FIRST Ladies - Blog

NCWIT Award!

10/26/2018

An amazing opportunity for girls and women in computing is open! The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) holds annual competitions for all ages. The Aspirations in Computing Award, or AiC, is their competition for high-school girls.

Many FIRST students have won awards through AiC on the state and/or national levels. NCWIT has a strong presence at FIRST events – they typically have booths at the World Championships, and they often host meetups/socials at FIRST competitions.

There are many fantastic prizes available for AiC winners! I have been honored to be both a National Runner-Up and an Affiliate Winner. As a result of this, I have received cash prizes, cool swag, and more. Cooler and more valuable than any of these prizes, however, is the NCWIT community. All award winners are invited to join the NCWIT AiC private Facebook group; this group is a wonderful resource and a strong community – members are constantly posting about various opportunities in the computing field, tips for programming, scholarships/internships, etc.

Applications for the award are open until November 5th . If you apply, you will answer questions about your computing experience, and you will write essays on topics such as leadership and future goals. Additionally, a mentor must endorse your application.

This is a wonderful opportunity – here is the link to learn more about AiC: https://www.aspirations.org/

This blog was written by Katie from FTC Team Schrödinger's Hat (FTC 3595). If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

Lesson plans & STEM CURRICULUM for kids

5/6/2018

Back in 2015, President Barack Obama announced that science “is more than a school subject, or the periodic table, or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world..." It was during this time that the U.S Department of Education developed a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiative to teach these skills to America’s children.

Why STEM?

Technology isn’t going anywhere. STEM jobs are on the rise in America and throughout the world. Observatory on Borderless Higher Education has called the current job market a “global race for STEM skills.” Indeed, STEM fields will continue to be some of the most in-demand, highest-paying jobs in the world. Did I mention they’re also some of the happiest and most fulfilling jobs?

STEM for Girls

STEM skills are not just for boys. There is a huge need for more women throughout the STEM industry. Sadly, few girls major in computer science or related fields and there is a huge gender gap in the tech field, including Silicon Valley. By starting at home and in the classroom, and by inspiring a love of STEM subjects in our girls while they are still young, we can hopefully encourage more diversity and better representation in this important field.

STEM Resources

No child is too young (or too old) to start learning about science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. Here are some of our favorite resources for children and teenagers.

Preschool

Goldiblox creates wonderful, educational toys for girls ages 4 years and older. Meanwhile, Tynker can be a fun way to teach computer coding to young children. Need more ideas for younger kids? Here’s a great roundup of STEM activities for preschoolers.

Elementary School

Elementary aged children can have fun learning computer coding and video game development, especially when combined with their favorite video game: Minecraft. This curriculum, which uses Minecraft to teach kids Java and JavaScript for video game development, is geared toward children ages 7 to 12 years.

Middle School

While the Minecraft curriculum mentioned above is still age-appropriate for middle schoolers, your child might also be longing for something different. Why not “graduate” to more advanced (and lifelike) video game development?

Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 is a powerful and, not to mention, free video game creation engine. After ensuring that your computer meets the minimum requirements to run the software, you might explain to your child that Unreal Engine 4 is used by professional video game developers to create some of the most popular video games on the planet. It has also been used to create virtual reality worlds, special effects animations, and has even been used by the space industry. It’s intuitive to use and with plenty of online tutorials and free (and paid) resources available for download, just imagine what your child can create!

High School

High schoolers can benefit from lesson plans that are more advanced and include more “real world” projects. While some of the lessons mentioned above, including Unreal Engine, would work well for high schoolers as well, they might also benefit from some of the lessons mentioned here. You could use this as an opportunity to teach your teen about financial literacy and prepare him or her for a possible future career in real estate, banking, accounting, or even design.

Keep in mind that the resources listed above are not an exhaustive list. By doing a quick Google search, you can find many more resources, curriculum outlines, lesson plans, and activities. You might even search for local STEM clubs for children in your area. If you’re interested in paying for STEM lessons, iD Tech offers a summer camp program for children in preschool through high school. Need something online? Skillcrush and Treehouse are two paid options with beginners’ coding classes that could easily work for high schoolers.

This blog was written by Julie Morris. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

Natalie Panek- Aerospace engineer interview

5/1/2018

Natalie Panek is a Canadian aerospace engineer and explorer. She graciously agreed to do a phone interview for FIRST Ladies to tell us more about her job, her experiences as a woman in STEM, and her advice for other girls and women in STEM.

