Magenic Pancake Breakfast 2016

Every year, we host a pancake breakfast at a tech company called Magenic. The company is one of our long-time sponsors, having been supporting us since our early days of FLL. We use the event as a method of fundraising as well as a way to spread the “gospel of FIRST” to a wonderful local tech company.

We got there early to set up in the break room and got right to work making the pancake batter. People slowly began to trickle in, and soon, all of our griddles were full of chocolate chip and banana pancakes. As they stood in line, we chatted with them about their work and what we do in FTC. We also claimed one of the table’s as Stacy’s throne, where we sent people to take a look at our robot and engineering notebook. Whenever we saw someone loitering near our robot, we would engage them in conversation about FTC and the impact that it has had on our lives. This led to a few interesting opportunities to learn about the employees’ jobs and how our programming was similar to what they did for a living.

As we talked to the employees, we also had several brief but interesting conversations about the future of technology and how robotics was beneficial to high school students. They seemed very excited about the opportunities we had and we heard “I wish they had this when I was a kid!” more than once. We discussed how FIRST let us dabble in a variety of skillsets more than just programming or just mechanical engineering.

When we packed up to go, we left with a feeling of new enthusiasm for FTC and we were happy to have the opportunity to share our story (as well as FIRST) with engineers in the industry.

Makin' pancakes

Showing off our robot's scissor arm

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