Forging a Future
As we settle back into the work at hand, building out the Advanced Manufacturing & Robotics Center (AMRoC) Fab Lab, we do so freshly inspired from a trip to the Houston FIRST Championship where over 30,000 people cheered on youth from around the world competing in this amazing Sport for the Mind. With us, this year, was our old FIRST Tech Challenge team, Team #2845, Team Duct Tape - old in the sense that the team is in its 11th season, though the team members are just 12-16 years old and reveled in their first visit to an international FIRST Championship event.
What made this trip to the Championship particularly wonderful was being able to attend with the majority of our FCDI board members and our long time associate, Scott Ertz, of PLuGHiTz Live. With so many of us on site, we were able to connect with more people, and come back with more ideas and insights than any one of us could have alone. We were also fortunate to be able to connect with another nonprofit, Swerve Robotics, who sat in on our AMRoC Fab Lab presentation at the FIRST Championship Conference, and discovered we had a lot in common - including having most of our board members on site. We're hoping to connect again during the year, to see how we might collaborate cross country.
The Houston Championship served to re-inspire and remind us of the importance of the work we're doing here in Tampa, with AMRoC Fab Lab, and how we fit into the greater vision for the Uptown Tampa district under development by RD Management. Since returning from Houston, we've participated in a University Area Community Development Center Partners Coalition gathering, hosted a Homebrew Hillsborough meetup at AMRoC attended by over 50 people, and took part in a MOSI Science after Dark event. All of these gatherings had in common a new excitement about the community we all share, about new opportunities and experiences underway, about making life better for more people by providing agency, capacity building and the enjoyment of an enriching community at all levels.
We're excited about the work ahead and the future it holds for all of us, and immensely grateful to those journeying with us. Please follow along at FFCDI.org and AMRoCTampaBay.com to stay up to date on events, programs and our AMRoC Grand Opening in June!
Founder at Swerve Robotics
5 年We too were excited to meet you and look forward to future collaborations. It was inspiring to meet so many other like minded people and share ideas. Since we returned from Houston with two of our 4 FTC teams (417 SKID and 8923 Perpetual Velocity), we have participated in Washington’s annual FIRST to Change the World luncheon where teams from all over invited guests and sponsors to help raise over $100,000 to benefit Washington FIRST robotics teams. In addition, we have been fundraising for 417’s upcoming trip to Botswana where our students will introduce the FLL program to teachers and students. I am reinvigorated and inspired by our connection and wish you all the best!