So you want to do WHAT???
An International Guide to Starting a
FIRST® Robotics Competition Team
Version 0.9.1
February 2012
Forward
We’re really glad you’ve decided to start a FIRST team. Our goal is to have many, many more
countries as part of the FIRST family in general, and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), in particular.
FRC is the most exhausting thing you may ever do. That being said, it is perhaps the most rewarding
whether you are student, mentor, or sponsor. Why? The answer is quite simple: because you are
building something of tremendous value for the future by investing in our technology leaders of
tomorrow. And after all the marketing, media, or “spin”, entertainment personalities holding fundraisers or elected officials pledging sweeping reforms will not solve the major challenges of this
century, although they may implement them. The solutions to problems like sustainability, cancer,
or colonizing the stars will come from the scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians.
It’ll come from STEM heroes and no one knows better how to encourage future STEM heroes than
FIRST.
Great ideas know no borders. So a few of us within the FIRST community thought it would be a good
idea to make sure that we were doing everything possible to reduce the barriers to starting an
international FIRST team. In fact, it may even be incorrect to assume that these are barriers.
Woodie Flowers has said that people like a really tough challenge so think of this document as an
introduction to something that you will really like.
We’ve been waiting for you and your country to get into the game. Welcome to FIRST!
The FIRST International community.
About this document
This document is organized somewhat chronologically in what you will need to do to go from the
start through shipping your first robot and going to your first FRC Regional tournament. The initial
document was based on a group of experienced, US-based FRCers moving to a southern hemisphere
foreign country which didn’t have FIRST and then starting a team. While this gives the document a
somewhat US-focused viewpoint, it also provides the contrasts as to what US teams expect and
experience. Furthermore, this document also represents starting FIRST in a new country.
These early iterations of the document are also just a stream of ideas. We hope that it over time,
like Wikipedia, others will refine it into something more enjoyable to read. It’s our hope that
documented experiences and anecdotes from many international teams will be added to this “open
source” document.
This document assumes that you are familiar with FIRST and FRC and that you’ve read the material
on www.usfirst.org relevant to starting a new team.
Chapter 1
The most important thing needed to start a FIRST team…any FIRST team
“I’m a crazy, rabid squirrel….and I want my cookies”
Hammy, from the movie “Over the Hedge”
“The improbable, we do before breakfast….the impossible takes a little longer.”
An international FIRST team champion.
It’s been said that it takes a village to educate a child. This is also true about FIRST because it does
take a whole host of people to make a successful FRC team. You will need students, but that is
probably the easy part if you are reading this document as you probably know a group of students
who are either all ready to go or who you think would jump at the chance to build a meter and half,
50 Kg robot in six weeks. You will need mentors to teach your students all they need to know and
sponsors to fund your entry fee, spare parts and travel to a regional competition. You will need a
place to meet and work. You will need people and things you can’t even imagine since each FRC
team has it’s own particular flavour and challenges.
The one thing that is common to all these things is “you”. You who are reading this document. It
might be one person, it might be a family, it might be a teaching group or faculty, or it might be an
engineering team at a sponsor company. But right now and for the foreseeable future of this new
team in a potentially new FRC country, you are the most important thing needed to starting the
team.
We’ve found in trying to get the second, third, fourth, etc. team in an international FRC setting that
the key ingredient to getting a team up and running is a passionate champion or champions. We’ll
call it the Champion Core Team (CCT). Let’s face it, there’s nothing like a great idea and an
energetic, enthusiastic person or people talking about it. That’s what you want; that’s what you
must be. Enthusiasm is infectious and you will need to convince mentors to part with their free
time, sponsors to part with their spare money, and students to part from Facebook or Xbox.
