If you are in Portland Oregon next weekend and want to see something amazing young female role models, join me at the Girls Generation high school robotics competition. Several local FIRST Robotics teams will be getting together for a girls robotics. Only the girl members of the teams will be competing in this special event.

http://team1540.org/girlsgeneration/ 

Saturday October 7th

Location: Catlin Gabel School Gymnasium
Address: 8825 SW Barnes Rd. Portland, OR, 97225

8:00am Pits open
8:30am Field open for practice
9:45am Driver's meeting and Welcome
10:00am Competition Begins
3:00pm Alliance selection (each alliance has FOUR teams, three play at a time, no timeouts)
3:15pm Semi finals and finals
4:45pm(ish) Award Ceremony
5:00pm Load out

I would encourage everyone interested in becoming involved in FIRST Robotics teams or seeing great teams to attend and see what it is all about and how seriously awesome it is. This is one of those things that I love as both boys and girls get involved learning engineering, programming, teamwork and more. There are other events coming up from Oregon FIRST Robotics including a mentor event and another robot competition with the annual Catlin Gabel hosted BunnyBots.

As you may or may not be aware, Autodesk is a enthusiastic sponsor of many teams with grants, employee volunteers, free Autodesk software, training, and sponsoring events including the big PNW championships as it is such a powerfully positive life changing activity for kids to be involved in. I am encouraging and challenging more Autodesk employees to get involved as it wont only change a kids life but yours as well. I cant tell you how much it has meant to me to be a mentor to a group of amazing kids.

Not in Oregon, no problem as FIRST Robotics teams and events are global and probably at a school near you. Checkout the FIRST website.