Im coming into my forth year participating in FIRST and have become team captian. but am anticipating a problem:
this year we have decided to really push recuitment in an attemt to get a larger team and share the FIRST experience with more student in our community (past years have had only 5-10 devoted member) and i was wondering how to orginize a larger team (hopefully around 30) to involve everyone and have every one not only feel apart of the team but also be productive learners.
it seems that only so many people can work on the bot at a time,
So, how can so many people on a team all share the benifits of FISRT simaltaniously?
Hm… I’m going to try by wearing my 639 shirt, stocking up on some pins in my pocket, and then walk around the Cornell campus - sure to get a few interested people’s emails…
Then there’s always writing in your school newspaper about robotics. I usually write stuff about books/movies/tech, but I always make sure to get in an artcle about robotics. Our newspaper always has an edition on the first day of school each year, and the centerspread is dedicated to activities and teachers.
Hm … then there’s another method - bugging people to join… bug bug bug.
ONe way we have goten people is talk to the science teachers and see if they will give extra credit if you join robotics we have that at our school so you have the devoted ones that dont care about the extra credit then you havet he kids that join for extra credit which they end up liking robotics and keep on doing it
Hmmm…correct me if I’m wrong but I think the problem was how to manage a larger team, not neccesarily how to form a larger one. My advice would simply be taking cues from the team organization threads. It seems that with hierarchies, more jobs are created yet people are still held accountable when there’s good leadership. Of course it could fail but it’s all about how much effort everyone puts into it.
After a quick search, this thread was helpful: Team Hierarchy
On that thread, I made a post that had even more links to other threads that I found helpful…yay for links within links.
Two years ago we had 22 members I believe.
This past year we had 17.
This coming year we will have 18.
We have usually had enough stuff for everyone to do where everyone gets to wear all different hats and get their hands into everything. There were a few times last year during the build when a few people found themselves bored though.
However, our team doesn’t do all the stuff that a lot of the larger teams do like a fully painted crate or the Chairman’s award or FLL teams or community involvement type things.
A lot of our stuff is on a really low scale. With a larger team, people could be devoted to those other areas of FIRST robotics as well. Also having more members largely benenfits fundraising and spirit capabilities.
you must have a positive image. For example, at our school we are a very big football and basketball school and very little things get credit that are important. Our startegy was to throw our sucess in everybody else’s face and quoting a leader from 2 years ago ‘demand respect’ the most productive mebers that we got on our team were not accquired by demanding repect. Make an opportunity to everyone and then work on showing them what first is really about. Middle schools are an excellent place to start.
Remember, in the movie A field of Dreams, there was a famous quote: If you build it, they will come. This applies to a robotics team as well.
It has been my experience in FIRST that, on a team, you want quality – not necessarily quantity. In 2000, (the year before I joined 93) the team consisted of 15-20 active members. In 2001, that number jumped to about 40 active members!. Things did not go well for us that year, mainly because there was so many people! It was great that that many students were interested in FIRST, but the team simply did not have the need for that many students to be involved. In 2002, we had 20 dedicated members. This was my best year on the team. Everyone was always just busy enough, and there was always something to do.
Wanting to share the “FIRST experience” with those who know little about the program is awesome! But just be careful when recruiting people. Get people on the team who want to be there. Remember, going from five members to 30 is a huge jump!
</end_semi-rant> :yikes:
Managing a team so large usually calls for a ‘business plan’ of sorts. Figure out who is doing what before the season starts, rather than waiting until build time! Decide whether or not your team will be doing Chairman’s, animation, PR, swappables, etc. Get your crate built and decorated during the off-season so it isn’t forgotten about until the last minute. If you have a lot of new members who need training in the machine shop, nominate an experienced team veteran who can train the rookies and show them what needs to be done. Have your electrical lead go over the electrical components of past years with the rookies interested in that. The key to managing any team is organization!
We still have not hit our stride when it comes to team orginazation. We just have too many people. Between 2002 and 2003 we increased in size by 150%. The growth CRUSHED us. We didn’t know how to handle that many people, but we never wanted to cut people. (In fact, the schools will not allow us to cut from a club, and we can not split into 3 teams - one for each highschool we work with) It, in a word, sucked.
For 2003, we have had about 75 9th graders sign up, and I’m scared to go to the first meeting.
I’ll be watching this post to see what comes up. (And check the team org section, it has lots of good ideas, most of which we were able to use last year to help out)
