Theory

I started this book, like I said previously, to give freshmen the resources to learn and for senior members to teach. But this book was also meant to compile the knowledge that we had and the ideas that we formed. One of the most prominent ideas that we formed was drawn from the fact that our club was at a low point. So, we developed a solution, not robotics driven as you’ve seen previously, but driven solely off of our experiences and common sense. This is theory; the idea that you can solve a problem in the club by changing the club.

The Area 53 Team Division Manifesto

Teams

In the manifesto, we first define a good team. It’s basically a group of friends that work well together and fit each position on a team well. They don’t have to win, but they are the best team because they can enjoy their friendship when robotics sucks and enjoy both when it’s great.

We next define different types of teams. An optimal team is well rounded, contains skilled members, and should be able to compete highly. It is commonly an exceptional tiered, concentrated, or team of X team. A tiered team is a team that cycles through members consistently. They have consistent strength and are normally mid-tier because of this. A concentrated team is a team that is made up of one grade level. They are weak early on, but are very strong later. A team of X is a planned team with few members. The members are usually grouped to win. A team of X by force is when there are many members on a team, but only X of them do work. These are the worst teams as the non-working members drag down the team. We also define competitiveness here. You know a competitive member by how they carry themselves in practice and in competitions. Competitiveness plays a large part in what types of teams are formed.

Once we defined everything, we proposed how many teams of each type Roosevelt should have. This is bound to change, but gives a good sense of a healthy club.

New Members

We start by defining types of people. You can’t tell what types of people incoming members are, but when you do grouping them accordingly is a necessity. According to the previous section, competitive, mid-competitive, and non-competitive teams tank similarly to this ranking. Avoid having the last 2 groups of people in the club as much as possible as they can waste spots.

When admitting new members onto teams the current way is random distribution. This allows new members to learn immediately and develop. This method has worked previously and will likely be used again unless specific teams need to be made. But, there are some other untested ways that can yield different results. Tryouts is a very simple task to do a quick check to judge their attitude. It is the most basic method and the most inconclusive. If you have some knowledge about them, teams can draft the new members. This is a more complex task, but can yield great results especially for tiered teams. Team mentors lets existing teams create new teams out of new members no matter the experience. This is a very complex task, but can yield very powerful concentrated teams.

You’ve probably noticed that the Team Division Manifesto didn’t include how to recruit people. We’ve noticed 3 different ways with 3 different outcomes. The first is word of mouth, which yielded few but dedicated members. This method will probably never be used primarily again. The second is morning announcements, which worked the best. We got a large crowd initially, but it then reduced to a group of dedicated members. Notably, parents were never involved if the person didn’t join the club. The third is the open house, which worked horribly. We got too large of a crowd and catered to parents instead of kids. We were left with members that were here because of their parents.

How to Change the Club

I’ve told you our thoughts on team distribution and freshman integration. But there are a lot of problems that we haven’t faced that you might and if we’ve faced the same problem, it’ll probably be in different circumstances. This section was meant to give you a jumping off point so you can start changing the club in different ways. Sadly enough, it’s hard to change the structure of the club once you’re already nose-deep, but there are cases when you have to do something. Sit down with dedicated members and talk through it. We started this book and it’s documents for you, you’ll need to update it for the next freshmen.