Team 1261

So...

Only one month left until we get back to school, we go back on August 10th, with open house being on August 6th.

1. Last year we had a table at open house. We mostly just told freshmen where to go, but I think it was a way to see people that we're helpful and stuff. Not to mention that the parents got a good look at the robot.

2. Before we have the orientation meeting, we should have a veterans meeting. You know, to catch up, get the goofs of summer out, make jokes, and most of all, plan the orientation meeting.

3. Nancy created a little handout which we handed out at the beginning of the year. I have it now, and I tweaked some things and for the form, I need to know if we're doing registration the same way as last year? I think it was a good system.

4. The orientation meeting needs to be planned out well. We should probably have a rough draft so that come the meeting of veterans, we can assign students to their jobs and create a 'program' of sorts for the orientation meeting. Tanner - I'm not sure, but do you still have the DVD with the FIRST intro video?

I think a nice powerpoint is also in order. And obviously a demo. We'll have to introduce them to the game, etc.

5. Does anyone have any new info on the off-season event that is supposed to take place in September? I think it'd be a good chance for new comers to drive, be pit crew, learn a bit of scouting, and ultimately get swept into the feel of competition.

That's all ... for now. .

The following link is for the handout document that Nancy first drafted up. I changed some of the stuff, added some stuff, etc.

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1452690/2 ... andout.doc

Let me know if something is wrong and I will fix it. It's a dropbox file, but your browser should treat it like a download.

Please note that in the FAQ, I have set the first meeting for August 19th, which is the second week of school. I'm assuming we'll have a veterans meeting on the first week of school.

Also, I have said that they need to go to the website to register, but I'm not sure if we're still doing that, and how we plan to get them to register on the forums.

Well, let me know if something's wrong.

Also, I used Arabic Typesetting for the font, so if you don't have Microsoft Office 2007, then the font might not display properly.

Sorry in the first post I said open house is August 6th, but it is, in fact, on August 5th.

Sunny wrote:1. Last year we had a table at open house. We mostly just told freshmen where to go, but I think it was a way to see people that we're helpful and stuff. Not to mention that the parents got a good look at the robot.

2. Before we have the orientation meeting, we should have a veterans meeting. You know, to catch up, get the goofs of summer out, make jokes, and most of all, plan the orientation meeting.

3. Nancy created a little handout which we handed out at the beginning of the year. I have it now, and I tweaked some things and for the form, I need to know if we're doing registration the same way as last year? I think it was a good system.

4. The orientation meeting needs to be planned out well. We should probably have a rough draft so that come the meeting of veterans, we can assign students to their jobs and create a 'program' of sorts for the orientation meeting. Tanner - I'm not sure, but do you still have the DVD with the FIRST intro video?

I think a nice powerpoint is also in order. And obviously a demo. We'll have to introduce them to the game, etc.

5. Does anyone have any new info on the off-season event that is supposed to take place in September? I think it'd be a good chance for new comers to drive, be pit crew, learn a bit of scouting, and ultimately get swept into the feel of competition.

Open House:
Even though helping freshman find where to go is good, I think we need to be a bit more *boom* in our presentation. Not pushy, just kinda *boom-y*. Yeah, I'll think more about what the definition of *boom* is later when I have more time to think.

First Meeting:
In the first meeting, I think we need to cover: what FIRST is, what we do, and the beginning of fall season. Again, I think it should be like the open house, lots of this *boom* thing and just to grab everyone in. Kinda like something in a essay, sure they've read the first paragraph and actually will start reading, now we've got to make sure they'll stay.

Nancy's Phamplet - Its quite nice so far (even though OSX's textedit makes it look horrible or MSO, I don't know), but I kinda feel like it isn't organized well enough. Not to be like pushy or anything, but I think it could read a bit better.

Robolion DVD - Yeah, I still have it though it uses 2007 video 'n stuff. I could make a new one, but that all depends on how much time I have to work on it.

Off-Season Event
Not a clue, I'll email Mrs. Strain.

-Tanner

Tanner wrote:

Sunny wrote:1. Last year we had a table at open house. We mostly just told freshmen where to go, but I think it was a way to see people that we're helpful and stuff. Not to mention that the parents got a good look at the robot.

2. Before we have the orientation meeting, we should have a veterans meeting. You know, to catch up, get the goofs of summer out, make jokes, and most of all, plan the orientation meeting.

3. Nancy created a little handout which we handed out at the beginning of the year. I have it now, and I tweaked some things and for the form, I need to know if we're doing registration the same way as last year? I think it was a good system.

4. The orientation meeting needs to be planned out well. We should probably have a rough draft so that come the meeting of veterans, we can assign students to their jobs and create a 'program' of sorts for the orientation meeting. Tanner - I'm not sure, but do you still have the DVD with the FIRST intro video?

I think a nice powerpoint is also in order. And obviously a demo. We'll have to introduce them to the game, etc.

5. Does anyone have any new info on the off-season event that is supposed to take place in September? I think it'd be a good chance for new comers to drive, be pit crew, learn a bit of scouting, and ultimately get swept into the feel of competition.

