FCDI Heads to Houston FIRST Championship!

The Foundation for Community Driven Innovation heads to Texas next week, for the Houston FIRST Championship. In addition to cheering on Tampa Bay area teams competing at the event,  we’re facilitating two workshop sessions at the FIRST Conference there.

Manufacturing the Future – Thursday April 19, 1:30pm, GRB 360A

It’s become one of our favorite topics, and we’ll be moderating a  Manufacturing the Future panel discussion at the event on Thursday, April 19, 2018 from 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM in the George R. Brown Convention (GRB) Center in room- 360 A.  Expected on the panel will be:

Manufacturing the Future was delivered as a panel presentation and discussion at ROBOTICON Tampa Bay, and facilitated by our manufacturing education partner, Greg Serio, of The People of Manufacturing.  The session created a powerful experience for participating team members and others.  Originally scheduled to facilitate the panel at the Championship, Greg is unable to attend so we’ll be facilitating on his behalf. The panel will feature manufacturing experts currently participating in the FIRST Championship, and other associates, and gives FIRST students, alumni and special guests an opportunity to hear from a variety of manufacturing professionals and help identify helpful career and college tracks.

The Power of Off-Seasons & the Showcase Scrimmage – Friday April 20, noon, GRB 350D

Then on Friday April 20th we’re hosting a workshop on “ The Power of Off-Seasons & the Showcase Scrimmage ,” from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM in GRB 350 D . Bring your lunch or we’ll eat together afterwards and keep the conversation going! Presented by Terri Willingham, program director at Foundation for Community Driven Innovation, with fellow board members Steve Willingham, Systems Engineer, Mentor for multiple FIRST Teams and Chuck Stephens.  We’ll share best practices from ROBOTICON Tampa Bay to help attendees make the most of local off-season and showcase events. When we first organized ROBOTICON Tampa Bay, now in its 6th year, we modeled the off-season event on a scaled back version of the Orlando Regional. We quickly discovered a community appetite for a robust large-scale local robotics event. With just two Regional events in a state the size of Florida, a local off-season competition provides a unique and exciting event for local residents, a way for FIRST teams to see all the programs in context, and a publicity boon for the county and event partners eager to align themselves with a high profile youth academic program like FIRST that provides a talent pipeline for area industry and business. Over time, ROBOTICON became an educational proving ground, as we added related engineering exhibits and some fun opportunities like mentor and human matches (a great way to explain the games to the public), a live interview show called FIRST Looks  , hosted by PLuGHiTz Live Radio, a podcast company owned by a FIRST alum, and eventually, all four programs in what’s become a giant robotics science fair.  It’s also made the development of the Advanced Manufacturing & Robotics Center (AMRoC) possible, through awareness raising and proven impact. In this session, we’ll go over best practices for turning the humble off-season – big or small – and local scrimmages into robust recruitment tools for teams, mentors, volunteers, and program sponsors. We’re looking forward to sharing and learning from others at the Houston FIRST Championship next week, and hope you’ll follow along on FIRSTs Social Stream and ours (Facebook & Twitter!) to see why we do the work we do, and why we believe young people who are immersed in real world problem-solving, project-based learning experiences and challenges can become the kind of capable, critical thinkers we need for a personally fulfilling,  socially responsible and economically powerful future for them and for us.