Your CCT should be a group of like-minded individuals who are somewhat totally focused on starting
the FRC team. That’s not to say that you should expect to stop work, be separated from your family,
or miss any social events. What we mean is that you need to be constantly looking for opportunities
in your work, home, or outings to fill all the pieces of the puzzle you must assembly (we’ll get to
what those pieces are throughout the document). For the next few months you need to be looking
out for every chance to add to the collection of people and resources to build your team to critical
mass.
The biggest fallacy about starting an FRC team (or any FIRST team for that matter) is that you need
to be an engineer, or someone who’s handy with tools, or someone with a particular set of STEM
skills. The truth is that the most important element is a CCT that is good at project management. If
you are good at allocating resources, managing budgets, and drawing up schedules, you have all the
skills you need (you, of course, have to have the passion to see this project succeed). We’ve started
one team where we had no mechanical engineers or anyone, for that matter, who knew that 80-20
was a type of metal and not a rule of thumb about projects. You’re project management skills to see
all the pieces needed, to know how to assemble them, and to make adjustments as you deviate from
your initial plans PLUS your passion for starting this team are what will make this team a success.
What sort of project management skills are we talking about here? Well, if you’ve organized a
wedding, with dinner reception, for 200+ people, then you can do this. If you’ve had a house built
where you’ve organized all the tradesmen (plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc.), then this will be
about the same level of difficulty. Conference or workshop organization is also good experience.
Any sort of formal project management where you’ve had two or three different groups of people
you had to work with is really what we are talking about.
Along the way, you will hear your countries’ equivalent (polite or others) of “No.” Given that FRC is
new to the people you are talking to, you will have to decide whether this is really “No” or just the
fact that you didn’t do a good job the first time of communicating your ideas. FRC is very exciting
and often times it is hard to communicate with words what is best experienced. We’ve found that
using the FIRST videos as an introduction—especially where they show the sports-like competition
atmosphere—is a great way to communicate the ideas. Because you are very passionate about this,
though, in many cases you should just view “No” as a “request for more information” and try again.
Don’t get discouraged!
If you are all by yourself or it’s just you and your family, the first thing you need to do is try to find
some extra people to help you. These should be the like-minded people, but with hopefully
complimentary skills. It’s important that you can work together and communicate effectively with
each other as this can be somewhat stressful (like when you ask that sponsor for a $5000 donation)
You may even wish to seek out people who may disagree with you on things as this makes for better
ideas by the group as a whole. One team we started had two groups of mentors with somewhat
different philosophies on the robot build, but it made for a very good team start.
Finally, whether you are one person, one family, or a true CCT, make sure that you have good
“support system.” This will be a lot of work and there will be times when you are celebrating and
times when you are frustrated. Having people around you who can support you during the ups and
downs will make this much easier.
Chapter 2
FIRST contact
…..and no, we are not referring to the first FLL challenge or Vulcans greeting Zephran
Cochran, the inventer of warp drive.
FIRST contact is really about working with FIRST. Once you have nailed down your champion core
team you will want to speak with FIRST. You may think this is putting the cart before the horse, but
having several of you ready to go will help you with all the things that need to be done. Being able
to designate one person to work with FIRST will be helpful.
The FRC International Coordinator is Carla Proulx. Just like you most likely will have one person
speaking with FIRST, FIRST has one person ready to speak with you. The International Coordinator’s
role is simply that: to coordinate all the needs of the international teams. Even though you will get
emails from FIRST in general about your Kit of Parts or your regional event, the international
coordinator is your champion within FIRST. Carla is able to help you with something particular to
your international situation as well as just a problem with being a FIRST team. Of course, if you
know who to work with in FIRST about the issue, you should contact that person, but if you are at all
concerned that there is something different or special about your situation, you should make sure
that Carla is informed.
So now, we have to embarrass Carla and tell you what she actually does. Carla is absolutely,
positively amazing. She will work tirelessly to help smooth out any problems that arise with your Kit
of Parts (KoP), your regional, shipping your robot....pretty much anything to do directly with
FIRST. She is your advocate and she is very, very good at it. We’ve been part of FLL and FRC teams
in the US and we didn't know Carla when we were there. We can honestly say that Carla totally
minimizes many of the challenges international teams have as compared to "mainland" North
American teams.
