20 September 2008

So far, so good...

I had the pleasure of attending the 4th team meeting at the school. It seems that the new team members are growing in number with each passing day. Lisa has been fantastic in getting people interested and joining.

This coming Monday we're having an orientation night where new team members and their families find out the details of what their student will be doing with the the team, what's expected of each member and what they can expect from everyone else.

Preparations for the new season have been made and training sessions have been established and scheduled.

Next weekend, we're participating in a town-wide business expo with both machines on display. This is going to be great...


07 September 2008

First team meeting of school year.

This past Friday was the 1st team meeting of the new season. Quite a few new faces mixed in with the older, familiar faces of last season.

as usual, some have an idea of what they would like to do, most don't, but that's OK... there'll be plenty of time for them to choose.

Bri and Eric did a fine job of running the meeting, they will get even better as time moves forward.

On Thursday, we had a mentor meeting and established the training calendar for the fall and identified the activities over the same period.

Our faculty advisor had a surprise for us... she had recruited two more faculty interested in helping the team. Both of them are science teachers and so we have a greater potential of attracting females to join the team.

It was a calm, fun meeting, lots got done.

That's it for now...

01 September 2008

What's been going on...

It's been a long time since I last wrote anything, and a lot has happened. No surprise there.

Anyway, my youngest graduated this year and is now at Purdue, which makes next season the first that I won't have a child on the team. It will be certainly different.

Last year was also different, it was the best year ever, the team had the most successful season to date, the reasons for which are manyfold. Since the last post of 2006, which was our first season at the school, lots has happened, and not all of it good. What once was a bright future at the school as we entered that phase turned out rather poorly. I could go into the whole story with volumes of why that was so, but suffice to say that one leader was less than stellar and had a position of authority which was abused, IMHO. That person has been removed; a cancer excised and healing has begun.

That is all past us, all connections have been severed and we're on a path to grow the team in the school. Bridges that were burned by the individual mentioned above are being rebuilt by the successor. Preparations are being made to move ahead, dwelling on the past only long enough to learn from the mistakes made.

One of the biggest changes is the sharing of our training sessions with other teams. We put a lot of time into these sessions and want to share what we've learned. We also want to gain knowledge from others and incorporate that knowledge into our sessions. That is now possible.

Unlike the last few seasons, I will not take so long to share my thoughts.