly, and will be for parents, interested teachers and students in the school, administrators, and I suppose donors. We have a lot more people in the club than just the robotics team, and the club does a lot of other activities too, so it would probably be broader. I would expect that our PR person would oversee it, but we’d also choose a separate newsletter person and committee to write it and do layout.[/quote]
No, you would not be the only guy in the program that dose that! I think every team has their own fool. But im usualy the one that feels compelled to injure them with my mouse and keyboard… lol… And well for the news letter we dont have one, but i would say to include upcomming events, meeting times, and maybe history about the team and its members… Good Luck!
Chief Delphi does an entire newspaper every year. It is usually 5 to 6 pages long, and contains articles from our students about what thier role to the team is or what thier sub team is responsible for during the build season. Our engineers and Coaches also write selections for the paper. Articles also come from the F.I.R.S.T. VIP’s Dave, Woodie, and Dean. This is completely a student made and written newspaper. It is also a sub team called Communications/Publications and that is thier main project to tackle during the season. This would be a good thing for any team to start, I think that it would be interesting to hear about what other teams are doing during the year.
We have one that comes out once a year or so…We do a lot of community fundraising and we send one to each of our sponsers.
But the mother who got it together daughter is graduating, and she is focusing more on Lego robotics at her school. So I would love to start one…say once a robotics season (build, off, competition, pre)
I also would like our local newspaper to have a technology column every week. (And well environmental too, the natural world is my passion, be where else can I get hands on experience with hand tools?..I certainly don’t have a jig saw:))
Newsletters are important for building up your extended community. There are many people who want to know what kids are doing these days but don’t know how to ask or where to find out. A newsletter scattered around the school is a great start.
Do any teams have technology nights/forums to discuss and showcase their work that is open to the public and well advirtised? I think it’s a great idea but advertising can be difficult.
Best of luck writing and spreading the word to all teams,
BTW How is everyone doing with Dean’s challenge?
newsletters fell under the responsibility of the website team on my old team, however they were always given other stuff to do, which is why the website and newsletters were never done (except in 2005, it seemed everything went as planned, but that was the only time)…
Also our team did an hours system… Where you had to do so many hours to go to be on the drive team (they figured if you’re not there then you don’t know enough about the robot to be on the drive team), and you had to do so many hours to go to the event on thursday, so many hours to go on friday, etc…
We’d always have like 3-4 students just hanging around with nothing to do everynight trying to accumlate hours… So like they always got stuck on the jobs nobody wanted to do since they really weren’t part of any subteam… One night they might be organizeing tools for us, another night they might be machining parts with loose tolerances so somebody like me could dedicate time to other stuff, maybe they’d go work on an old robot to get something working and do troubleshooting etc…
Those people ALWAYS turned out to be critical since without them important stuff wouldn’t get done… They maynot have worked on any particular critical part of the robot, but without their work the little stuff would never get done and we would have had lots of problems come ship date…