Chapter 3
“The Plan”
“…a plan is something from which you deviate.”
General Norman Schwartzkopf”
Like all great adventures you will need a plan. Since you have made it this far into the document,
we’ll assume that you are enthusiastic and you are pretty good at planning and executing projects.
What you need next is a plan.
A plan is just a general roadmap. You know where you are and you know where you want to get to,
so know you have to pick a path and figure out what you need along the way to get there. The end
point is a robot built and shipped in 44 days and you need students, parents, mentors, and sponsors.
There is no absolutely correct order in which you have to recruit your students, mentors, and
sponsors. One team has done students first and then sponsors and mentors. Another group has
done mentors, sponsors, and then students. Still another has done sponsors, mentors, and students
last. There is no “one size fits all”. You may even find you go back and forth among the different
groups.
Before meeting beyond the CCT – you will want to have some basic ideas about your team before
you go beyond your CCT. It’s a good idea to know your targeted students, mentors, and sponsors so
that when you begin to approach anyone of these groups, you already can “paint a picture” of what
the team will look like.
People will want to know a rough idea of what, where, when, who, etc. regarding the team. Where
will you meet? How often? What times or what is the time commitment? Can I still do it if I’m on
holiday for the first two weeks of build season? How much will it cost to go to the Regional? Does it
cost anything to be on the team? The more of these things that you are prepared to answer the
better off you will be.
In some cases, your answer may be that you are meeting with this group (for example, students) to
decide one of these things. A meeting with sponsors might determine where you meet if you are
asking a potential sponsor for access to their machine shop or computers. A meeting with potential
mentors might decide how many times per week you will meet before build season.
Be prepared to be flexible. Many of the groups you will try and recruit have their own constraints on
what they can and can’t do. For example, one sponsor wanted very much to be a “premiere”
sponsor but could not afford the cash contribution we were asking for. After a bit more discussion,
we found out that they could make a large donation of in-kind materials, even purchasing things for
us from AndyMark or providing airline tickets to the US, which was just as good as direct financial
support for us.
Another important thing to be able to communicate is the beginning and the end. The beginning is
why you are doing this. What are you passionate about that you are ready to give up all your spare
time and lose sleep over? People will want to know this and if you can tell them about it, they too
can get excited about it. For one team, it was giving students an opportunity outside of the school.
For another team it was directly ad and dressing their countries skills shortage. The end is the
measurement, or metric, of how you will know you are successful. For students, you may want to
know whether they get into university in general or study STEM related areas in particular. For
mentors, it will be the sense of fulfilment they get from a student learning from them. For sponsors,
it may be getting summer interns (northern hemisphere teams) or employees who have come
through the FRC team. Whatever the beginning and end are, it should be some how related to
directly to why you are so passionate about starting the team.
Just a note on this. If your motivation for starting a team is just to build a robot and that’s it, that’s
the beginning and end, than you may find it difficult but not impossible to find mentors and
sponsors. Certainly, there are mentors and sponsors in the mechatronics field who would like to
support efforts to have high school students design and build robots. You will, however, find a much
broader group of mentors and sponsors if you can leverage the broader vision of FIRST: to inspire
and recognize STEM interests among students. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to
build and compete in a robotics tournament, but not everyone will be willing to devote the
necessary time and resources without a broader “end”.
Students – if you are a school-based team, then you have a ready-made source of students. If you
are based around a university then you probably have a target group of high schools from which you
usually, or from which you wish to, draw students. If you are a community-based team, you may
need to go into the schools, churches, or places where students socialize to recruit students.
