I am trying to put together a list of Northrop Grumman employees that are involved in FIRST. Last year the NASA teams had weekly telecons between the mentors and those who attended found them very helpful.
I would like to start at least an e-mail group of those mentors who work for any division of Northrop Grumman, no matter how small or how recently they were “assimilated”. This would be for discussion, help and networking outside of the normal Chief Delphi fora. A major goal of this group would be to increase Northrop Grumman’s support of FIRST. Another would be networking outside our normal channels. (Right now times are good, but you never can tell when the layoffs will begin again.)
If you are interested or if you know one of your mentors is a Northrop Grumman employee, send me a name and location and I’ll ask if they want me to put them on the list.
It would probably be best send names via PM. I have about 15 already.
I don’t recall that we have any facilities up there. If we did I’d probably try for a transfer Boeing used to pretty much own the place so you might have more luck with them. If somebody does know of one or two, then maybe we can do some recruiting.
Northrop Grumman has facilities/personnel in Seattle, Fort Lewis, Renton, & Keyport, WA that I know of. Mostly what’s called Mission Systems (primarily Submarines in Seattle I believe), and Information Technology. Try to enlist some of them.
Chris is going to be thinking about a transfer request now…
Unfortunately, so far Boeing in Seattle has been less than receptive to FIRST. Other areas of the country have fairly good support from Boeing (namely, St. Louis, Texas, and Florida) but Seattle has very little interest.
Both Microsoft and Boeing are similar… at a Corp. level, they don’t understand FIRST. However, there is a team (XBot) which is sponsored by MS Engineers. While Boeing does not sponsor a team, I have been successful in writing grants to their surplus store each year (Think very large warehouse with the motto “If Boeing bought it… we got it”) So, for the last two years, I have written a grant and our team has received a couple hundred dollars to spend there on everything from drill bits, to rolls of zip ties, to large pieces of lexan…
Good plan… Thanks… Fort Lewis is next door to us! Good idea!
Northrop Grumman has facilities/personnel in Seattle, Fort Lewis, Renton, & Keyport, WA that I know of. Mostly what’s called Mission Systems (primarily Submarines in Seattle I believe), and Information Technology. Try to enlist some of them.
Hey you forgot about New York. If I am not mistaken Grumman is still here on Long Island. I don’t know if they sponsor any teams though.
I work in Bethpage,NY for Northrop Grumman. Chris and I already know each other and he has the list of NG Long Island FIRST volunteers. Here on LI Northrop Grumman helps fund the SBPLI Regional rather than any one team.
Northrop Grumman has facilities in every state in the union. Trying to locate the FIRST volunteers in a pool of 123,000 is a challenge, because people usually start out by volunteering as a parent rather than as a Northrop Grumman employee per se.
Unfortunately they are only looking for programmers right now. I deal more with REAL stuff.
Mark is right about the problem of locating Northrop Grumman employees. NG has employees on many more teams than just those they sponsor. (The BeachBots have two, but get $0 from NG) I’d like to change that, but to do so I need help. Finding out just who is involved and what divisions they work for is part of that.
If most of the divisions are telling Corporate, “Hey we’re involved in this neat program to develop new employees before we hire them and we think you should help too”, then just maybe Corporate will listen, and Corporate is where the big bucks are.
I work in Bethpage,NY for Northrop Grumman. Chris and I already know each other and he has the list of NG Long Island FIRST volunteers. Here on LI Northrop Grumman helps fund the SBPLI Regional rather than any one team.
Cool. Did Northrop Grumman have a both at the regional. I remeber there being a company that produced infrared transparent paint. Was that Grumman or some other company.
As you looked at the row of company booths our booth was all the way on the right by the stands. We demonstrated IR technology that looks through paint to see cracks, corrosion, and other [font=Verdana]fatigue damage to the underlying metal or composites that would normally be hidden.[/font]
Team 230 in Connecticut has had a couple of NG Engineers in past - Nordon Systems - they occasionably stop by but aren’t too active. Northrup Grumman did donate a pair of Innovation First Streamer modems enabling us to download code remotely ~$200.
Boeing used to pretty much own the place so you might have more luck with them. If somebody does know of one or two, then maybe we can do some recruiting.
I deal more with REAL stuff.