Getting Involved¶

Student Robotics is powered by volunteers. We have a variety of skills and backgrounds, but share a passion for encouraging the teams through the medium of robotics.

There are a lots of different ways you can get involved. Whether it's mentoring a team through the competition year, helping run one of our events or developing our hardware or software, this runbook is the place to look for guidance on how we do things.

What to expect¶

When you first start helping out, you'll have a chat with a volunteer co-ordinator who will be able to tell you a bit more about how we're organised and work with you to find things you'd like to help with. They'll also ask you for contact details and for you to read the Code of Conduct.

They'll also be able to answer any questions you have about the organisation and get you set up with accounts on our collaboration platforms (we primarily use Slack and GitHub).

Responsibilities¶

Everyone will contribute in different ways and has a range of different experiences. It's up to each of us to create the community we want to be a part of.

Reliability, communication and taking ownership¶

Our time as volunteers is precious, so its important that we spend it on making things happen or enabling those who are doing that.

Please be clear with about what you're working on and how it's going. This helps others know where they can help and creates a reference for the future.

It's completely fine to say no to things or to explicitly drop them if you don't have the capacity. We trust you to balance your contributions to SR with the rest of your life.

It's better to say no to something than say yes and not do it.

Being empathetic and creating a safe environment¶

We should be thinking about others whenever we do something, acknowledging the effort they may have put in before criticising.

For example: if you're reviewing something a colleague has been working hard on, and all you do is say "Approved, but needs a couple of changes" then you haven't thought about the effect that has on the person, nor have you considered the power of saying something more congratulatory and celebratory.

We aim to be compassionate and care about other volunteers. Everybody should want to create and enjoy a safe, fun place to contribute, where people can take risks without fear of ridicule or retribution, where all questions are answered in a friendly and empathetic manner, where people consider the position of others before responding, and where everybody's default position isn't to prove something about themselves, but to help their colleagues to grow and improve.

Tasks¶

Main article: Tasks

Our main list of tasks is at https://github.com/srobo/tasks/issues. If there's something you'd like to get involved with doing, discussing on the task there (and possibly creating one if needed) is the way to go.