Also, you may be targeting different types of students. Is your team going to be like a sports team or
is it an after school team? Is it for gifted students, students with difficulties, or all students? Do you
have a mandate to reach groups of students not normally found in STEM: woman or
indigenous/native groups? Whatever it is, if you can have a clear picture of the students you expect
to have on your team, you will be better able to plan everything else.
We’ve found that the fastest way to get students interested is to show them a robot, a video, and
tell them that the robots they build and the tournaments they get to go to are in the US. We are
able to get dozens of students ready to give up their entire summer holiday (southern hemisphere
team!) to build a robot and go to the US.
One of the unexpected things that has happened to one team in particular that is community-based
is that groups of 2-5 students from a dozen high schools start showing up for the team meetings.
Essentially, these are the students who are “odd”, “different”, or just don’t fit in to school sport or
other activities. These students now have a larger group that they can feel a part of and they
become their own community, spending many, many hours together and well-beyond what is
needed to build a robot. They start getting together socially for a movie or volunteer work. It’s very
rewarding to see this transformation in the students.
Parents – Depending on your culture and the status your profession provides you within that
culture, parents will have differing levels of respect and trust that is assumed to be given to you. If
you are lecturers or professors at a university, the culture may implicitly trust you with authority
over their children. In another culture, being a parent will just raise suspicions. You need to
consider this and be prepared to assure the parents of the students that you will keep their student
safe.
What you really want to do is be able to communicate to parents that you understand your
responsibility in supervising their children/students. We tell parents that it is a privilege that they
would entrust their children to us and we want to do everything we can to maintain that privilege.
Our first priority is to the students safety and to communicating that to the parents. Again, this will
be very culture-specific. In some cultures, you may need to make additional efforts to monitor social
interaction between the girls and boys or between ethnic groups.
Since FIRST stresses safety in everything we do, developing communications to parents about safety
is not difficult. There are plenty of materials accessible from the FIRST website and through FRC
teams stressing safety. Make sure you tell parents that students must have safety glasses—
depending on the culture, you may have to provide them if students can’t get a proper pair of
glasses. In warmer climates, where sandals and perhaps short pants are the norm, determine
whether your machine shop or soldering areas allow students to wear open-toed shoes or have
exposed skin. Hearing protection and protective clothing may also be appropriate depending on the
class of equipment being used. Being “tough” on safety at the beginning of your program will make
it much easier to have a team with few injuries. Trying to add safety in afterwards is much more
difficult. FIRST makes it easy to be tough on safety, so communicate this to parents and students
alike that it is a very important aspect of FRC. Who knows, you may win a safety award at your first
competition!
If you can provide parents with a full disclosure of what hazards may be around during an FRC team
meeting then they can make an appropriate judgement as to what parts of the team, if any, they will
permit their student to participate in. An example disclosure form that we use is in the appendices.
In some countries, there are strict privacy laws. This will limit your ability to use video or
photographs of your team unless you can get parental permission. An example disclosure form that
we use is in the appendices.
It’s probably also a good idea to collect medical information on your students should they become ill
or get injured while in you care. (More on this when we get to having your team travel to a Regional
competition in the US). This will be region specific depending on the sort of healthcare provided by
the local or country government and on any private health coverage that students may typically
have. An example medical form is found in the appendices; this form also has general contact
information for the parents and student on the same form as you want all this information in one
place should there be an emergency.
One other thing on the forms is culture specific rules that you may wish to add. In some countries it
is typical for students to be able to drive an automobile. You may want to consider a policy about
students transporting students. Or mentors transporting students. Any issues surrounding your
“duty of care” to your students when they are involved in team meetings or activities should be
considered.
Mentors - the number of mentors you will need varies widely and depends heavily on your team
philosophy, structure, and schedule….so have a plan for what you want. We’ve seen teams with as
few as 4 mentors, and there maybe teams with 1 mentor. If you have a “safety” rule of needing two
mentors present with each group of students and you have 4 subteams (mech, electrical, software,
and business), then you will need at least 8 mentors every time you meet unless you can collocate
some of your subteams in a single room. If you have mentors not showing up for each meeting,
then you will need more. A good starting point or goal might be a dozen mentors , but this number
could change if you have over 50 students on your team.
