Hello, I am part of the FRC Team 6901 Knights Robotics, a high school robotics team from Frisco, Dallas. Our team, mostly comprising sophomores, is seeking experienced mentors to guide and assist us in excelling in the field of robotics. Any help and support provided would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for considering our request.
Have you checked out the FIRST Mentor Network? The lead or alternate Mentor/Coach for the team can log in to the FIRST website to access it, and can post a request for mentors to find, or directly search for available mentors in the area (or remote mentors worldwide) based on skillset.
From all I’ve heard, the official mentor network is next to useless—the website is hard to use and when it does work, it’s hard to actually find a mentor. There’s a reason even the most well-known teams post on Chief instead of using that website. Saying “just use the mentor network” is similar to replying “RTFM” to a programming question. It’s not very productive and doesn’t contribute to a solution.
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That’s not what I said though.
Did I say they shouldnt post here as well…? I simply asked if they tried this as well, which is a perfectly valid suggestion in my eyes.
If the FIRST Mentor Network is useless, its because nobody is using it. The solution to that is for people to start using it. If its lacking features, then FIRST needs to justify prioritizing development time/effort, which will only happen if people use it.
I’m not saying it’s perfect by any stretch of the imagination. It does leave much to be desired. But it’s worth suggesting as an additional option.
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It is definitely a “use FMN ymmv” situation.
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Hey,
I posted on the Mentor Network, thank you for that. Are there other places I could reach out to? For example our local engineering place. I’m assuming that anyone can be our mentor though, is that alright?
Yup, its generally up to the team on who they consider a mentor. Could be parents. Could be teachers at the school. Could be professionals from the community.
If you are a mentor for your team, apply to join the “Texas Robot Mentors” Slack channel. Otherwise, ask your mentors to do so. There is a lot of good information relevant to our District posted there as well as opportunities for the mentors to network. I posted a request for mentors on CD and in the Slack channel and was able to get two recent alumni from another team in our area to come help.