What a whirlwind last week was! After wrapping up Gulf Coast Maker & Comic Con, we launched right into hosting a visit by the ARM Institute, which included a tour of EMS, where the FIRST Robotics Competition field is being built, as the centerpiece of our Advanced Manufacturing & Robotics Center. There we got to discuss our work with The People of Manufacturing media crew, before heading to set for Tampa Bay’s first ever ARM Institute Regional Workshop.
A couple of days later, we staffed the STEM Pavilion we organized for the Synapse Innovation Summit, and helped facilitate a Manufacturing the Future Panel discussion at the Summit.
The morning of March 26, FCDI board members met up with Ryan Astor, from ARM Institute, for a short tour of EMS and to check out the progress of our new FIRST Robotics Competition field, being custom built by the company. We also got some camera time with TPOMFG’s media crew to share more about FCDI and our goals with AMROC.
That night, we hosted the first ARM Institute Regional Workshop in Florida, at the Hillsborough Entrepreneur Collaborative Center. At the workshop, about a dozen guests representing local academia from the University of South Florida, Hillsborough Community College and St. Petersburg College, along with a couple of local companies and representatives from FCDI, heard from ARM Institute’s CEO, Byron Clayton and Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Bob Grabowski, along with Ryan Astor, ARM’s Regional Relationship Manager.
On March 28, at the Synapse Innovation Summit , Braas Corporation joined us to give our booth a visual boost by supplying a CNC simulator and robotic arm to give Synapse Innovation Summit STEM Pavilion visitors a look at some manufacturing education tools. It was a great complement to the other great exhibitors who came together to showcase the best of Tampa Bay STEM education.
At the Summit, FCDI president, Steve Willingham, facilitated a great panel discussion we pulled together, with Dr. Clayton, along with Jay Johnson of EMS; Lara Sharp Program Director of Engineering Technology at St. Petersburg College; Rich Alvarez, Director of Workforce Development for the Pinellas ExOffenders Reentry Coalition, and Greg Serio of The People of Manufacturing.
Principal to the discussion was to the value of supporting small to mid-sized manufacturing companies already making an impact in the area. While it’s great to have big box manufacturing names in the area, it’s the smaller companies that overall employ the most people and bring added economic value to Tampa Bay through the production of a wide variety of products and services, the panel agreed.
At every stop , we beat the drum for the education to workforce pipeline and the power of real world , project based, mentor supported learning and pre-apprenticeship programs like we’ll be providing at the Advanced Manufacturing & Robotics Center. ARM Institute echoes our conviction, and added their voice of expertise on the state of U.S. manufacturing right now (good!) and the need for skilled young talent to make it better. ARM’s goals are to build a world class knowledge center and staging facility that transitions innovation technology to production at all levels of manufacturing, but as much as possible to small and mid-sized manufacturers, like the hundreds we have here in the Tampa Bay area.
It was a great week that gave us an opportunity to showcase the important work we’re doing in the areas in the manufacturing and tech education fields, and to start the conversation of building a more robust, full spectrum school to work, solutions oriented manufacturing support community across the Tampa Bay region and the southeast.
We’ll continue to build on the work started during the whirlwind week of March 26, as members of the ARM Institute and through the development of AMRoC, through which we’re working to help provide empowering workforce skills for young people, and with our program partners, help bridge the talent gap to 21st century manufacturing & industry right here in Tampa Bay.