FIRST Tech Challenge UK Fellow
Their Mission
My Task
The Summer I interned, 2018, FTC UK had just been introduced in the UK. Their goal was to get 100 schools across the country to sign up to the FIRST organisation. My job was to talk to schools and investors about my FIRST journey and to make resources for schools to aid them in having a successful team. After my internship, I became a FTC UK Fellow, helping them until today giving talks, helping out in their events, and assisting the CTO in any help he may need.
Reaching out
I went to Staffordshire University to talk about FTC and my journey during the program to 50 people. At this event, there were teachers of several schools, potential mentors from big companies like Renishaw and JCB, and other investors.
In June of 2019, we went to Mischon de Reya to talk to a group of 20 lawyers as potential investors and mentors. I spoke briefly about my time at FIRST and how essential it is for everyone to form part of this program.
Talk given to mentors and investors from companies like JCB and Renishaw
Talk given to mentors and investors from companies like JCB and Renishaw
Talking during presentation about my journey and impact
Accompanied by three other FIRST students giving the talk.
Talking during presentation about my journey and impact
Bloomberg Talk
In September I had the fortunate chance to go to Bloomberg LP Headquarters to talk about the journey I had at FIRST and the immense impact it had in my life. This talk held about 150 people, and Dean Kamen who founded FIRST®, the managing director of Google UK, and many other important investors and people were there.
Bloomberg Speakers
I was one among many great speakers trying to promote FIRSTTechUK. Some of the amazing speakers present were Ali Stripling from Arm, Professor Louise Archer from the UCL Institute of Education, and Meghna Khokhar and Mark Walker who are former mentors from FIRST. Thank you Ed Cervantes-Watson for bringing me along to such a great talk.
CEO of FIRST Tech Challenge UK
UCL Institute of Education
Former mentors from FIRST and current Bloomberg workers
CEO of FIRST Tech Challenge UK
In order for the team to keep track of what they had to do, I designed milestones for them to complete every week.
Some teams members may not want to be 100% in the engineering sector, therefor I made team roles so that everyone no matter their preference can have a role in the team.
In order for the team to keep track of what they had to do, I designed milestones for them to complete every week.
Resources
Several schools were concerned when forming a team as they had no experience with robot building in the past. As a company, we realised that we had to make resources for them. I then made resources on how to structure a team, how a team calendar should look like, and how to build different mechanisms.
Flowcharts
I made seven different flowcharts for the teams to have step by step instructions of what they need to know throughout the season. All events are linked to the milestones. I wrote all the context for the resources and created them in Adobe Illustrator, and then we sent it off to a graphic designer to finalise them and make them look amazing!
When the challenge is revealed, the whole team needs to know the rules
Using my past experience in FIRST, I tried to write down how I used to come up with ideas and made an easy flowchart for new teams to follow.
The drivetrain is very important in a robot as it is its only way of moving, therefor a clear flowchart was made to show how to do this.
When the challenge is revealed, the whole team needs to know the rules