So after being a little involved in the FIRST setting on Long Island, I realize how amazing it would be to have a central, organized place for everyone involved to connect.
Connect could mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but in my head I was thinking if anyone on Long Island needed anything, like say a part or help with some award submissions there would be a big network of people to fall back on.
This is a super rough, first try at it, and to make it work I’ll need people to come on the platform!
I started a Facebook page for the New Hampshire alliance back in 2015, and it has become very helpful for a lot of our teams. We’ve even talked about officially expanding it to all of New England. I hope it helps your area just as much.
Curious as to how this differs from F4, a project also started by a member of 2869 (Sam Perkowsky).
As F4.network describes:
F4 is a group of dedicated, experienced, and knowledgeable students ready to help the FIRST community any way possible.
You also seem to be aiming to create a Slack group, just like F4 already has. While I’m not necessarily against the idea, I’m just curious as to if this will just be another “excess group” when similar groups (with similar goals) already exist.
You could argue that this group allows for mentors to also contribute - however, it’s likely valuable experience for students to spearhead management for items you mentioned - parts, awards, even if they’re just collecting and implementing/forwarding the feedback.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I’m just interested in what the benefits of this being a stand alone platform are.
We actually started it as a google email group but found that it was more utilized in a casual social media setting, of which most people had accounts anyways.
Exactly, which is why I’m curious in regard to the needed differentiation between F4 and this. Seems like it would be more efficient to have a single platform (especially considering that there appears to be a sufficient number of students from the area in the group, perhaps this number has gone down?), but that’s why I requested clarification.
Like Mitch mentioned, it’s helpful to be able to be in contact with people geographically close to you, especially for getting parts machined or if you need to work out of someone else’s lab for whatever reason.
It’s also nice for things like our SBPLI Long Island competition, where, for whatever reason if teams need to communicate - they can.
If teams need help for things like local outreach or hosting offseasons they can also source help from the chat.
And while you’re right - it would definitely help students to lead certain aspects, but a lot of times mentors would like to connect as well. And say there is the case of a volunteer coordinator needing people to help out at something - they’d be able to reach a mass amount of people through it.
Looking back at how I contact many people in the area for FIRST related things, I see how disorganized it is. I dm some on twitter, text others, etc. It would be amazing to have a centralized platform for all things Long Island FIRST related, for both students and mentors.
Even if it does end up becoming an excessive chat, if I’m able to help one person before then, IMO it’s totally worth it.
I am on F4. But out of the 106 odd people, there are 4 from the area, and all from the same team
Maybe I’m mixed up here, but how is a single platform that provides no help to a Long Island team in the way of machining or anything that needs to be done/answered in a quick way better than one that does?