FTC 3595: What first sparked your interest in STEM, and when did you decide that you wanted to be a rocket scientist?
Natalie Panek: I think my interest in STEM sparked from spending a lot of time outside. I grew up in the Rockies in Canada and did a lot of camping with my family, and spending so much time outdoors fostered a sense of exploration in me; that in turn sparked an interest in science, tech, and engineering and how STEM can be used to change the world. As for becoming a rocket scientist, that was never really a plan. My lifelong dream is to become an astronaut, and so that’s always been the long-term goal. The path that I’ve gone down to try and get there has led me to where I am today, which is a rocket scientist or an aerospace engineer.

FTC 3595: What motivates you about your job, and how does it make you passionate and excited for work every day?
Natalie Panek: I really love that I get to work on challenging engineering projects, and some of the things that I work on are space robotics. (You can imagine the Canadarm or other robotic arms, or even a Mars rover.) Right now I’m working on a Mars rover program for the European Space Agency, and we’re building the chassis and locomotion system: the base or the frame of the rover, its legs, its wheels, as well as its motors and all its other sensors. Everything that it needs to drive around on the planet, and steer, and do science. So for me, going into work every day is so cool, because I’m actually getting to help design and build hardware that’s going to explore space or go to another planet.

FTC 3595: What’s one of your favorite or one of the coolest projects that you’ve worked on to date? Maybe the rover?
Natalie Panek: Yes, definitely the rover. I feel like that’s the icing on the cake, but I’ve done a lot of cool things. I’ve worked on a lunar dust study; we were trying to see how you could protect hardware that would be on a lunar rover from hazardous lunar dust. Lunar dust can really cause a lot of problems for your rover and your instruments, and I thought that program was really cool. When we did testing on our hardware, we used a lunar simulant, and the variants were named Obi Wan and Kenobi.

FTC 3595: That’s awesome!
Natalie Panek: Yeah! We get fun little quirky things like that in the space industry sometimes. I’ve also worked on projects that really help promote sustainable exploration like trying to repair and recycle dead satellites using robotic arms. There are a lot of satellites orbiting around the Earth helping power our everyday lives, but there isn’t a great infrastructure or plan in place to help take care of satellites or do something with them at the end of their life. We’re trying to figure out a way of using robotics so that you could reuse a broken-down satellite instead of letting it become space junk.

FTC 3595: You’re building history with the work that you’re doing right now. What’s the biggest challenge working in a field with a lot of unknowns?
Natalie Panek: That’s a really great question. It’s kind of a strange question to answer, because the challenge is that everything is unknown. You have to go in every single day being open to failing, being open to things not going according to plan, and then being able to work with a really dynamic team of people to solve those challenges. You have to be creative and see different ways of approaching a problem and solving it, because like you said these are game-changing projects and technologies that sometimes have never been built before. It's hard, but that’s also what makes it really cool and exciting.

FTC 3595: Where do you see yourself in the next 5-10 years? What would you be doing or what other cool projects would you want to work on?
Natalie Panek: Well, I think I still want to be working in the space industry. That’s always been my passion, and I love what I do. But as I’ve gotten further in my career, I’ve realized the importance of science communication and science policy and inspiring the general public to get excited about the projects that scientists and engineers are working on, as well as figuring out ways to persuade government and different agencies to provide funding for these types of projects. So I would love to delve into more of that side of my work and integrate the science communication, science education, and policy aspects with the engineering work that I do.

FTC 3595: Do you have any advice for girls going into STEM?
Natalie Panek: One of the biggest pieces of advice is to not be afraid to go outside of your comfort zone. I’ve been in a lot of scenarios where I was really afraid to take that first step, whether it was learning how to fly a plane or helping build a solar powered car, and I think that was because I didn’t want to be the person in the room who didn’t know anything. I was afraid that I didn’t have the skills to contribute. But if you can get over that initial fear and vulnerability, you’ll see that usually there is a great team surrounding you to help you overcome those challenges and to help you build your skills. That being said, I also think there are a lot of barriers that are still facing women and minorities in STEM. It is up to everybody to create safer and more welcoming spaces so that people can enter these fields and feel like they have places to move and ways that they can succeed.

FTC 3595: What have been some life-changing experiences, and what have you learned from them?
Natalie Panek: That’s going to be hard to summarize in a one-minute answer, because I feel like I’ve had so many life-changing experiences: my first job where I am still today, working on space robotics, even going to university, taking an engineering degree, and then getting involved in extracurricular activities like helping to build a solar-powered car. I learned that hands-on experiences where you’re getting an opportunity to apply what you've learned in your textbooks and to fail on a daily basis are really powerful experiences, because you’re just learning how to implement something in the real world for the first time or trying to figure out how things work or connect together on the fly.

