Many grade schools and middle schools have science days, science fairs, technology days…
get your team linked up with the grade schools in your district and bring a couple of your robots to these events (running if possible). Its a great way to give younger students a look-ahead to high school - and also a great hook for FLL and the VEX program.
In Rochester, NY (back before we had a regional here) several local teams use to have expo matches at the county fair in the summer (in a domed exhibition building). This resulted in new teams being formed in the area, and engineers joining local teams.
We do that, i believe in april the middle school next to us has a math, science and technology fair. we went to it last year and have been invited again. although if we make it down to atlanta, we’ll have no robot
Apply for a MIT Inventeam grant. Keep the engineering base of your FIRST team together and the business folks busy. We were one of the first FIRST teams to do so and it has helped our program tremendously.
Doing presentations to the afterschool programs at local schools.
Trying to arrange the grade-specific presentations to local elementary schools we wanted to do last year but didn’t get permission for until too late in the school year.
Hopefully going to Capital Clash again, and maybe another off-season event as well.
Hosting our local engineering competition again, the Garrett County Engineering Challenge.
Getting next year’s new members on board EARLY so they don’t feel completely lost when the build season starts…maybe get them prepped one week over the summer on this year’s bot, and then take them to the off-season stuff.
We do a bunch of mini-comps, demonstrations, fund raisers and stuff like that.
We’re also going to do classes like using the machines. There’s going to be a design period for a standardized chassis and electrical box. Next fall one of the teachers in the school is holding classes for us after school to teach us how to weld.
We’ll hope fully raise more than $6000, and go to a couple off-season events, recruit new team members, improve the robot, and hopefully do some community relations events for the chairman’s award.
Compete at Peachtree (and hopefully Championship )
OUTREACH!!
Goto IRI, Summer Frenzy, Capital Clash, other offseasons?
Host an offseason? (maybe Vex, who knows)
Hold our annual team yardsale
raise funds
summer project (finish “spED”? who knows)
Have a team party
Improve/de-bug ED v 7.0
and alot of other stuff too
For the next 7 weeks, I’ll be raising money. When those stressful seven weeks go by, we’ll be in Georgia for the Championship Event! w00t!
Then we’ll go to at least BattleCry, although I’ve always wanted to go to IRI (Andy, Bill, and the rest of you think you’re capable of moving Indiana closer to Maine for a few days in July?), and maybe slightly more reasonable I also want to go to Mayhem in Merrimack. Beantown Blitz is probably pushing it for distance, but we share somewhat the same name :ahh:.
Then in November or December there will be the Maine FLL tournament, which we attend to demo, along with various school demos.
Intermidst is raising money, building prototypes, looking at pictures from past years, website stuff, scouting stuff, etc.
Well, my team will actually be getting organized. This years management was a complete fiasco, we didn’t even know which hotel rooms were reserved! I may edit some of my footage from FLR to make a recruiting video. We may search for sponsors too, along with training for the new programmers and stuff like that. We plan on getting the autonomous for this years bot running too.
I know I said this before, but thanks to everyone at FLR, you guys did an awesome job!
We haven’t competed yet in our Lonestar Regional, but our kids are already trying to figure out how to convert our poof ball shooter into a T-shirt shooter for basketball games :ahh:
)
For us, it’s already “next year.”