Just like for students and parents, have a plan that is culturally relevant for how you will get mentors
involved. Many people, especially professionals like engineers and scientists, will want to be
involved in training the next generation of people in their profession—who doesn’t like to talk about
what they do if they are enjoying doing it. Professional organizations, like ACM, IEEE, SAE, etc. are
great places to find these people. Don’t overlook the local machine shop either or the DIY (Do It
Yourself) mother or father who is good with a hammer, wrench, or welding torch.
Mothers and fathers of students involved in the team may want to be mentors. In some cultures,
students in their high school years spend less time with their family at home. FIRST is a great way for
the family to share in something together and you may find parents who are looking for ways to stay
“connected” with their students during the last few years before they go to university.
Getting one person excited to be a mentor will many times lead to another.
Sometimes, the best place to find mentors is by talking to your sponsors.
Sponsors – If you don’t have funding or you need more funding (getting a dozen or more people to a
US-based regional can cost $US 20,000 or more), you will need to find sponsors. Once again, it’s all
about planning and being prepared with a culturally relevant message.
Most sponsors will want to know what they payback is for them. Two great areas are marketing and
new employee identification and development. In the marketing area, if you put sponsors on your
team T-shirt, on your robot, your website, and any correspondence, then your sponsors are getting
“rewarded” for helping you by people in your community seeing that the sponsor is supporting the
community. It may seem a little self-serving but if they don’t spend their marketing money with you,
they just might by space in a newspaper, magazine, or the phone book. They may also be looking for
ways to get really good, new employees. By sponsoring an FRC team they can watch potential
future employess—and train them along the way—so that when FRC students graduate from
university, they are ready to make a big impact at one of your sponsors simply because they’ve
known the sponsor for years. Combining this sort of sponsorship with mentors from the sponsors
means that these sponsors can actually be training their future employees and helping them study
relevant things at university. It’s a very powerful combination
In some countries, sponsors will want to provide you with lots of mentors and other resources
besides funding. Corporations need to show that they are responsible community citizens and one
way is for the company to get involved with local community efforts by giving their employees time
and resources to work with community groups. Do not under-estimate the degree to which an
international company might want to help your small community.
So, where do you find these companies. The best place to start is the FIRST website! Find a
company that is currently a FIRST sponsor in the US and then approach their local office. This has
worked at least 50% of the time, if not more, for us. It is great proof of just how good a job FIRST
does, how great FIRST sponsors are, and how much people recognize the value of a FIRST-corporate
relationship.
Preparing your “pitch” to students, parents, mentors, or sponsors
Video – go to the FIRST website and show some of the great video that is available. Have a couple
favorites so that you can have one at the beginning giving an overview of the program and maybe
one towards the end that leaves people with sense of how exciting FRC is…and what it can do for
them.
Know what you want to accomplish – for each and every meeting, know what you want to
accomplish at that meeting. If you want students to sign-up for the team, bring permission forms. If
you want sponsors, know what you want them to give you and what you will give them. If you have
a clear idea of what a successful meeting looks like, you will be able to prepare the materials and
message ahead of time for that meeting so that you can achieve that outcome.
Think about some common objections – Along with knowing what you want to accomplish, you
should think of what some common objections are so that you can overcome the “typical” obstacles.
If you need to have night time meetings because mentors are available then but it’s dangerous for
students to walk home at night in your area, have some sort of chaperone function that gets
students home. Again, this is culture-specific
Talk about who you already have on-board – there is nothing like success to get more success. If you
need more of something and you already have some of it, tell the next group this. So, if you want
some new mentors to join, have a current mentor come along and talk about why they are
mentoring. If you are trying to get a new sponsor, tell them what funds you’ve already manage to
raise…and if you haven’t raised any yet tell them who else you are going to see so that they know
what sort of “club” they are joining.