FTC 3595: You already talked about this a little bit with how all of your time outdoors and exploring influenced you into wanting to do what you do now, but how has it continued to influence you? What impact do all of your explorations have now?
Natalie Panek: It has occurred to me over the past few years just how many parallels there are between exploring here on Earth and exploring in outer space. We’re oftentimes trying to go to remote places or places that no one’s been before in search of the unknown, but I think the stronger parallels are in how we explore and in being responsible for how we explore. One of the things I often talk about is growing up in the outdoors with the “leave no trace” policy. Whenever you're going somewhere new or camping or backpacking, you take out everything that you take in -- you don’t leave anything behind. You try to stay on trail as much as possible, because you don’t want to disturb the land around you, especially in national parks. I think that “leave no trace” policy needs to extend into how we explore space, and also into how we are exploring and studying earth.

That goes back to the satellite servicing project I talked about, because we have all the satellites and this hardware orbiting around the earth that’s doing a lot of good. It’s enabling a lot of technology that we use in our daily lives as well as earth observation satellites, weather monitoring satellites, etc., but if we don’t have a plan in place to take care of what happens to those satellites at the end of their life and we continue to build up the space junk around earth, then we’re not exploring in a sustainable way. So for me, that parallel has really become clear and emphasized in the way that we explore and the need to be more responsible for exploring, both here on earth and in space.

FTC 3595: You’re obviously really passionate about the work that you do when it comes to space, and you love nature as a hobby, but if you were to enter a different field, what would you choose and why?
Natalie Panek: There are so many things that I would want to do and want to be, like maybe a racecar driver or a forest ranger or trail crew in a national park or someone who is an extreme athlete or an explorer who really goes to remote places for a living. Since I probably couldn’t do all of those things, maybe there’s a way I could combine my interests in science communication and somehow do a T.V. show where I could do each of those things as an episode.

FTC 3595: What are some changes that you would like to see in the STEM community?
Natalie Panek: The changes that I’d like to see are promoting more inclusive and safe spaces for people. I think we often talk about needing to inspire the next generation of young people to go into STEM, and while that’s 100% true, I also think that young people are already inspired, they’re already engaged, and they're already working on really cool projects. It’s a matter of keeping young people engaged by creating safe spaces where everyone can feel like they can contribute and are part of a team that’s welcoming.

FTC 3595: There are a lot of girls going into STEM education, but not as many pursuing a STEM career afterwards. Why do you think there’s a big drop when women begin entering the job market?
Natalie Panek: I speak to this point a lot. Universities will report statistics about how many women they have enrolled in undergraduate engineering, but that statistic doesn’t really mean anything unless we look at it with a wider lens i.e. how many women continue on in industry after their degree or once they’re in industry and maybe have a family. Do they stay in that STEM career, and how many women get promoted into director or management positions? These are questions that we definitely need to be talking about and examining at all segments of the pipeline. Are systemic barriers, harassment, work that is not rewarding or fulfilling, or a hostile work environment discouraging people?. I recently heard the phrase ‘the glass ceiling modified to the glass obstacle course, meaning that there are so many things that women and minorities have to navigate in STEM, and it becomes death by a thousand cuts after a while trying to navigate them while getting to a place where you feel like you have succeeded. So all those things are something that we all need to be working on in STEM to change.

FTC 3595: Why do you think it’s important for girls to learn science?
Natalie Panek: I think it’s important for everyone to learn science, because science is present in almost everything that we do. I’m a huge proponent for ensuring that everyone is technology-savvy, not technology-dependent. I think that we’re entering a very interesting time where we’re starting to border on people blindly using technology and devices without taking the time to understand how they work or what the implications of their usage are. We need to build science-literate communities, taking the time to question everything and think intelligently about the world that we live in.

FTC 3595: Is there anything else that we haven’t asked you or you haven’t talked about yet that you would like to touch on, either about your experiences or things that you would like to say to a community of high school roboticists?
Natalie Panek: I would say that as you are navigating your careers, the world of robotics, everything else related to STEM, and looking for role models and mentors, consider and realize that you girls are also role models and mentors to someone younger than you. I guarantee there’s someone younger than you who is also wishing that they could have someone to ask questions and turn to in order to find their way. So as much as you’re excited to learn from others, be willing to teach others as well.

Want to learn more about Natalie Panek? She’s given numerous TEDx Talks, keynotes, etc.

