Case Studies: Learning From the Best FRC Media Teams

The FRC community is unusually open about its work. Studying what top teams actually publish is one of the fastest ways to level up. Here are real, verifiable practices and the lessons behind them.

Case study 1: FRC 1690 (Orbit) — reveals plus open CAD. Orbit, a top international team, pairs polished robot reveal videos with publicly released Onshape CAD each season; their 2025 and 2026 robot CAD releases are posted on Chief Delphi (the 2026 robot, 'Kepler', was released there with x_t files and a CAD Drive folder, alongside a Behind the Bumpers video). The lesson isn't 'be as good as Orbit' — it's the dual strategy: a reveal builds hype for your audience, while open-sourcing your CAD contributes to the community and signals confidence. Even a modest team can publish their CAD link; it costs nothing and earns goodwill and Impact Award-worthy community-contribution evidence.

Case study 2: 'Behind the Bumpers'-style explainer content. Beyond flashy reveals, many teams produce explainer videos walking through their robot's subsystems (the long-running 'Behind the Bumpers' interview series is a well-known example). The lesson: educational content has a longer shelf life and broader audience than a one-time reveal. A calm, well-captioned 'how our intake works' video helps rookie teams, demonstrates your team's expertise, and is exactly the kind of FIRST-message-spreading judges reward. You don't need a render farm — a phone, good lighting, and clear narration are enough.

Case study 3: Public documentation teams (e.g., FRC 167 Iowa City Robotics, Team RUSH 27). Some teams publish their award process and Impact Award resources openly — FRC 167 maintains a public docs site with an Impact Award section, and Team RUSH 27 (a 2014 Championship Chairman's Award winner) posts practice interview Q&A and their winning presentation materials. The lesson: documenting in public forces clarity and creates a reusable internal playbook simultaneously. Your process docs can live somewhere students and the community both benefit from.

Case study 4: The community infrastructure itself. The Blue Alliance (volunteer-run) and the Chief Delphi forums exist because teams share. The lesson for your media team: participate, don't just consume. Suggest your robot photos and reveal videos to The Blue Alliance so they appear on your team page; post a build-thread on Chief Delphi; answer a rookie team's question. This community presence is both outreach and reputation-building.

How to run your own case-study session. Make this a recurring team activity:

1. Watch 5 recent robot reveals (search them on YouTube or browse Chief Delphi's Robot Showcase); for each, note the hook, the pacing, and one technique you could copy.
2. Open two top teams' published CAD or docs and identify one practice to adopt.
3. Pick exactly one technique to implement this month — don't try to copy everything.

The meta-lesson. Every team in this lesson got good by sharing openly and learning from others in a loop. The biggest mistake a media team can make is working in isolation. Study, adopt one thing, ship it, share it back, repeat. That loop, sustained over seasons, is how ordinary teams become teams others study.