Bringing awareness of FIRST @ The workplace.

[xitaqua]

Hello fellow engineers and professionals in the workplace ( a.k.a : procurement , biz ops, marketing , managers....etc...etc) :

I was wondering what others are doing to bring awareness of FIRST at their work area, also any tips for sharing info about FIRST with others ?

Cheers,
Marcos.
:)

[Andrew Schreiber]

Mostly I send out invitations to local events. I am also fortunate enough to have a very relaxed dress code so I am able to wear FIRST themed shirts almost every day.

[Akash Rastogi]

My bro wears team shirts to work all the time :D (Thomson Reuters) He invites whoever he can to events and also team meetings when possible. My bro has been in FIRST since '98

[Koko Ed]

Well, I have my medals hanging on my fork truck for one plus and X-Cats and FIRST logo on there too. I also wear many team shirts from my own teams, to other team shirts I have to shirts from off seasons and occasionally my official FIRST event volunteer shirts (my warehouse is very dusty so white shirts get ruined quickly).
I used to hang flyers about local competitions up in my building but it is mostly empty plus I don't think anyone paid attention to them anyways.
I try to participate in Xerox demos on site if I can and if I'm actually needed (the mentors are pretty good at keeping the image of Xerox FIRST which are teams 191, 1126, 1450 and 2340) as visable as they can and Xerox is very good to their FIRST teams.

[Sayrah]

I have medals, newspaper articles and pictures hanging on the wall outside my cubicle. We have an online newletter/newspaper that is updated daily and I have submitted a few articles about the team before they attend competitions, especially the local ones, to try to entice people to attend. I have found that the article is much more likely to be included if I write it and attach a few pictures than if I just tell the communications department about the event and try to get them spun up to write it. I send emails to co-workers, managers, directors, and vice-presidents prior to competitions with the webcast url if available and then follow up after the event with a report on the team's experience/accomplishments. I've been known to carry a trophy around with me at work all day from meeting to meeting. When I happen upon someone who continues to show interest I usually try to get them to volunteer at a regional - my boss is now hooked on the competition and would like to return to judge again in 2009. This year the team brought the robot to my company on Take Your Child to Work Day and it was a big hit. Sometimes I feel like a pest, but my company hires engineers and FIRST is exactly the type of program that we need to be reinforcing with our support and presence.

[xitaqua]

Hello All,

These are all very cool ideas.

I like the t-shirt idea and also the idea of sending e-mail to co-workers...

Maybe we could have a "wear your FIRST robotics t-shirt to work" day across corporate america :)



Cheers,
Marcos.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

If you have a local event in your area, definitely invite people from work to be spectators and / or volunteers. You'd be amazing how much people enjoy some robot competition! I got two people from work excited.

Find out if your workplace is mentoring any teams. If so, network actively with those mentors and see what they think about bringing awareness. You will often achieve more with a team than you will on your own - more reach, unique perspectives, etc. - this is the case for many things in life. Tried and true strategy, use it!

If all else fails - bring cookies in the shape of FIRST shapes. Cookies are always good.

[Carol]

We have had demos of the robot at various DuPont sponsored events, such as Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work day. This exposes not just the young students (who are really too young for FRC, although we do have FLL and FTC info there) but their employee parents and other employees who pass by. We try and have the demos in the site cafeteria to get the most audience.

This of course is at our local DuPont sites - I'm sure teams who are sponsored at other DuPont sites across the country do something similar.

We have also submitted news event to the company's Engineering Newsletter (which reaches only that department) and, when we have some special news such as winning a regional or a Championship award, we try and get it on the Company wide news.

For an example, see this (from the DuPont public website:)

http://www2.dupont.com/Media_Center/en_US/daily_news/june/article20080619a.html

[xitaqua]

Hello Carol,

I like the idea of doing demos, we have found out the issue of doing demos is coordinating with the teams to bring their robot to the company along with the students, specially in certain times when school is off.

I think the best time to do demos at the company is now until october to be able to drum up mentors for the teams.

This year myself and a group of employees got some funding from Engineering to build our own demo robot using 2008 kit, we are in third week of build. We hope to have a good modular chassi by September just in time to make a demo at the Science Center. The main goal of this project is to train employees that will become future mentors. Since this is a demo robot, we have a different set of assumptions to work with.

Cheers,
Marcos.

[Carol]

Another reason for demoing at the workplace and getting employee's attention is to recruit their children for the team. Not being based in a school, and taking students from anywhere, we do have to constantly work to attract students to our team.