Here are some of our favorites:
Space: Our Invisible Landfill: https://youtu.be/XM-QKG70a5s
Breaking Boundaries on Earth and Beyond: https://youtu.be/0fG6BdpgYR0

Natalie Panek also has a website where you can learn more about her and the projects that she has worked on: https://thepanekroom.com
https://www.facebook.com/nolimitdocumentary/

This blog was written by FTC 3595 Schrodinger's Hat. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

Leadership for Women

4/21/2018

During a recent drive to work, I listened to an NPR broadcast of an interview with Michelle Obama. The interviewer asked her “Do you have any regrets?” I was a bit surprised at the former first lady’s response: “yes”. When she continued (and I’m paraphrasing here) “I regret that I didn’t find my voice when I was younger. That I spent time in awe of the people who were sitting at the table, thinking that they knew so much more than me. But when I arrived at the big table, I found that the others really didn’t know anything more than I did. So, I regret that I didn’t put my ideas out there when I was younger.”
I think that what Michelle Obama was saying was that she regrets not being more of a leader earlier in her life. As John Maxwell (1) defines it: “Leadership is Influence. Nothing more, and nothing less.” So how do you come to have influence? I think there are 3 simple guidelines for this.

Know your stuff. You don’t have to be the expert or have the most technical knowledge, but you can’t influence others (i.e. get your ideas adopted), especially in a technical field, if you aren’t competent. Find people who know more than you, and use their knowledge to compliment what you are learning through your studies and your experiences. Form relationships with these people, so you can rely on their guidance throughout your career. Don’t be afraid to ask questions (it does NOT make you look stupid!), and recognize that “knowing your stuff” is a lifelong endeavor. When you are competent, you can also be confident, which is a requirement for a good influencer, and thus a good leader.
Know yourself. By this I mean be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses. Contrary to what you might think, you should focus a larger part of your time and effort on building upon your strengths, not on improving your weaknesses. When you know and recognize your limits, you can strive to build teams that include people who have strength in your weak areas, freeing you up to focus on what you do best. Self-reflection is a fantastic way to increase your knowledge of yourself, and again you should tap on others for feedback to help you gain insight into what you do well and what you don’t. And take that feedback as a gift! Even though it might be painful to hear from someone you respect that you have gaps in your skillset, it is invaluable information for you to use to improve your effectiveness. This feedback should be used to self-correct: to deliberately modify the way you show up to others. I also call this being coachable. If you always respond to feedback with an excuse or explanation of why you are right or why it is someone else’s fault, people will stop giving you the very feedback that could help you continue to grow.
Know your team. Following up the idea of knowing yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, you need to invest in knowing the same of your teammates. The best teams are combinations of people with different strengths -- this allows the team to achieve more than what the individuals could by working separately. This is huge! When you are working against technical and time deadlines (does that sound familiar??), multiplying your effectiveness by having team members with complimentary skillsets is invaluable! Knowing others takes empathy (that is understanding and sharing the emotions of others). By understanding what motivates others, you can help them better know themselves and work to build upon their strengths. This is so important as a leader, because people want to align themselves with someone who not only gets results, but who also makes them perform better, too.

Recognize that as a female in a technical field you will more than likely find yourself in the minority quite often. That can be a GOOD THING. Being different makes you stand out, and demonstrating and growing your leadership skills gets you selected for increased responsibility. I think that you can recognize that you have tremendous opportunities to build on these ideas as a female participant in the FIRST program. So, go out there and find the work that motivates you, that helps you “relish achievement for its own sake (2)”. And develop your leadership skills so that your voice can be heard early on – so you don’t look back with regret that you didn’t have the confidence to influence the conversation sooner. I can’t wait to follow you FIRST Ladies into a very bright future.

References

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, by John C. Maxwell, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998
“What makes a Leader” by Daniel Goleman, published by the Harvard Business Review, 1998

This blog was written by Joyce Witowski, mentor of FRC team 2468. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

Joyce Witowski has over 30 years of experience as an engineer and leader in the area of semiconductor manufacturing technology. She has held a variety of technical and leadership positions at Intel, General Electric, KLA-Tencor and NXP, spanning process engineering and operations, applications engineering, sales, procurement and quality. She is currently the Director of front-end quality at NXP Semiconductor in Austin, Texas. Joyce holds a BA in Chemistry from Washington and Jefferson College and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Clarkson University. She has been a mentor for FRC team 2468 for the past 9 years, focusing mostly on project management and outreach.

FTC's Social Onion: A Brief Retelling of My Experience as a Co-captain of an All-girls Team

4/14/2018

Typically choosing to surround myself with those who identify as “progressive individuals”, the most sexism I had faced was from teenage boys attempting to find refuge behind the light of their computer screens while throwing verbal attacks in my direction out of envy of my personal successes.

To say that choosing to participate in FIRST Tech Challenge has been one the best decisions I have ever made would be an understatement. Because of the program, I have identified a deep passion for engineering and computer science, I have something to concentrate on and look forward to, and I have made lasting connections with students and professionals across the United States.

Encountering small tufts of sexism too, has been a blessing; even if it is one that has been disguised. Being the co-captain of an all-girls team, and a social one that too, I have encountered quite a few of these tufts.

