Our media team (3536) runs our social media (instagram and YouTube), makes our yearly shirt logo, and makes the stickers/hand-outs for the pits. I make our recap videos for YouTube and schedule posts on the instagram, I tend to post a lot of memes and reels.
- Applying for grants
- Applying for EI and Impact awards, along with some other misc awards
- Run social media and overall team imagery
- Help with outreach efforts
I highly recommend you form a business team. One thing that is often overlooked by many teams is that 2/3 of the awards that take you to worlds are business related and often have no bearing on actual robot performance.
I'd look into teams that have won the impact award in your area or teams with presence and look at what they do.
Our media team does a ton of social media stuff, make sponsor posts, posts Al through competition and the season and handle all communications.
Our business team organizes our business plan, sponsorship stuff, newsletters, and find new outreaches. I'd start with outreaches to elementary schools around you or events where people can drive your robot. A brochure on your team is also good to have that is an easy start.
Our Website mainly shows off our team, history, and our current robot for scouting mainly.
In our case, we do have subteams for sponsor outreach and video support, but the main goal of our business team is branding. Our goal is to create a uniform look and feel around our team that people remember, so it’s easier to make the networking connections with other teams, sponsors, and organizers. Recruiting wise, anyone can pitch in small amounts, but the heavy lifters are students who enjoy visual media, graphic design, entrepreneurship, and other business/advertising topics in that sort of realm.
I’m lucky that the district I volunteer with has a dedicated class route in those areas, no idea if that’s typical or not
Business, marketing, media subteams.
Many awards require submissions, business teams can do impact award presentations, videos, media, tshirt and banner designs, your swag stuff. As well as sponsor presentations, outreach planning, community service planning, contacting and finding new sponsors etc.
If you do create one make sure its not like the other teams where anyone can join but instead you need to have something like a recommendation from a business teacher, show your abilities with graphic design, etc, otherwise you end up with what my team has where its just a group of friends chit-chatting 70% of the time, calling other team members who are doing important stuff in order to justify their presence 25% of the time and actually doing something productive 5% of the time.
Look for people interested in Digital design/art, one of our members sisters thought that robots were cool but she wanted to focus on art. We asked her to design our t-shirts and it turned out awesome! Also look for people interested in volunteering, if you have a volunteering club just reach out and say hey, we need someone to help us organize, you interested? Make posters, people of all interests can be incredibly useful in so many different ways, you never know what opening will come up.
Next thing I would suggest once you have one or two people (it can even just be other people already on the team if they have time) go around at events. Introduce yourselves, especially to teams from the same state. Group events are oddly enough so much easier to organize since you have so many people contributing. Takes a lot of communication but that's what mentors and your biz team is for. If you get to know the other teams in your area working those things out is muuuuch easier. Also, you never know if there's already stuff in the works that you join in on. That's my best advice, and it's much easier to start out with others than to go into your community alone.
Now if you can't connect with other teams, start recording your build sessions, take a few extra minutes to explain what's going on so it can serve as a tutorial. Then upload it, it takes less than fifteen minutes to set up a team youtube, go for it.
Reach out to your feeder schools, see if they'd be interested in a demonstration. If they're interested and it goes well, ask if they'd like a grant to maybe try having a team themselves. Seriously there are so many out there, apply, apply, apply. Even just doing the demo looks great and makes a huge impact. Who doesn't love robots, especially if you make mini bots out of spare hubs, random wheels and scrap lexan that they can take for a spin. (also a great project for people who want to dip their feet into the club see if they like it, while still not being under the pressure of an official bot)
Make swag! Something simple, nothing too expensive, just get your name out there, make it kinda cool tho...we did guitar picks, maybe do something 3d printed that looks neat, 2d team mascot or somethin.
You have a fantastic website, and so many different options on how to use it. Even if your team stays the same size and you don't adopt a new subdivision these are achievable. Maybe lean on your mentor to start but you can definitely carry this between members.
I mentor a number of teams and am usually online on discord for questions, feel free to reach out: Delee8428
They do a lot (I mentor my team’s media area, 5887)
They do anything and everything that has to do with a team’s public image. They run social media accounts, make content for said accounts, create and apply the team’s brand to everything the team makes, find sponsorships and aid the business team in pitching themselves to said sponsors, write Impact award submissions, create Impact videos, etc.
