October 12th Meeting - First Robotics

[nateb...@gmail.com]

Our next meeting will be on October 12th at 6pm at the FFA Enrichment Center on the DMACC Ankeny campus. 

We are honored to have representatives from the First Robotics program come and speak to us about their work. First provides STEM based technology opporunities for students throughout the world. First was founded by Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segue) and Woody Flowers to provide these kinds of exciting competitions for students. First focuses not only on robots and competition but also on outreach to the community promoting STEM based education. One of the fundamentals of the First programs is “gracious professionalism” where competitors compete at the highest level, which also providing real sportmanship and support between team.  

  

This presentation will cover the software development side of the First programs, particularly the FRC model. The program is also looking for mentors to help discover new technology and build efficient and effective programs to operate the robots. This is an excellent opportunity for the development community to get involved in a program that teaches kids the real art of building quality software while exploring and using new and advanced technology. The teams and games that we will represent are:

  

FLL - First Lego League, which is a program for students between 3rd and 7th grade.

FTC - First tech challenge, which is a program open to 7th through 12th graders.

FRC - First Robotics Challenage, is a game open to 9th through 12th graders.  

  

The speaker is Tadd Hatch. He has been involved in robotics with First for 4 years in FLL, FTC and FRC. He has seen teams competitng locally and in the World Championship levels. Tadd is motivating by watching students solve problems and become critical thinkers. Outside of robotics, Tadd has been a Program Manager with Iowa Student Loan for 17 years focusing on developing high quality software using agile techniques. You can also hear Tadd present at the Des Moines Agile Conference on 10/13.  

Meeting location:

FFA Enrichment Center

1055 SW Prairie Trail Parkway, Ankeny, IA 50023

The meeting will be upstairs in rooms 212 and 213

Sponsors:

Source Allies is the Epic Level sponsor for CIJUG in 2017!  Source Allies is a local technical consultancy who values collaboration, craftsmanship, and an ownership mentality. We provide a home to our teammates where we encourage each other to grow not only technically, but as peers & consultants. This is evident in the quality software we deliver to clients.

Learn about our “ownership mentality” at: www.sourceallies.com

Additional sponsorship and consideration are provided by:

Businessolver

Big Sky Technology 

TekSystems

Pillar Technology