No matter how much we attempt to drill the idea of Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition into FIRST students, there will still be quiet sexist exchanges that can only be dug out from the memories of those tied into some of the tightest social circles in the FIRST Tech Challenge. Social circles that unravel themselves as an onion would—with those most passionate, successful, and social at the center, and those progressively less so with each layer of the onion.

This past season, I had unknowingly worked my way towards the center of this social onion. Here, I was tagged as one of the more “chill” girls out the of the few girls that were in this odd circle. The closer I got towards the center, I would realize later on, the more acceptable sexist remarks became. After further inspection, I came to a realization that most students were against these remarks, but would say nothing in fear of being marked as “uncool”, and losing their position in the group. Classic.

The number of boys I ran into who clung onto the idea that my team (and other all-girls teams) won awards and advanced solely because of the fact that we are an all-girls team is ludicrous. Oftentimes, they would neglect the fact that we had put in hundreds of hours into perfecting our team’s work (just as they had with their own teams), and would claim that our gender immediately secured awards for the team.

One would expect that after 0 all-girls teams from New Jersey moved onto East Super Regionals the barrage of sexist one-liners would ultimately cease. Instead, a handful of unrelenting boys moved onto more personal attacks. A team once called me out of the blue, and members took turns insulting my work, my team’s advancement status, and even my relationship status. It was especially unsettling because this was a team that we had once worked with very closely. One member (whom I had never even met) went so far as to Direct Message me and make disparaging comments on my intelligence, and my team members’ mental capacities.

It is important, dear FIRST friends, to remain nonchalant in situations like these, and refuse to swoop down to their level and attack them in return. One must hide the frustration and hurt as refraining from doing so will only encourage the oppressor.

It is interesting to note that all these occurrences took place online. Perhaps it is their fear of judges lurking in the shadows, or maybe it is because their confidence suddenly wavers when they can see the faces of those who they are hurting; whatever it is, no one has attempted to make such disgusting comments towards my teammates to our faces at competitions.

It was almost comical that these boys were so bothered by our success that they had dedicated so much time to attempt to stop us. The thought process behind this, however, needs to be brought to the light: being discredited for one’s own work is the daily reality for far too many women in STEM fields. Although these are merely small acts of sexism, and nothing like the growing number of cases of women being sexually harassed in the workplace, it must be addressed. We must extinguish even the smallest of flames as they always have the potential to grow into large, uncontrollable fires.

Aparna Rajesh
FTC: 11306
Prototype G

This blog was written by Aparna Rajesh of FTC team 11306 Prototype G. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

My Experience in FIRST - Katie Kolodner

4/7/2018

As a middle school student in a program dedicated to the Humanities and Communications and comprised of around 90% girls, I believed my obligatory future lay in the liberal arts. Despite my gradually growing passions for mathematics and the sciences, I suppressed my interests in school projects to walk a path similar to that of other girls who loved film and media. By the end of my first quarter in middle school, I had essentially deluded myself in the belief that I needed to precisely mirror others in my grade.
Later that year my dad volunteered to be a judge at the FIRST Tech Challenge Maryland Championship that was being held at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, inviting my brother and me along to watch the competition. Touring the presentation area, I was astounded to discover such complex robots and became fascinated with the obscure, undeveloped idea of engineering I had generated at the time. When qualifying matches began in the field area, however, I was disheartened to discover solely or mostly male drive teams. Perceiving the lack of girls controlling and mobilizing the robot at this competition, though not extinguishing my newly kindled interest in FIRST, was a discouraging experience that instituted tighter chains around my cage of doubt. Yet, as I attended more and more qualifiers and state championships over the years, I noted increased female representation and consequently grew a small kernel of hope that I, too, could become an integral member of a FTC team.
This dream, initially overshadowed by disbelief and apprehension, came into fruition when I applied to a local FTC team through my high school in my sophomore year. My acceptance into Team 5421, RM’d and Dangerous, which I had seen competing even during my middle school years, has opened new doors and allowed me to integrate myself in STEM more closely than ever before. The other girls in my team have additionally given me priceless encouragement, and I am extremely fortunate to have been able to overcome the intimidating, male-only notion of STEM engendered in me early on.
I hope that girls who may be facing such challenges in the present can realize that their futures are not determined by others. Similarly, I aspire that girls will be able to discover a network and community of unique individuals to support them throughout their STEM journey. My greatest piece of advice as someone whose hesitation and uncertainty transformed into passion and confidence is thus to not be afraid to deviate from the norm and instead embrace a new direction. After all, individuality in STEM can only foster, not hinder, both personal and collective growth.

