Allocating teams

Allocating Teams

  • Transfer data from the Google Form of Team Applications into spreadsheet, and populate new spreadsheet ‘SR Year Teams’ with following info, in chronological order:

    • Team Leader Name
    • Email address
    • Phone number
    • Organisation
    • Organisation address
    • Organisation postcode
    • TLA
    • Rookie
    • LTC
    • LTC Area
    • LTC Email address

  • Remove duplicate applications, keeping a record of the duplicate applications in case it is possible to allocate more than one team to an organisation.

  • Consult Team Archive to establish whether the team is (i) a rookie, (ii) obtain previous TLA.

  • If rookie team, need to allocate a new TLA, taking care to ensure that it has not been used previously.

  • Plot geographical location of allocated teams using postcode.

  • Plot geographical location of LTCs.
  • Divide teams up aiming for geographical areas with equal numbers of teams in each LTC area.

  • Enter the LTC information on to ‘SRYear Teams’ spreadsheet.

  • Produce spreadsheets for relevant people:

  • ‘User account info’ including: Team Leader Name, Team Leader Email address, Organisation, TLA. Share with person in charge of user account info.
  • A spreadsheet for each LTC containing the info for the teams for whom they are responsible: Team Leader Name, Email address, Phone number, Organisation, Organisation Address, Postcode, TLA, Rookie.

  • ‘Kickstart Teams’ for Kickstart Coordinator: TLA, Organisation, Postcode, LTC Area, LTC, LTC Email address.

  • Send ‘Team Leader Intro’ email via MailChimp to successful Team Leaders including following information:

    • Kickstart info
    • User account info
    • Inform re. TLA (using info from ‘SRYear Teams’ spreadsheet)
    • Inform re. allocated LTC
    • Advice re. seeking help – i.e website, forum, LTC, Mentor, Team Coordinator
    • Explain re. SR being a volunteer-run organisation.

Example of email sent in 2017

Congratulations – your team has been allocated a place for Student Robotics 2017! (I am aware that you may have applied for more than one place as you were hoping to have more than one team, however, due to demand for this year’s competition we have only been able to allocate one team per organisation.)

So, what happens next? Our volunteers are busy planning this year’s Kickstart event where you will be introduced to the SR Programme and receive your SR kit. It will be held on 15th October, 2016 at various locations around the UK. You will be notified which Kickstart event you have been assigned to attend over the next few days. Throughout the SR Programme your team members will require access to SR services. Therefore, you, as Team Leader, will shortly receive an email containing your SR username and password which will enable you to create user accounts for your team members.

Each team has been assigned a Three Letter Abbreviation (TLA) for ease of communication.

Your TLA is:

Each team has been allocated a Local Team Co-ordinator (LTC) based roughly on your geographical location. Your LTC will be your main point of contact guiding you through the SR Programme. (If you’ve competed before, you may notice that we have reorganised the way in which we provide support/communication.)

Your LTC is:

We are aware that you are all extremely busy people and there is often a great deal of work involved in the logistics of organising a team to enter. Therefore we will endeavour to notify you of information as soon as it is feasibly possible. However, please do bear in mind that Student Robotics is a volunteer-run organisation and, as such, the work is done in people’s spare time leading to some delays occasionally, during which we would appreciate your patience.

If you have any queries from now on, please do the following: 1. Look on the website. 2. Post on the forum (once you’ve received your SR user account information) NB. Please do not post sensitive personal information on the forum as this is publicly accessible. The forum is a great way to share information and get answers to your questions - if you’re wondering about something, chances are someone else is too or has done and posted on the forum – you’ll hear more about this resource at Kickstart. 3. Email your Local Team Coordinator. 4. Ask your Mentor – this is something your LTC can help with organising. (Ideally all teams would have a Mentor to help with the technical aspects of the Programme. We have a limited number of volunteers who are available to mentor teams, but if there’s not one near to you, we can help support you to find your own from local industry etc.) 5. If after all that your query still has not been answered email me, Fiona at teams@studentrobotics.org.

We’re very excited to have your team participating in this year’s competition and look forward to hopefully seeing you and your team at Kickstart in October!

Attribution

This page is based on work done by Fiona Gillan, originally published at https://github.com/fgillan/sr-team-coord/wiki/Allocating-teams, which was under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.