Through the pouring rain we demoed with over 600 artists at Northeast Minneapolis’ Art-A-Whirl, an annual art fair. After being invited by one of our sponsors, High Monkey, to help represent them, we set up a field with the center vortex, beacons, and a few stray particles to show people what FTC’s Velocity Vortex was all about.
As people discovered our demo, we chatted with them about the different FIRST programs, explained this year’s challenge, and let them drive our robot. After they successfully collected and shot a particle they received their official robot drivers license. There was even a girl who came back about 20 minutes after receiving her license to drive the robot again. When we tried to teach her the controls again, she took out her license to show us and told us that she already knew how to drive it. She wanted to keep coming back until her family finally dragged her away to go look at other booths.
While parents watched their children drive the robot we told them about which FIRST programs that child could join and how to find teams within their school districts. We answered their questions, loaded them up with flyers and business cards, and sent them off with all the information they would need to find a team for their child. Some of the parents knew that their schools had LEGO League programs but didn’t know that the program progressed into anything. Whenever their was a lull in the crowd of parents and kids we started our very own dance parties where we taught High Monkey employees some traditional FIRST dances.
This was an amazing experience and we hope to be invited back!