This blog was written by Katie Kolodner of FTC team 5421 RM'd and Dangerous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

Funding a FIRST Team PART 2: Sponsorship

4/2/2018

Competing on robotics teams is impossible without funding. Robotics is an expensive sport, and fundraising allows teams to do what they do! This being said, the process of fundraising can be difficult to start and to continue. So here are some tips on how to start and what to look for when finding and recruiting sponsors
   Sponsors are individuals or organizations that provide funding or other resources to teams. Sponsorships differ from fundraisers in that sponsor relationships are meant to last throughout a season and multiple seasons if you’re lucky! Unlike fundraisers, sponsorships are also meant to be reciprocal. There are four big steps to obtaining sponsorship: setting groundwork, identifying potential sponsors, reaching out to sponsors, and maintaining sponsor relationships.

Groundwork:
   The first thing teams should be doing is documenting what needs their season will entail. Creating a projected budget for your upcoming season is a great way to start (see previous blog for details on preliminary budgeting). But needs of teams aren’t exclusively financial. When looking for sponsors, it is important to recognize that sponsors can do more than provide financial support. Sponsors are also great sources for materials, mentorship, and services.
This all plays into the groundwork your team should be doing. When looking at the needs of your team, look at things your team can be sponsored for instead of buying yourself. Teams spend a lot of money on branding materials, team shirts, and printing a new engineering notebook every single year. These are needs too!
Another great way to start a season is by writing a business plan. Optimally, business plans should be a great house for your early budgets. They are a great tool when setting short term and long term goals, looking at your team’s strengths and weaknesses, creating a mission statement to outline what motivates your team, and documenting budgets and expenses. Business plans help to make your team seem professional and organized, and are impressive to companies that will have business plans of their own.
Sponsorship letters are similar, but more condensed. Letters should be only one page, and include brief team history, financial needs, what FIRST is, and contact information. Having all of this written beforehand will come in handy later...
But before any money comes into your team, there needs to be a plan for how money will be funneled. Does your team have a bank account? Is money run through your school? Are donations to your team tax deductible? The worst thing would be to receive money but have nowhere for it to go.

Identifying Potential Sponsors:
   Once your team is fully ready, budget and business plan in hand, now is the time to find companies or individuals that may be able to sponsor your team.
   As earlier mentioned, don’t limit your focus to just monetary sponsorship. There is a world of experts and resources that are willing to help out teams if teams find them. This is to say, don’t narrow your focus to companies who could give you money. Find companies and individuals who also specialize in things you need done: printing, machining, 3D printing, plastic work, etc. A great example is finding a printing sponsor willing to make business cards, posters, and print new versions of an engineering notebook before tournaments. Or finding local manufacturing companies that are willing to cut sheet metal or plastic.
   When finding companies, start by looking at parent companies and companies that are already aware of FIRST. The businesses team member parents work for are often a great place to start. Your team already has a connection, and parents will know who the right person to talk to is for sponsorship. From there, look at companies that sponsor other teams. Some bigger businesses sponsor multiple teams, already know the values of FIRST, and are committed to supporting teams in their communities.
   From there, start a giant list! List all of the STEM companies in your city, all of the companies who might be able to provide you with something other than money, and anyone (like a local chamber of commerce) that might be able to get you in contact with companies you might not have been aware of. The bigger the list--the better!

Reaching out to Sponsors:
   Here is where all of your groundwork documents come into play. With your giant list of potential companies, start writing down contact info for each. Now is where you can start emailing your sponsorship letter around.
   But what has been most valuable is making phone calls…….dun dun DUHHHH. Calling to ask for sponsorship or to set up a time to talk to someone about sponsorship is terrifying. Again, some preparation is needed before picking up the phone. Cold calling scripts should include your name, your team’s name, where you are from, what you are looking to do, a phone number to call you back, and if you’re setting up a meeting over the phone, include dates that would work for your team. The important thing about these scripts is to keep them concise. You don’t want to lose the attention of the person on the other end. Here’s an example:
   Hi, I’m ______ from FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics Team from _______ High School, we’re fundraising for our season. I was wondering if we could come in and give a sponsorship presentation for your company.

+Wait for response+
Great! Does sometime next week work after 4?
   Note how this script asks to set up a presentation. If at all possible, set up face to face presentations for important individuals within a company. Your team is a lot harder to ignore when you are in front of someone talking to them. Here are some tips for scheduling sponsorship presentations:

Schedule an hour of time
- Presentation should be no more than half of your scheduled time
- Leave room for questions at end
When to call to schedule presentations
- Wednesdays and Thursdays
- 8:00am-9:00am
- 4:00pm-5:00pm
- Always use voicemails
Have one team member be the point-of-contact
Suggest times and days that work
If nothing happens, CALL BACK

In presentations, what your team says and how your team says it become especially important. Presentations should be around 15 minutes, and your whole team does not need to be present. Business plans become useful when presenting too because they show that your team takes itself seriously and has outlined goals and documented financial/material needs. The team I am on found that a core four people works really well. Presentation content should include:

About your team
About FIRST
Your technical work
Your outreach work
Your Business Plan
Your Budget
- Including how much money you need
  - Don’t be shy about saying numbers and projected expenses!
  - My team even prints out full copies of our business plan and flags the financial section. We leave this copy with the person we’ve presented to so they have something to look over.
- What money would be used for
Bring your robot if you can!
- Whenever possible, use visuals. If you present in a conference room, ask if you can set up a powerpoint presentation and show video of your robot in competition. These all make explaining robotics and your team a bazillion times easier!