Talk about the beneifts – every school, community, or nation has goals and priorities. If you can talk
about your FRC team in terms of how any one or all of these will be fulfilled then you can leverage
the general interest and energy around those issues. In one country, there is a skills shortage in
general and for STEM people in particular, so FRC teams repeat that message and talk about how
FRC helps solve it.
Talk about your own experience with FIRST – there is nothing like first hand, personal experience. If
you’ve been to a FIRST event—especially Championship—you can relate this experience to the group
you are meeting with. Your excitement and enthusiasm can not help but bubble over into the
conversation and people will see your passion, and they too will become excited.
Chapter 4 Getting ready for build season.
“Rome was not built in a day.”
….12th century French proverb.
Do a skills review for both mentors & students,
answer questions about what to expect in the KoP,
things you may want to be working on NOW with respect to travel and shipping your robot.
Are you interested in community outreach and we can help answer questions about what's worked
for us as well as give you some ideas.
Sign up for FIRST Choice.
Get your students and mentors familiar with FIRST Forums and Chief Delphi as resources.
Order any spare parts or interesting things you may want to explore from AndyMark or Banebots.
Also, get plenty of "standard" nuts and bolts--decide whether you will use "imperial/english", metric
or both (it's not as simple as it might sound).
Most importantly: you need to decide on a team philosophy. FIRST is very flexible about what
mentors do versus what students do during build season. Some teams have the mentors build the
robot, some have the students do it, and most are someplace in between. One team’s focus is on
the students developing life skills, so we tend to over emphasize student involvement. Dangerous
work, like welding and metal cutting, is done by mentors but the rest of the robot build is done
mainly by the students. You need to decide what balance is best given your team's goals and skills.
Chapter 5
Getting ready for Kick-off and robot design.
“The only bad idea is the one you didn’t think about…”
We use something we call Aus-MOE for dissecting and translating the game manual and animation
into a robot design. I can go through this with your mentors and student leaders.
Which brings up a good point: you need to decide how you will organize the team and how you will
run team meetings during build season. We work as sub teams (mech, software, electronics, field,
shell/bumpers, business, animation) but meet as a team for 15 minutes at the start and end of each
meeting. We may also form "tiger teams" when we get into trouble on some part of the robot or
business plan.
Along with our students building most of the robot, the mentors try to create the framework for the
students to succeed each build season by staying a couple of days ahead of the students,
anticipating problems and making sure that they are always considering alternatives....it's not a bad
idea for you and your mentors to "plan" the season before the students do to make sure you've
thought of everything you need them to think about (hope that was a clear thought!). If you work
backwards from ship date, you'll see that build season will be a very structured plan on paper. Like
all plans, DRIFT will deviate from it and you and your other mentors will need to continually be a few
days ahead of the students in your minds.
Chapter 6
Build Season
“What ever can wrong, will go wrong”
Murphy’s Law
“Murphy was an optimist”
O’Toole’s Commentary on Murphy’s law
“Don’t Panic!’
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“The sun will come out tomorrow…”
Little Orphan Annie
Building the robot
Don’t forget the bumpers
Building a field
Building a UI/driver station
Practice
Driver/operator training
Safety tests
Driver/Operator/Pit Crew selection
Chapter 7
Getting ready for shipping.
I would rather be in Philadelphia…..W.C. Fields
Don't forget to apply for your Bag & Tag exemption!!!
Research what materials you are allowed to ship out of and back into your country--they may be
different than the materials the USA allows (research this too!!) because of the differences in the
agricultural and customs laws.
For the USA side of things since we've shipped many times to the USA. You will want to get the
proper wood for your crate.
