[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by rachelholladay

I hope to emulate a lot of people. I feel like whenever I walk into a FIRST event, its a bunch of my childhood heroes gathered together in one space. For right now, I'll pick one person (who isn't on my team) who I find awesome.

John Larock, aka Mr. MOE for helpfulness / gracious professionalism. I have, like every other FIRSTer, always looked up to 365 MOE because their work is incredible. I was happy to see Mr. Larock win the Woodie Flowers Award at 2011 CMP. After having given my team's RCA presentation, my fellow presenter and I rushed to the Chairmans chat to hear from MOE (represented by Mr Larock and I believe a student) and the other HoF teams and to ask them as many questions as possible. Later the next day my team was leaving the Black Eyed Peas concert and my friend (same one) and I spotted Mr. Larock halfway down the street in front of us. Logically, we sprinted to catch up with him to say something along the lines of "You are awesome, congratulations on WFA, can we email you to soak up your awesomeness?"

Of course he said yes and as soon as a slept a little from CMP I proceed to email my questions. I'm on a team that is really working hard to expand our outreach capabilities and Mr. Larock provided me with some great insight, particularly on organizing your outreach plan into focused programs. Before the judges at the 2012 Bayou Regional called our team to accept its 3rd Chairmans Award (in a row) they listed some of our accomplishments. One of the first things they said was that we had "well organized and energetic groups focused on mentoring, outreaching, partnership, and volunteering." They were referring to the programs we has thought up after having been inspired by MOE and using Mr. Larock's kind words of wisdom. He probably didn't even realize that his one email helped transform my team.

Just to add onto this - He is one of the most kind-hearted and generous people I have ever met in FIRST. In our area, we are lucky to have him and Al Ostrow from 341 to learn from. Both exceptional people.