We had our first meeting of the year today at 3:30. It was a small turnout, but that was probably to be expected on our first day back after summer break. More importantly, we got started.
One of the first goals we set was to participate in the Robo-Rodeo in September. That gives us something concrete to work toward right away and, hopefully, a chance to get some experience together as a team before the regular FRC season begins.
We also pulled out last season’s robot, powered it up, and fired a few shots across the room to make sure everything was still working. It was. That means we have a functioning robot that we can use for demonstrations as we recruit new students over the next several weeks—and, admittedly, it was nice to start the year by making something move and shoot instead of spending the entire meeting talking.
Most of the meeting, though, was about logistics. We talked about what we want to accomplish this year, what skills we want to develop, what needs to happen before build season, and what we can do now to make January a little less chaotic when the new game is announced.
We also officially welcomed Brant Shepherd as our new head coach. I am personally very relieved and very glad to have a teacher joining us who already has experience with FIRST Robotics. Having someone at West who understands what an FRC team is trying to accomplish—and what build season is actually like—is going to be a tremendous asset.
We spent some time talking about this website as well and what I hope it can become. My goal is for malfunctionz.org to be more than a place to post pictures of the robot. I would like it to help us with organization, recruiting, fundraising, and documenting what we learn.
In particular, I hope we can build a library of information for both new and returning students: how to safely use the tools in our shop, how our robot systems work, how we approach design and fabrication, and the processes we’ve learned through experience. If we do that well, we won’t have to rediscover quite as much every January.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be working on that foundation while also getting the robot ready to demonstrate, recruiting new members, preparing for Robo-Rodeo, and figuring out what kind of team we want to be this year.
One of my own goals is to intentionally step back a little more.
A successful robotics team shouldn’t be a group of students watching adults build a robot. The students should be designing it, building it, programming it, breaking it, fixing it, and learning why the thing they tried either worked or didn’t. My job is increasingly to make sure they have the tools, knowledge, and support they need to do that themselves.
So that’s the plan for this year: help the students step up by learning when I should step back.
I’m looking forward to seeing what they build.