   The most important thing to remember when you are presenting for sponsorship is to make it very clear what your team is looking for. Potential sponsors should not have to guess what you want. Show your budget, explain what it takes to fund a team for a season, and even ask for specific amounts. It doesn’t ever hurt to be direct, though it might feel a bit uncomfortable.
Maintaining Sponsor Relationships:
   Sponsors are most valuable when they continue to support your team over multiple seasons. The brunt work of making this happen is on your team. Sponsorships are more than fundraisers and donations in that they are also intended to go both ways! Teams should be providing for sponsors in the same way sponsors provide for them. A lot of teams do this by plastering sponsor names and logos on their robots, shirts, websites, pit areas, and pretty much everywhere. This is a great start, but there is more that you can do to keep up with your sponsors and keep them engaged in your team!
First of all, send thank you notes! Handwritten thank you’s go a really long way, especially after presenting to a company and you are fresh in their mind. Send thank you notes early and often!!!
Secondly, focus on updating your sponsors with your team’s progress and how you are utilizing their support. My team sends monthly newsletters, and updates before and after every single tournament. It is also nice to invite sponsors to come watch your team at competitions (again, handwritten is best)!
Thirdly, offer to demo for your sponsors! It’s another great way to keep your sponsors in the loop as your team and your team’s robot changes throughout a season.
   With these tips, your team is all set to hit the ground running for the upcoming season!

This blog was written by anonymous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

Funding a FIRST Team Part 1: Groundwork and Fundraisers

3/24/2018

(tune in next week for Part 2: Sponsorship)

Competing on robotics teams is impossible without funding. Robotics is an expensive sport, and fundraising allows teams to do what they do! This being said, the process of fundraising can be difficult to start and to continue. So here are some tips on how to start and what to look for when setting up and running fundraisers.

How to Start

Utilize your off season: The best time to fundraise in when your team is not mid competition season. Working in the off season gives time to fundraise well, and helps your team hit the ground running in your upcoming season.
Budgeting: Writing a budget is the best possible place to start in the offseason. Budgeting allows teams to anticipate costs and create a fundraising goal. Plan for no surprises! Good budgets should include the costs of everything your team spends money on in a season. Include robot hardware, parts, electronics, motors, servos, anything that needs to be replaced, tools, materials, FIRST’s registration fee, tourament registration fees, team branding materials, cost of running events, travel costs if your team competes out of state, and probably a lot of duct tape.
Business Plan: Writing a business plan not only checks off one requirement for your season, but it also helps teams outline their goals for said season. Your budget should fit your goals---teams that want to do more have to spend more. Along with goals, business plans are a home for your preliminary budget as well as actual team income and expenditures. Example business plans are available on the FIRST website.

Once you’ve set the groundwork for raising money, your team is ready to go! But how do you find sponsors and fundraising opportunities?

Finding Fundraisers

Fundraisers are an easy way to raise quick money for teams. However, fundraisers are usually one-time opportunities, and do not carry the potential for long-time relationships like sponsorships do.
- An easy way to set up fundraisers is to look at what local school sports teams are doing, and hop on opportunities wherever possible. In my team’s school district, restaurants like Chipotle, Chick fil-A, Culvers, and Leeann Chin offer fundraisers for sports teams wherein a percentage of sales within a certain timeframe go back to the team. These have been quick commitments that yield a few hundred dollars apiece. Not bad!
- Teams I’ve been on have also made good use of crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe. These sites will take a small percentage of money raised, but they can be incredibly beneficial and low-commitment. The value of GoFundMe lies in how easy it makes small donations. Often, families of team members want to contribute to their loved-one’s teams, and GoFundMe makes that simple.

