FIRST Ladies Lunch Discussion at the Greater Pittsburgh Regional

Hello, readers of FIRST Ladies!

Our directors from FRC team 3504 Girls of Steel wanted to share a FIRST Ladies event that we hosted at the FRC Greater Pittsburgh Regional.  This event was very impactful, so we encourage you all to host similar events at regional competitions you attend in the future. 

On Thursday, February 29th during the competition’s scheduled lunch hour, Girls of Steel hosted a FIRST Ladies lunch discussion in a conference room at the David L. Lawrence Convention center.  We were able to secure this official space by contacting the coordinators of the regional in advance.  They also put our event on the official schedule, which definitely helped to increase attendance. 

In the weeks prior to the lunch discussion, we advertised the event via Chief Delphi and also by contacting local teams in Pittsburgh using the Steel City Robotics Alliance’s discord group.  We also announced the event at a Week 0 competition that Girls of Steel hosted in Pittsburgh.  Whenever we advertised the event, we emphasized that we were looking for “expert speakers”, who would be experienced women in STEM who would rotate between the tables at the lunch discussion. We chose rotating “experts” instead of one panel for everyone to keep every individual engaged in order to best spread the message of our event: the promotion of inclusion in FIRST!

Around 60 students across 10+ teams attended our lunch discussion! Every table received a sheet of paper with guiding questions for their discussions (attached HERE if you would like to use it!) which helped break the ice. Overall, the discussion was very successful!  Us directors had the opportunity to meet many students of different genders and backgrounds and share experiences as women in FRC. Every attendee was so kind and definitely embodied the FIRST Ladies mission. We plan to host annual events at the FRC regionals 3504 attends. We also hope to host an informal meet-up at the 2024 World Championship- stay tuned!! :)

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