New Michigan Offseason Robotics Competition

[Ed Law]

Team 2834, 469, 33 and 68 are working together to bring a new offseason event to Michigan.

This event aims to help recruit girls to FIRST Robotics and encourage them to take on technical roles on the team. In this competition, robot driver/operator, human player and pit crew must be high school aged girls. Male team members can be in the pit but only in support/advisory role. They cannot perform maintenance and repair on the robot.

Date: Saturday, 11/16/13
Time: 8am - 5pm
Location: Bloomfield Hills High School, 3456 Lahser Road, Bloomfield Hills 48302

Please refer to flyer for details and registration link.

[bardd]

Your cause is good, but I think you may have went a bit too far with it. Not allowing the guys to do anything would discourage them, so they might not help preparing for the event as much as they should. Also, you would be putting a whole lot of stress on the girls at the event, because most teams don't have that many girls, usually around a quarter of the team, so you're basically having 25% of the team do the work of the whole team.

Girls-only drive team is good, but you should allow guys to do some pit work (maybe restrict to one guy at a time, or only allow them to do what the girls tell them to do), that way the guys would have something to do and won't be bored and probably a bit negative, and the girls have a bit less stress on them, while still maintaining the purpose of the event.

[P.J.]

I don't know if anyone else is having this problem, but when I click on the flyer it just takes me to a blank Google Documents page. Just wanted to bring that to your attention in case it's not just me.

[AdamHeard]

Michigan has so many off season events, I can't imagine having one for girls is really going to demotivate or detract from the guys in any way.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Girls Generation has been going on for several years in Oregon. It seems to work for them.

[Ed Law]

Originally Posted by P.J.

I don't know if anyone else is having this problem, but when I click on the flyer it just takes me to a blank Google Documents page. Just wanted to bring that to your attention in case it's not just me.

I tried it with Internet Explorer and Google Chrome and they both worked. Are you using an iPad or iPhone? They don't seem to like Google docs.

I have attached the pdf file here directly.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Girls Generation has been going on for several years in Oregon. It seems to work for them.

Same with GirlPOWER, hosted by the Firebirds (433) in PA.

[bardd]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Michigan has so many off season events, I can't imagine having one for girls is really going to demotivate or detract from the guys in any way.

What I meant was they might not be so keen to help with this particular event (meaning preparing for it).

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Girls Generation has been going on for several years in Oregon. It seems to work for them.

It works for us in Washington too, after our team participated in the Girl's Generation event held by the Flaming Chickens we co-opted the idea and held our own version last year and we will be holding one again this year.

At both of the events a lot of the boys on the teams do help with preparations and do attend the event.

Here is a short recap of our 2012 Girl's Generation event. http://tahomarobotics.org/2012/10/14...neration-2012/

[DampRobot]

I wonder how the community would respond if a team proposed an all boys offseason, with no girls allowed in the pits.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by bardd

What I meant was they might not be so keen to help with this particular event (meaning preparing for it).

Ya might want to look at what happened with 842, some years back. For one of their competitions each year (for a couple of years at any rate), they quite literally left the boys at home.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/28120
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/31037

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

I wonder how the community would respond if a team proposed an all boys offseason, with no girls allowed in the pits.

Certainly there would be an uproar over that.

However the fact is that in many teams pit and drive crews are often dominated by males, not necessarily males only but often mainly males.

These girls only events encourage them to take on those roles w/o the worry of "not being as good at it as the boys" and not feeling that they have to "fight" to get the right to participate in those area.

Many of the guys on our teams really enjoy the girls events. For one thing it is nice to just watch an event w/o worrying about the robot. Plus we usually buy some of the cheapest Halloween wigs we can find for all the male mentors and students, put them on and get out there and cheer for our team.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Mr V

Certainly there would be an uproar over that.

However the fact is that in many teams pit and drive crews are often dominated by males, not necessarily males only but often mainly males.

These girls only events encourage them to take on those roles w/o the worry of "not being as good at it as the boys" and not feeling that they have to "fight" to get the right to participate in those area.

Many of the guys on our teams really enjoy the girls events. For one thing it is nice to just watch an event w/o worrying about the robot. Plus we usually buy some of the cheapest Halloween wigs we can find for all the male mentors and students, put them on and get out there and cheer for our team.

You should try and get the author of this Seattle Times Op-Ed to Girls Gen. Events like this are also a great opportunity to try and recruit female mentors as well, because getting more women in engineering is often something women in engineering feel quite strongly about. If they go to an event and see so many girls excited about engineering, they may be hard pressed to turn down the opportunity to mentor them...

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

You should try and get the author of this Seattle Times Op-Ed to Girls Gen. Events like this are also a great opportunity to try and recruit female mentors as well, because getting more women in engineering is often something women in engineering feel quite strongly about. If they go to an event and see so many girls excited about engineering, they may be hard pressed to turn down the opportunity to mentor them...

Thanks for the tip!

[CodePoet]

I Like this idea. It will allow more students to experience tournament competition. I hope our team is able to participate.

No restrictions on who can be drive coach.

Why is there this one exception?