Unfortunately, quite often the demos are doing school, so it is only adults at the demos, with an occasional senior or recent alumni who can make it.

Another perk to having a demo at company sponsored events such as TOSADTWD is that someone from senior management usually stops by, and we can reinforce the message to them of why it's important for them to continue sponsoring us.

[Mark McLeod]

Our FIRST mentors at work are organized as a group and we do similar publicity within the company to attract new mentors.
-- PA announcements before local events
-- Posters before events in coffee or other public areas
-- Posters on our walls or by our doors afterwards
-- Weekly company email newsletter has articles appealing for mentors
-- Biweekly company newspaper (after the fact articles)
-- Video showcase on our internal website (no YouTube)
-- Exhibitions once a year in the Fall to attract mentors and spread recognition (see some posters for those below)
These are during school hours, but the schools justify it as an educational outing. We actually have to limit the number of schools we invite or rotate among several. We just don't have the space anymore to host 40 robots at once.


http://www.team358.org/history/2008/images/sm_NGC_exhibition_2007.jpg (http://www.team358.org/history/2008/images/NGC_exhibition_2007.jpg)http://www.team358.org/history/2007/images/sm_NGC_Exhibition_2006.jpg (http://www.team358.org/history/2007/images/NGC_Exhibition_2006.jpg)

We also get publicity through community service & volunteer awards and recognitions.

ChrisH and the west coast Northrop Grumman mentors have run an engineer Vex competition on the weekend at work to encourage new mentor involvement.

[Tom I]

I'm actually a FIRST student, and I got an internship for a company near where I go to school, Amphenol TCS. I wear my Team polo shirt a lot to work, and I have pictures of my robots as my background on my computer. I often talk about it and tell stories, and while I am hoping to maybe get a sponsorship, if all else fails, everyone who I talk to is now interested in FIRST. Many of my co-workers have children approaching high school, so I encourage them to look into FIRST.

[xitaqua]

Tom,

I think you bring good ideas for bringing awareness at the workplace, it is always very cool to see the enthusiasm of Interns.

At my workplace we have given tours to the Interns of our facilities where we have a group of volunteers building a demo robot using 2008 FIRST kit, we got 5% participation from the Summer Interns. They help us on marketing, scheduling , engineering and procurement. Very cool. :)

[hallk]

I start early on. Every interview I go to I mention FIRST. People are impressed by what I have done because of the program. It is nice to later say I wouldn't know how to do this if it weren't for FIRST. Most people really like the idea of FIRST when they see how far it has taken students like me.
I also invite people to events that the local teams host. I don't usually do massive email blasts but instead personally invite those who I think might be more interested.

[Billfred]

It comes up in conversation quite a bit around work--I talk about it a fair bit, and they had warning on the way in after it was a topic in the interview. For the uninitiated, I've found that keeping a match or three handy on my iPhone (or whatever other device you keep handy) seems to get past the BattleBots question faster than explanations alone. I'm waiting on an event to give them a better understanding. (I was hired in May, so they haven't seen build season yet. ;))

[Travis Hoffman]

Our PR department is very in tune with our team, and we receive great coverage throughout the year via Web articles. In addition, our director of engineering is the champion of FIRST in our division. He often issues requests among his underlings for technical mentor support on our behalf. We've also held numerous demos and brought team students in for "what the heck do you engineers do anyway?" days [no, we don't actually call it that]. Despite this and other efforts to recruit additional mentor support from within our facility, it has proven to be a mostly fruitless enterprise for about the past 5 years.....

On the other hand, we freely exploit the engineers' need for new gizmos and trinkets to decorate their Dilbertesque cubicles by selling Hexbugs and holding Chinese auctions at the facility throughout the year. So while most of my fellow Delphi divisional employees aren't putting any time into the team, they are at least contributing a lot of their hard earned cash to the effort. :)

[xitaqua]

Travis,

I think you bring a point that is often forgotten :

Bringing awareness of FIRST is a T.E.A.M efforts, it needs "Enterprise Coordination" where PR, Communications (Internal), executive sponsors and others are all aligned.

I think is always very cool when a senior executive at my company speaks at a regional and we get to see it on the company internal news.....it usually spark the interest of others.... :)

Sometime it takes many "impressions" before someone get sold on FIRST Robotics, and the next step helping then figure out how to get involved and coordinate it within the organization.

Cheers,
Marcos.