Planning your FTC Robotics season for greater impact
Are you a FTC team that is looking forward to a second or third season and trying to figure out how to raise the bar? Did you see some other inspiring teams and wonder what does it take to get to Inspire? How did they do all that in one season? Here is the secret – It’s “pre-kickoff”. Let me explain.
When we looked at planning out the FTC season – there were essentially three logical blocks with a very different set of activities in each: Pre-kickoff, Build, Competitions. Planning and execution in the pre-kickoff can help you set up for a much better season.
Pre Kick-Off Planning and Execution
Most teams use the summer to start on their outreach activities. The best teams will start the week after the last competition and use this time to reflect on their journey, and plan out the areas where they need to grow and drive higher impact. Which areas do you need to learn more skills? How to drive higher impact from your outreach? How to improve your business plan to achieve sustainability and even impact other teams in new ways. Pre kick-off is the time where you want to put a lot of effort on planning, learning, outreach and the business plan.
Learning & Connecting
Every new season is an opportunity to build out your mentor network. Reach out to new mentors who can inspire and teach you new skills. It’s also a great time to either learn new skills or figure out how to excel in skills that you just started learning the year before. Maybe you did not do much 3D CAD design last year and you want to do more this season.
This is the time to dig into research in new areas – drive trains, machine learning, etc. Also get a head start on the engineering notebook – get the templates and the process going.
It’s also provides an opportunity for team members to rotate around within the team – learning new areas while mentoring/leading others where they are experts. Also it’s a good time to think about team leadership and figure out how to give more team members leadership opportunities.
Outreach Plan & Activities
Pre-kickoff is the time where majority of the outreach gets done. This is a great time to look for opportunities to share your passion about robotics with others. Take your amazing robot around to schools, libraries, and many more places and WOW everybody. Look to inspire new teams or groups (Scouts, Boys & Girls Clubs, Libraries, School clubs, Industry open houses, etc.) that have not been exposed to robotics. Consider mentoring FLL or Jr. FLL teams, or help get teams started. Think about the story you want to tell at the end of the year on the impact you have driven through your outreach, and start building towards it.
Experienced teams can help host an FTC kick-off events/leagues or train other teams at these events. Even though these opportunities come later in the season, you need to plan ahead for it and engage the event coordinators early. These opportunities offer immense possibilities for networking and building out your skills presenting to adults & teams.
Business Plan
On the business plan – do you have a self sustaining funding model? Do you need to get new sponsors? Maybe write a few more grant applications to get additional sponsors. Reach out to local business and tech firms to entice them with all that the FIRST robotics community can bring to them – sponsorship, mentoring, and volunteering opportunities. In addition, I’m sure they would enjoy the exposure to the great talent pool for future interns and employees.
If you plan and execute well, the pre kickoff part of the season can set you up for a very successful year and you will get a major part of your engineering notebook done before kickoff.
Build Season
Once the new challenge is out at Kick-off, teams are heads down into strategizing and solving the challenge and the focus is definitely on the robot. If you are part of a league, you probably have about two to three months to get a working robot on the field to your first leagues. Teams going through multiple iterations of the designs and constantly improving the functionality have little time for anything other than the robot build, documentation and getting a competitive robot ready.
Opportunities and time for outreach will be scarce, but you could get in a few scrimmages with other teams – maybe even mentor a few rookies who are ramping up.
Competitions
Once the league matches and the competitions get going, there are opportunities to round out your outreach activities with volunteering. Maybe your team is helping host an event, volunteer at FLL event or judge Jr. FLL events.
You need to ensure that you spend time and focus on being able to tell your story well. Ensure that the engineering notebook highlights all the things that you have done but is also a captivating read. Teams usually have done so much during the year, that they have a tough time figuring out how to tell the story and highlight the most impactful parts of their journey. Spending time on preparing the judging script, boards and props can be a critical to do well at competitions.
Start the Season Early
When you consider the three parts of the season – the building and competition parts of the season are very intense and typically don’t give a lot of time to raise the bar in new areas. Pre-kickoff is the time where teams have the time and opportunity to try new ideas and invest in building up their technical skills, research, outreach and business plan portfolio for better impact.
If you are one of the many teams ending your seasons at a State or Regional competition, you now have a couple of months head start compared to those teams who are still trying to get ready for Worlds.
Our team had one of our best seasons when we started the day after our last competition from the previous season. Don’t wait till summer. Don’t lose momentum, rather build on the previous season.
Good luck and hope you have one of your best seasons ever!
Read more: Goal Setting for FTC Robotics Season »
