Lessons your team has learned and would share with a 2012-2013 rookie

[paul lathrop]

Hey Teams,

Has your team learned a lesson you want to share with the rest of us?
One of the best parts of FIRST is the networking of all participants
to help each other become stronger and better teams in all areas.

So with that said, what have you all learned? Don't be embarrassed
we've all made mistakes and still do.

Let us know,

Paul

[paul lathrop]

Lessons my teams learned for 2012 as of 10/27:

Cad software to assist in build: in the past 9 years of our frc/ftc
program we have never been able to use cad to help our build. We
decided to spend the first half of tge ftc season to design in cad
before building anything. By doing this, we saw many mistakes with
alignment, spacing etc and were able to solve them without having to
take half the robot apart. We also saved cost by not using matierals
that didnt work for their design. Not only will our final product be
designed well, it looks great, and helps by allowing us to pursue the
ptc design award.

Hands on recruiting: This year we increased membership in our program
by 500% by recruiting students during registration days. We had a
table set up with an ftc bot driver ready on a fll table with the
scholarship info poster up. Students and parents got to hear about the
past sucess of the program, plans for the future, the scholarship info
(big win with parents) and drive a robot. All students loved it;
football and basketball players too. Another idea to get your numbers
up is to have your team meet at different times throughout the week;
after school, in the evening after practice or homework and or
weekends. This helped us out but put a lot on our adult.volunteers as
the time commitment went up dramatically.

Hope these 2 lessons help. I know ill post more throughout the year.

Paul

[Dr. Barger]

Thanks for the suggestion!
We also had success by using an invitation. As a first year team we
are trying to get the school talking about FTC. Students see other
students getting invited and want to know how they can get involved.

Dr. B