To FRC teams in SF bay area

FIRST General Forum
1

Some of you may know that I took an early retirement about 2 years ago and moved to the SF bay area. About a year ago, I decided to pursue my passion in teaching. Not wanting to work as a full time teacher, I ended up being a part time math tutor including ACT/SAT test prep so I can work with students 1-on-1. Unfortunately this also means I will not be able to coach a FIRST Robotics team anymore because of time conflict. I did stay in touch with FIRST Robotics by volunteering as inspector/judge at FRC events the last two years and I plan to continue to do that in the future. However I want to use my experience starting, and the many years of coaching and mentoring Team 2834 to help the teams in this area to have a better FIRST experience.

I would like to offer a free one-day discussion with an FRC team on some or all of the following topics if they would like to improve on what they do. Possible topics are

  • Team organization
  • Business plan and team handbook
  • Team goals
  • Build Season Project management
  • Awards preparation – Chairman’s, Engineering Inspiration, Entrepreneurship, dean’s list, and technical awards
  • Robot design process
  • Drivetrain design
  • Prototyping
  • Scouting

When 2834 was a rookie team, I was completely new to FRC. One of the reasons why 2834 has been successful in what they do is they learned from the best. Some of the things I will be sharing are things I learned from Team 33 – The Killer Bees, Team 27 – Team Rush, Team 217 – The Thunderchickens, Team 67 – The Hot team, Team 469 – Las Guerrillas, Team 503 – Frog Force and Team 2337 – Enginerds. They were all very generous in helping us when we were starting out.

I know that there are a lot of materials already online to help teams. However I thought that if I can sit down with a team and truly understand their specific issues and concerns, I may be able to suggest a few possible ways to work through them. Let me know what you think.

2

Would you be willing to do a Skype Session with a team on the other side of the country :slight_smile:

This is a great resource and we were lucky enough to have a few teams here locally step up to lend a hand and advice during our rookie year.

3

4159 would benefit from all the knowledge you can offer - they’re looking to improve themselves constantly in the fields you’ve mentioned. I expect you’ll be hearing from them soon - as well as the other teams in the SF area.

4

We’d love to talk with you! I’ll send a PM when we get closer to the team starting in September. We’re up on Rollins Road in Burlingame right now but moving to Redwood Shores in January.

5

I’m sure 5026 would love to work with you (we’re in Burlingame)
We’ve struggled on awards and overall team organization but we put out our first relatively competitive robot last season and are looking up.
I’ll shoot you a PM with details and my email for contact.
We’re available essentially anytime starting in a few weeks.

6

I may have posted my original post a little early before school started. Now that school has started and teams have started to meet, I would like to finalize my schedule. If any team is still interested, please contact me soon.