Open House:
Even though helping freshman find where to go is good, I think we need to be a bit more *boom* in our presentation. Not pushy, just kinda *boom-y*. Yeah, I'll think more about what the definition of *boom* is later when I have more time to think.

First Meeting:
In the first meeting, I think we need to cover: what FIRST is, what we do, and the beginning of fall season. Again, I think it should be like the open house, lots of this *boom* thing and just to grab everyone in. Kinda like something in a essay, sure they've read the first paragraph and actually will start reading, now we've got to make sure they'll stay.

Nancy's Phamplet - Its quite nice so far (even though OSX's textedit makes it look horrible or MSO, I don't know), but I kinda feel like it isn't organized well enough. Not to be like pushy or anything, but I think it could read a bit better.

Robolion DVD - Yeah, I still have it though it uses 2007 video 'n stuff. I could make a new one, but that all depends on how much time I have to work on it.

Off-Season Event
Not a clue, I'll email Mrs. Strain.

-Tanner

I know the organization needs work. I'll work on it more as soon as I can.

Open House is a big...hassle. People are looking at their teachers, taking pictures, meeting friends, etc. If we try and make too much "boom" on open house, I'm 100% sure that our efforts will be futile. Although, I think the biggest boom we "could" make is to drive the robot, especially with the C-base, which doesn't have any firing or anything. It might be easier to convince the administration to let us drive that around.

I think just for clarity, there are two 'first' meeting. One is the veteran's first meeting and one is the new members' first meeting. I'm going to refer to the new members' first meeting as orientation.

We can talk about orientation more in depth during the veterans' meeting. We did this last year. It gives the veterans a chance to catch up, and not have to instantly focus on one thing. And we can carefully plan.

For the orientation meeting, I think what we did last year worked well. First we sit down and introduce the team, the program, the mentors, the season, expectations, etc. This is all done really well via a powerpoint. And the DVD will be really helpful as well. We can show the FIRST video for starters. Then after that, last year, we went to the atrium and ran the bot. I think this year we could do the same thing, and considering we have two robots, it'll be much more fun.

Then we come back and show them the game animation, a video of our match, and then we let them on our merry way.

Are we still registering on the website?

might i suggest we advertise a little more? last year was, in my opinion, a bit of a fail. all we did was stand outside the door helping people find their ways to their classes. what if, this year, we blow up a giant map of the school, like the ones they hand out, and hang it up behind our station? that way we can help and advertise at least a little bit more...only a thought...



also, for a *boom* we could have someone do a lil research and make some graphs and crap about the overall helpfulness of robotics, how it benefits the mind, the future, yada yada, lil things like that. those sort of stats can possibly get some parent attention, which will help try and convince the newbies to come...


more ideas in the process.

ptwortman wrote:might i suggest we advertise a little more? last year was, in my opinion, a bit of a fail. all we did was stand outside the door helping people find their ways to their classes. what if, this year, we blow up a giant map of the school, like the ones they hand out, and hang it up behind our station? that way we can help and advertise at least a little bit more...only a thought...



also, for a *boom* we could have someone do a lil research and make some graphs and crap about the overall helpfulness of robotics, how it benefits the mind, the future, yada yada, lil things like that. those sort of stats can possibly get some parent attention, which will help try and convince the newbies to come...


more ideas in the process.

The Map idea isn't bad at all, but the thing is that the maps generally are disorienting, and generally when Tanner and I were giving directions, we'd just point towards the direction they need to go.

The research idea isn't bad, I'm not just not sure if that kind of data is available on the internet, (although I do know that roughly 15% of MIT's class this year was in FIRST) but I'm not sure exactly what other kinds of data is available.

research wise, here are some ideas we can announce:

~Scholarships-
* Over $9.8 million in college scholarships
* Over 630 individual scholarship opportunities
* Over 130 Scholarship Providers

~FIRST "advantages"-
http://www.usfirst.org/who/content.aspx?id=46


just random stuff like that.

and we can play that slideshow of the past season during orientation, to show people that we arent just smart people

ptwortman wrote:might i suggest we advertise a little more? last year was, in my opinion, a bit of a fail. all we did was stand outside the door helping people find their ways to their classes. what if, this year, we blow up a giant map of the school, like the ones they hand out, and hang it up behind our station? that way we can help and advertise at least a little bit more...only a thought...

also, for a *boom* we could have someone do a lil research and make some graphs and crap about the overall helpfulness of robotics, how it benefits the mind, the future, yada yada, lil things like that. those sort of stats can possibly get some parent attention, which will help try and convince the newbies to come..

Yeah. As much as I like helping people, we're there to display robotics, not to help people find their rooms (though we can). Though a big map would be a good idea. Or at least something of the such.

I like the idea of a graphs and statistics of stuff . I remember my mom and I once made some graphs of which colleges alumni went to. I'm not sure if we still have it, but I'll check.

-Tanner

ptwortman wrote:and we can play that slideshow of the past season during orientation, to show people that we arent just smart people

Well, during the first meeting we'd be showing a slide show of other stuff like facts and junk, but I think we'll fit in some stuff from last year showing how cool robotics is, not just a geek club (even though it partly is).

-Tanner

lets play the slideshow that we played at freshman orientation night.....