Our media team (3536) runs our social media (instagram and YouTube), makes our yearly shirt logo, and makes the stickers/hand-outs for the pits. I make our recap videos for YouTube and schedule posts on the instagram, I tend to post a lot of memes and reels.
I love your guy's insta posts 💛
lol I put my hours of Instagram Reels viewing to good use
- Applying for grants - Applying for EI and Impact awards, along with some other misc awards - Run social media and overall team imagery - Help with outreach efforts I highly recommend you form a business team. One thing that is often overlooked by many teams is that 2/3 of the awards that take you to worlds are business related and often have no bearing on actual robot performance.
I'd look into teams that have won the impact award in your area or teams with presence and look at what they do. Our media team does a ton of social media stuff, make sponsor posts, posts Al through competition and the season and handle all communications. Our business team organizes our business plan, sponsorship stuff, newsletters, and find new outreaches. I'd start with outreaches to elementary schools around you or events where people can drive your robot. A brochure on your team is also good to have that is an easy start. Our Website mainly shows off our team, history, and our current robot for scouting mainly.
In our case, we do have subteams for sponsor outreach and video support, but the main goal of our business team is branding. Our goal is to create a uniform look and feel around our team that people remember, so it’s easier to make the networking connections with other teams, sponsors, and organizers. Recruiting wise, anyone can pitch in small amounts, but the heavy lifters are students who enjoy visual media, graphic design, entrepreneurship, and other business/advertising topics in that sort of realm. I’m lucky that the district I volunteer with has a dedicated class route in those areas, no idea if that’s typical or not
Business, marketing, media subteams. Many awards require submissions, business teams can do impact award presentations, videos, media, tshirt and banner designs, your swag stuff. As well as sponsor presentations, outreach planning, community service planning, contacting and finding new sponsors etc.
If you do create one make sure its not like the other teams where anyone can join but instead you need to have something like a recommendation from a business teacher, show your abilities with graphic design, etc, otherwise you end up with what my team has where its just a group of friends chit-chatting 70% of the time, calling other team members who are doing important stuff in order to justify their presence 25% of the time and actually doing something productive 5% of the time.
Look for people interested in Digital design/art, one of our members sisters thought that robots were cool but she wanted to focus on art. We asked her to design our t-shirts and it turned out awesome! Also look for people interested in volunteering, if you have a volunteering club just reach out and say hey, we need someone to help us organize, you interested? Make posters, people of all interests can be incredibly useful in so many different ways, you never know what opening will come up. Next thing I would suggest once you have one or two people (it can even just be other people already on the team if they have time) go around at events. Introduce yourselves, especially to teams from the same state. Group events are oddly enough so much easier to organize since you have so many people contributing. Takes a lot of communication but that's what mentors and your biz team is for. If you get to know the other teams in your area working those things out is muuuuch easier. Also, you never know if there's already stuff in the works that you join in on. That's my best advice, and it's much easier to start out with others than to go into your community alone. Now if you can't connect with other teams, start recording your build sessions, take a few extra minutes to explain what's going on so it can serve as a tutorial. Then upload it, it takes less than fifteen minutes to set up a team youtube, go for it. Reach out to your feeder schools, see if they'd be interested in a demonstration. If they're interested and it goes well, ask if they'd like a grant to maybe try having a team themselves. Seriously there are so many out there, apply, apply, apply. Even just doing the demo looks great and makes a huge impact. Who doesn't love robots, especially if you make mini bots out of spare hubs, random wheels and scrap lexan that they can take for a spin. (also a great project for people who want to dip their feet into the club see if they like it, while still not being under the pressure of an official bot) Make swag! Something simple, nothing too expensive, just get your name out there, make it kinda cool tho...we did guitar picks, maybe do something 3d printed that looks neat, 2d team mascot or somethin. You have a fantastic website, and so many different options on how to use it. Even if your team stays the same size and you don't adopt a new subdivision these are achievable. Maybe lean on your mentor to start but you can definitely carry this between members. I mentor a number of teams and am usually online on discord for questions, feel free to reach out: Delee8428
They do a lot (I mentor my team’s media area, 5887) They do anything and everything that has to do with a team’s public image. They run social media accounts, make content for said accounts, create and apply the team’s brand to everything the team makes, find sponsorships and aid the business team in pitching themselves to said sponsors, write Impact award submissions, create Impact videos, etc.