We're back!

So, after a 2.5 year blogging-hiatus, the operations team is back and blogging again. Essentially, we did not disappear, but our blogging tendencies did, as operations was a one-man job last year. This season, however, we have a legit team of people, lots of things to do, changes to handle, and a recession to deal with... so we're going to need all the help we can get!

A few things we should probably explain right off the bat:

1. It's the Operations Team now, not Non-Technical. Basically, it's always been a bit embarrassing for the non-tech team to explain its name to judges and others at robotics competitions. It undermined our credibility and didn't exactly line up with FIRST's missions of promoting technology and engineering... Hence, this season we changed it to the less derogatory, more appropriately slick "operations".

2. In the 2.5 years since the last blog post, the constituency of our team has changed! Allison's off at Tufts, Hannah at Princeton - we've got a whole new set of people now. To meet us all, check out our webpage on Gatorbotics.com. The team has grown a bit larger than it was in previous seasons due to expanded responsibilities (See #4).

3. It's already week 5 of build season! Oh my. Yes, that's right, the bulk of the season's already transpired, but that's okay, because Operations does much of it's work over the off season anyways. We've done a lot, but we still have lots to do.

4. Our responsibilities have changed a little bit since we were "non-tech"... Operations is currently in charge of the website, pins, shirts, chairman's essay, the woodie flowers essay, the chairman's movie, the business plan, public relations, dealing with sponsors and fundraising; this is a bit of an expansion on what non-tech was responsible for in past seasons. More on that in the next blog post.