You will also want to bring some things in your crate that you can't take on the plane with you. You
can't ship batteries, but the US Regional Tournament organizers will have some for you. I don't
know if your country is 60Hz 120V for electricity, but you will need to know this to make sure your
battery chargers work or not. And you may need plug adapters. Don't bother bringing a battery spill
kit as it's easier to just buy a plastic pail and baking soda when you get to the US.
We are not allowed to ship batteries, but check your shipping regulations.
about tools - if you have different electricity standards then the US (60Hz 120V), plan on buying a
cordless drill and cordless vacuum cleaner from Wal-Mart that you can use year after
year. handtools can be packed in checked luggage. FRC teams will absolutely love to help you with
tools and spare parts--"gracious professionalism" is a very real thing at FRC tournaments--but you
will still want to have some favorites and essentials.
Use tie-down straps and bungy cords in your crate that attach to hooks on the inside of your
crate. Place your robot in the crate with weight off the wheels. Seal the crate with wood screws and
don't forget to bring the cordless drill/screwdriver! (yup, packed it inside the crate once...got saved
by gracious professionalism).
Plan on shipping a "war wagon" or buying/building one in the US (we can tell you what to get at
Home Depot). A "war wagon" is something you will use to transport the robot from your pit area to
the playing field and back again.
Plan on bringing your country's flag and a 2 meter or so pole to display it on....the field MC will
announce your team and wave it. Very cool!
Chapter 8
Travel to the US
Planes, trains, and automobiles
Spend a lot of time early on (like before build season!), researching airfares. Once you know which
regional you are going to, contact the regional director or organizing committee and ask them if they
will get you a group rate at a hotel that meets your cultural norms…and budget. It helps if you can
tell parents as soon as possible the total cost (including food!).
Have a plan for how you decide who gets to go with the “travel team”. If it’s everyone who can
afford it,that’s great. If your team pays part or all of the travel expense, try and have some system
which causes students to “earn” their way onto the travel team: if something is given for free, it is
not valued and you will get much better behaviour and performance from students who feel that
something of great value has been earned by them for their efforts. Even if your team doesn’t have
a subsidy, try to develop a way for “travel team” to be viewed as an honour in representing their
team, community, and country.
The MOST important thing are passports and visas.
Let the airline know that you are traveling as a school group with "limited' chaperones/teachers and
that you would appreciate being seated near each other (airlines often overlook this for high school
students for some crazy reason).
We've found that renting 12 person passenger vans works very well for ground transportation--you
can get them fairly cheap by going to the Travelocity web site. Make sure you know whether your
countries driver license is recognized in the US. You may have to get an international drivers license
from your country, or you may just be out of luck and you will need to rent busses with a driver.
Make sure everyone has travel insurance.....we've managed to go to the hospital nearly every trip
(one student got their first migraine headache, my 8 year old daughter tripped and fell on her nose,
my wife got pneumonia at our first regional tournament in New Hampshire no less!).
Make sure you have signed permission forms with you from the each student's parents that gives
you the authority to make medical decisions for their student. I've had to use this and it is
important.
Know how you will pay a US hospital should someone need medical care. MasterCard and Visa are
probably your best bet. Hospital visits will cost you about $300-500 before they let you leave with
the remainder billed to you later.
Plan an itinerary for your students for the whole time you are there. Thursday is very boring if you
are not working in the pit area or driving the robot. We are going to be in the US for about a week
and have plans for Disney, Kennedy Space Center, visiting some universities, etc.
Research and choose healthy, inexpensive dining options so you are not eating at McDonalds all the
time.
Have all your students register on the FIRST website and specify electronic release forms, if they
have internet access at home.
Draft a "travel code of conduct" for your students BEFORE they leave. Review it with them and their
parents in the room at the same time. Let the parents know that if a student breaks the code of
conduct, the student may be sent home immediately on the first available flight at the parent's
expense--I have the parents and students sign this. Using this system, I have had no trouble
transporting students 10,000 miles (Australian students are very respectful of authority as compared
to their American counterparts!).