Team+Council

=Team Council=

The FRC Team Council involves a student and mentor/coach from each FRC team across NC.

//**The purpose (from Marie Hopper, NC Regional Director):**// This is not a council for creating a wish list for someone else to fulfill. This is an active part of NC FIRST Robotics Program. It is a way to bring together the FIRST community state-wide to support each other as they see the need.

We met at Dorton after kick off on January 7, 2012 to talk about things Tom Gerber from The Regional Planning Committee facilitated the meeting.

__The Agenda was as follows:__

Welcome! -Sign-In -Purpose of Team Council--as stated above--a way to influence and impact our FRC community.

Team Council Participation Requirements: -Willing Student and Mentor from each team in NC

The Regional Planning Commitee welcomes a representative from the Team Council to take part in the planning meetings. Meetings occur throughout the year in various locations around the state, sometimes via video or phone conference.

There is a possibility that next year NC FIRST Robotics will be a 501c3 which may allow them to receive funds that could help us expand in NC and decrease the cost of the Regional.

There was discussion about pros and cons of becoming a "district" with other FRC regions to decrease the cost of participating in multiple events within the district. One consequence of this is not just a lower cost to go to a second event but also smaller events that are not as large as our current NC State Regional event. This also generally only happens in areas with higher concentrations of FIRST teams--we are growing but, not quite that big yet.

Some projects that the Regional Planning Committee invites us to be part of: --Providing volunteer staff for the safety glass tables at Regionals --State wide fund raising efforts --Off season/preseason events---Team 587 The Hedgehogs have a variety background resources and planning white papers, etc for one of these. We have looked into doing this in previous years. It is our estimation that a NC off season event will take at least four committed teams with about 20 volunteers each. Keep us in the loop to help with something like that. --Philanthropic projects --Other things that we as the FRC community have an interest in pursuing as a group--what would WE like to see happen in NC?