Lego League Coaching Advice

1. Watch Zachary Trautwein’s YouTube videos, old and new. He embodies the spirit of the event – it is a fun competition where we lift each other up.
2. Limit your team size so everyone can learn. Although the program allows large teams, try to stick with six. That’ll give everyone time to code, build, and innovate.
3. Buy a Pybricks license. It’ll cost you $60 for the year, but the program is so much more accurate than Lego’s free version. You’ll have fewer “Why isn’t the robot consistent” headaches.
4. Confirm each motors behavior before building your robot around it. Few things are more heartbreaking than tearing a robot apart when you realize the small motor was broken by the prior year’s team and needs to be replaced.
5. Get the parents involved. When parents shy away from helping, it is usually “I don’t know how to code” or “I’ve never built a robot” before. Pull them into your practices, because their enthusiasm will inspire their kids.
6. Communicate with the parents early and often. First Lego League is like baseball, if every player had to build their own bat and ball. Because of that, there’s a lot of “Does anybody know a person who works at X”, and it is easier to ask for that help when you’re constantly chatting with the team parents.
7. Ask for donations of unused LEGO Technics. Running out of parts to build an attachment can derail a team. Starting with a plethora of parts (and learning the discipline of keeping them organized) keeps the fun+productivity going.
8. Find a convenient shared space. If your school has a place large enough to securely keep your table, then I envy you. If you’re lucky enough to have a parent with a home large enough for the table, then be constantly thankful to that parent. Especially in Minnesota, where working in a garage in November is a non-starter, having a convenient shared space for building is a treasure.
9. Instill the discipline of “don’t get obsessed” and minimally-viable product. Teams have lost weeks trying to make an attachment or design work. Setting up some intentional-fails early on will give students the experience of letting designs go, and focusing on the progress rather than the obsession.
10. Try to invest in a second robot. The LEGO robots are unapologetically expensive. In a time where the Raspberry Pi and Arduino can do so much, it is hard to fathom the crazy price of these robots. Whatever model you pick, if you can (maybe over a couple seasons) afford a spare robot, you’ll 3x your team’s efficiency by dividing-and-conquering – plus the team will have less fear of experimenting.

Whether you work in a startup or in an enterprise, you can see how each of these lessons can apply to your career. Are there other lessons that I haven’t learned yet? Let me know!