President's Circle
For almost a decade, Team 812 has started and assisted 25 FIRST Robotics Competition [FRC] teams in San Diego. With our guidance, these teams have won All-Star Rookie Awards, Judge’s Awards, Engineering Inspiration and Chairman’s Award! Because of this, FIRST President, Paul Gudonis, selected our team to represent Southern California in the FIRST President’s Circle, a coalition of 20 FRC teams that are dedicated to create and support self-sustaining FRC teams in the FIRST community. Team 812 collaborated with FPC teams to share our knowledge, experiences, and resources with starting and supporting self-sustainable FRC teams. Since 2007, we have worked together to define what a “successful” team means and how to achieve that “success”. In search for the definition of a “successful” team, we put our skills to the test by starting and mentoring new FRC teams in our community. We kept in regular contact with FPC teams to communicate our accomplishments and setbacks in completing our goals of spreading FIRST. To do so, Team 812 took part in conference calls, email blasts, and online forums. With the President’s Circle teams, we helped put together an online database of tutorials and materials available for download to help teams with everything from creating a team manual to drafting a business plan. These resources have been instrumental in helping rookie FIRST teams get started. Team 812 has gone the extra mile to spread what we know to FRC teams by pioneering the Midnight Tour. We aim to guide rookie and veteran teams on the path to success by sharing our resources because these resources have no worth if no one knows that they exist. And because of our efforts, teams should never be without guidance and support. We encourage other FRC teams in our community to follow our footsteps to share everything that they know and all their experiences to teams that really need the help.
