I am currently starting my third year head coaching FRC Team 3313 in Alexandria, MN. Our team has really ramped up our member involvement, knowledge base, and community involvement each year.
I am asking for advice about public appearances for the team. In the past, we haven’t really had enough team members interested in Community Outreach to cause any problems or jealousy. However, veteran team members and I have been pushing extremely hard to recruit new members. This year, we already have 18 committed team members and all have expressed interest in presenting the team to schools, clubs, and businesses. It’s a GREAT problem to have but I do struggle with how to assign these presenters. Some team members are more experienced and knowledgeable than others but I would rather not exclude others from this awesome part of FIRST.
Does the CD community have any suggestions for me? What does your team do for public presentations? Is that a separate sub team? Do you have a sign up sheet (first come first served) or do you pass around the responsibilities (everybody presents once then goes again)?
Throw everybody at it. If there is a limited number of presenters, have it about half rookies and half veterans, and try to get the rest of the rookies in as observers.
Of course, this does assume that the more experienced presenters take the time to teach the less experienced ones. There are a number of ways to do this, but the best is probably to have everyone give the same presentation to the team in random groups. Then everybody gets a chance to find holes in the presentation and the presenters’ style, and fix the issues. Repeat until mostly perfect (about 2-3 sessions).
This sort of thing works well for demos, too. Just make sure that the rookies are up to speed and have a designated expert to direct the tough questions to if they don’t know the answer.
For presentations to schools, or companies usually it is the student leadership who leads the discussion on our end but rookies are up with them. When it comes to recruiting sponsorship it is up to individual students to sell our team. For member recruitment once again our leads are the ones who do most of the talking then present rookies speak about their experience the previous year. I can not stress enough though, never send anyone to speak who doesn’t want to, or is unprepared or unqualified
I am always a big proponent of not turning anyone away. I would suggest splitting the interested students into smaller teams with at least one experienced member in each speaking group if possible. Have each group take the lead on a specific outreach event. This will reveal who your best speakers are. At least by giving each person a shot, they all will gain experience with public speaking and outreach. Then as a mentor you should track and keep notes of who is the best, and remember sometimes you will be surprised. Some of my best speakers were the students who started the season as shy and less confident. If you see a glimpse of potential, try to empower them and convey how public speaking can be fun. (involve their families if possible)
Think of the season a year long audition and then when it comes time for competition select the top four or five and focus with them on how to give an effective presentation to the judges. Three will act as your Chairman’s speakers and the other two will act as alternates. That way with 5 students, they can take turns maning your pit to speak to judges throughout the competition. (everyone needs a break every now and then, even in FIRST)
As a mentor for my team I tend to challenge the students alot, but it works. I tell them that if they demonstrate effective speaking skills at all times, including in team meetings, it will increase their likelihood of serving as a team presenter (and interestingly enough the Dean’s List nominee).
Not that it needs to be said, but our job as mentors is to help every student gain as many skills as possible to help them succeed in their future education and careers. Even if they dont all speak at demos, it doesnt mean it wasnt a valuable exercise for them.
P.S. (one good exercise you can do is to have a family night, where you challenge the students to bring their parents and/or grandparents and explain to them what exactly you do on the team (plus it helps build your team community))
That is alot of suggestions to digest, but I hope it helps.
Jeremy,
Use the outreach as a training for your less experienced presenters. Let them see how others perform the task and what questions get asked. They will learn a lot about the team and the robot from hearing others discuss and present. After a few events, they will gain the confidence and knowledge they will need for the future. Besides you can always use a few extra hands to help carry robot and batteries.
I’m pretty much in agreement with EricH. Talking about FIRST is a great way for students to develop presentation skills.
In some cases, it may depend on what the goal of the presentation is. In my mind there are a few different “levels” of presentations, which you seem to have hit on a few of them.
Public/Community Demonstrations - This is a great way to let all of the students get involved. Often you want to have your leaders or most outspoken kids do a 2-3minute overview for the whole crowd, but then all of your students can individually talk about their experiences in a more one on one setting with the crowd. Have some talking to people, some explaining how to use the controls, some tossing balls around with the little kids, etc.
Fundraising/General Sponsors - Many teams do Patron Drives, where they collect donations from different businesses in the community. I have linked 1511’s page, as they have a whole host of documention you can borrow. This is a great way to raise FREE money, and to get the word out in the community. Most teams will have all of their students participate in this as well, though it helps to run some sort of “training” to educate the kids on what to say. Kids can go together or with their parents or whatever works, but its another great way to get students presenting about FIRST.
**Pit Crew kids **- not everyone thinks of this position as a presentation position, but 95% of the time it is the Pit crew students that have to sell your robot and other facets of your team to the judges. When you get to build season, I highly recommend watching for which kids are good at talking about the robot and what your team has done and have at least two on your pit crew that can really help win over the judges. This to some extent can be “trained” as well.
High donation sponsors - this can be a presentation intended to gain the sponsorship, or a “thank you” presentation done towards the end of the year. Often you will put some of your best students on this, as you want to give a more professional show. Start with who is interested, and narrow down the field by which students seem to be your best presenters (though it never hurts to put a student with good potential who can learn from the others).
Chairmans Presenters - I list this one last because this can be an incredibly high pressure situation, and one that many teams practice for over a month for. Many teams do actual try-outs or interviews for these positions. This is where you want to select the “best of the best”. Though often it is good to mix up the grade levels a bit - ie don’t have all 3 presenters as seniors if possible.
So ultimately there are tons of ways to get all of your students involved at many levels. Presentation skills are incredibly important as your students go to interview for college and for jobs, and even in the “real world” so its great to get them started as early as possible. I gave a presentation skills conference at Championships that might be of use as well.
I’m going to borrow from the BEST Robotics experiences that LASA Robotics has had and tap into the presentation aspects in hopes of helping with your concerns. In BEST, there is a lot of focus on presentation and the more prepared the team is, the better. What we found that worked well in BEST and carried over into FRC is the pairing of newer less experienced members with the veteran members and having them work on different aspects of the team for presentation needs. You can break it down as much as you want, giving insight into how the team runs itself, the build sessions, how the team manages its finances, why partnerships are important, the community that the team comes from, and the goals that the team has set, short-term and long-term. It’s also great to talk about the impact of the program on the students and the educational and career opportunities that have become available to them. By breaking down the topics and working on them with the veteran students and newer ones, together, it is educating everyone involved and makes it a very natural experience of enjoying outreach, being prepared, and talking with people.
It is a lot of work and it takes vision and strong leadership that sees this aspect of the team as important. It is also very rewarding and the bonus part of it is that it is a great team-building exercise. Like doing 30 pushups a day only communication skills and thinking are doing the work. You can break it down into a sub-team but it’s also an excellent opportunity for all of the members of the team to work on their communication skills and to understand the importance of having them and using them.
You can also take a look at the type/format of presentations you’re doing. For example, our team presented at the Girls in Science day at the Science Center in St. Paul this past weekend. It was essentially an all day presentation/demonstration, and we had the students show up and work shifts of several hours. It gave everyone a chance to get up and speak about our program, about FIRST in general, and to “work the crowd”.
For other presentations, the pool of presenters can be limited by the topic. When we talk about Beta testing, only those involved in Beta testing are present. When we present on electrical at the MN Splash, only the returning members of the electrical team present (although the new members of the electrical team are encouraged to attend, as they’ll be presenting the following year!).
Yet other presentations, we may be limited by class schedule - if the presentation is during the school day, many students often can’t take off for it.