Setting up Fundraisers

Once you know where there are opportunities for fundraisers, the next step is to get in the door!
- A great first step is to make phone calls. This will take some prep work as well. Your team should write a brief script before making any actual calls. Call scripts should include who your team is, where you are from, what you are looking for, and ways of contacting you back. Prepare for this to take no more than 30 seconds, or you risk losing the attention of the person on the other end of the phone call. When calling, have an idea of when your team would be able to be present at a fundraiser too.
- Emails work when trying to set up fundraisers, but they make less impact than calling or showing up to a business physically. Same as with phone calls, emails should be concise and get the point across early.
- Any way your team decides to get in touch with fundraising opportunities, remember to talk to the person in a company that actually makes decisions and can schedule your team. Talking to a part-time Chick fil-A cashier about your team is a great start, but then you depend on that individual to relay your information to a higher-up. When at all possible, talk to and email managers and supervisors.
All of this aside, the most important tip when looking to fund your team is persistence. There will be a lot of companies and individuals who turn you down, and that’s ok! Keep finding new opportunities, leaving voicemails when no one answers your calls, and keep trying!

(tune in next week for part 2: Sponsorship)

This blog was written by anonymous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

Leonardo da vinci adventure

3/18/2018

The Da Vinci Code (By Dan Brown) is one of my favorite books, and being able to learn more about Leonardo, and see his works inches away from my face was AWESOME! In 1452, during the Renaissance, a genius was born with the name Leonardo Da Vinci. When he was young, his uncles arranged for him to apprenticeship in the trade of architecture, sculpture, and art. He fascinated with the things around him, and felt the desire to understand the way this world works. It was his habit to always carry around folded pieces of scrap paper, where he could record things he observed, or theories that he formed. Those fragile pieces of 500 year old paper in Leonardo’s own hand, were what we saw, right in front of us! Fun fact: whenever he tried to show motion, he would also repeat and thicken the lines. His notes were tiny and neat, with little drawings on the side. Leonardo not only left incredible paintings for artists, but a legacy for scientist and engineers.

Absolutely amazing in the fact that he could do it all- observe well, write descriptively, draw lifely, and think ingenuisly. He wanted to study the mountains that were around him, and theorized that they formed because of an cave scalpel somewhere, like a see-saw: if something comes up, something else has to come down. Looking at the moon, he saw bumps, and waves, which he was only seen with by the ocean, and believed that the moon had a lot of water on it. Sure, we know today that it wasn’t correct, but just that scientific thinking and hypothesizing is something that we can learn from! Not to mention, he discovered what we today call “earth shine”, which is being able to see not only the shining crescent, but also the dark disk of the moon. Already, he made analogies with water and air currents to how the world is a system, and his genius mind had connected that sound with waves- today’s sound waves! Through observing, Leonardo discovered that water droplets, upon landing on the ground makes a crown shape. Five hundred years back, was he already spot on with something that we need super advance photography technology to spot- that’s mind blowing! He was not only a scientist, artist, but moreover an engineer, who tried to develop a solution for the flooding river. Leonardo’s solution is something that we use today-a dam. He was so great, that the famous painter Raphael, like many people today, deeply admired him, and even painted Leonardo as Pluto on one of his morals!

Killer eyesight, observation, and drawing skills, helped him see the world in a different way than majority of the people. He believed that you needed to understand what you observed. We shouldn’t be afraid to be curious and hypothesis. As the wise Leonardo said, “it’s not enough to believe what you see. You must also understand what you see.” One of the biggest things I took away from this experience was what Leonard Da Vinci showed us-to take life slowly, and notice the things around us. Sometimes we’re so focused on sprinting to our destination, that we miss the beautiful scenery along the way. Sometimes we’re too busy looking into the future that we forget the enjoy the present. With the technology today, everything is moving and advancing so quickly, and sometimes we just need to slow down to be able to fully appreciate the beautiful world around us.

Taking Care of Yourself

3/10/2018

   With all of your classes, and jobs, and responsibilities, and now Super Regional Tournaments, it’s important to remember not to forget about yourself in the hustle and bustle. It’s hard, when you have a lot of obligations, to take care of yourself. But your own well-being should be your first obligation.
   I realized this slowly over the last few months after I had been going to bed at 3am everyday for over two weeks. I couldn’t stay awake through any of my classes, my graders were suffering, and so were my relationships. I was getting everything done that I needed to, but none of it was done well and I wasn’t proud of any of it. I realized that for me to feel normal and healthy again, I needed to recognize my own needs: sleep, eating well, and taking time to do the things I wanted to and enjoyed doing.
   This doesn’t mean I quit everything, nor does it mean I stopped fulfilling my obligations to my teachers, my teammates, and my friends. Instead, I asked for help. I gave myself room to breathe and tried to give myself a break when I was overwhelmed. My team understood when I told them I couldn’t do all of the work I had committed to, and they helped me take tasks off of my to-do list.
I had to take care of myself in order to be proud of anything I was doing, and to make everything I was doing to feel meaningful. Doing this has made me alert and proactive again, and has allowed me to really enjoy my time in FIRST Robotics.

This blog was written by anonymous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.