Community Lemonade Game: The World Robot Olympiad Version Pt 2
BACKGROUND – On June 30th, 2012, I started playing a game. It played out on the Belmont Shore Patch, which was then a property of America Online and is now a property of a company called Hale Global. My friend Nancy Wride was the editor at the time, and I was helping to bring Community to the Patch with my personal blog. I called it The Community Lemonade Game. You can read about it here.
WANT TO START AT THE BEGINNING? Read the first post here. This is the second post in the series.
THE GAUNTLET – I’m playing another version of the game as I seek to build community around the Southern California Qualifier of the World Robot Olympiad. This is an event I’m helping to host as I’m the Youth Outreach Coordinator of the Robotics Society of Southern California (RSSC). So the Gauntlet… the challenge… is to successfully execute the competition.
During the course of the World Robot Olympiad Community Lemonade Game (yes, I know it’s a mouthful), we will be gathering skills that will help us as we prepare and coach youth for the World Robot Olympiad. I have a technical background, and certainly technical interests, but I also have a love of hands on making skills like sewing and mold making. The World Robot Olympiad Open Category is an inventing competition. Only the LEGO(r) Mindstorms NXT brick or the Mindstorms EV3 brick are required. Everything else is possible.
So in this version of the Community Lemonade Game, there will be several activities around the World Robot Olympiad. Some will be open to the public. At least once weekly, I will participate in a public exercise that is free.
There are costs involved in participating and coaching, so that can not be free, unless you – my reader – are able to fund and coach a team. If you are curious, I have calculated the costs at $1,200-1,500 per team for equipment, coaching and competition participation. If you already have the LEGO(r) Mindstorms or EV3 you can knock off about $600.
SPACE – There is space needed for coaching teams. Coaching is a hyper-local activity, although my Friend and Robotics professor Walter Martinez, who I met at the RSSC, has done some coaching with a group in Honduras over some digital platform. If you have a space that you can offer for teams to meet, that would be most awesome. Let me know.
EQUIPMENT – Equipment such as the EV3 and Mindstorms NXT are most welcome. LEGO(r) Technics, and creative LEGO(r) bricks are also welcome. However we will need all kinds of motors, gears, old toys. I’d like to experiment with some solar panels, and I hear that installers often have to cut the solar panels when they are making them. I heard that from a model turned rocket scientist who worked at JPL/NASA when I attended the Women in Big Data conference in 2016. Since then I’ve heard a lot about Big Data.
COACHES – We most certainly will need coaches. Core coaches for the team is what I’m talking about here. The team sizes are small. Just two or three kids per team, and – well hello! It’s Summer! – Coaching can be as simple as a mom, dad, older brother or sister. I have a few coaches who will be helping me in my summer program.
SKILLS – There are other kinds of coaches we will need. Presenters to share skills with the community. Certainly the mechanical engineer, the programming engineer, the electrical engineer and hobbyists. For the Open Competition, however, the coach is not only the engineering coach, but the mask making coach, the sewing coach, the artist. Perhaps our youth will think up interesting new versions of the Scarecrow and need to sew up a storm.
MATERIALS – We will need materials. Got any? I consider materials to be anything that can be used up.
PLAYERS – The player is the potential participant. We are seeking to create community around the World Robot Olympiad. But our community of players can be a viewer, a competitor, a volunteer within the player age range (up to 25 years of age).
AS I WRITE THIS – I am sharing with you from my dorm room in Greiner Hall at the University of Buffalo, in Buffalo, NY. It is the home of the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) and it is where I met Duane Wilson, who will be visiting with us in Long Beach, CA this July. I spent today learning a little more about Design Thinking (a popular buzzword to which I was introduced last year), the Agile Methodology (which I’d used before) and the Creative Problem Solving process, which I have studied for the past few years. For this, I spent the day with IBM’s Data Geek Michael Ackerbauer and 49 other new Friends. Above is a photo of me with Michael and “Flat Butch O’Hare“. Yes, I’m playing a game within a game and helping my friends at the O’Hare airport play this Flying Game. It was a hot day, and they were offering free fans and asked that I take photos of https://twitter.com/squigglemo… Butch”. Butch reminds me of Long Beach’s famous aviator, Cal Rogers. #flywithbutchohare @flyohare @fly2ohare @macker. Now I have tweeted the photo with Michael, as he can share it on Twitter, bringing my Tweets to the roundly sum of three. Find me now on Twitter: @squigglemom
Trish Tsoiasue is a community builder based in Long Beach, California . She builds socially responsible, grassroots communities, has many hobbies and interests, and lots and lots of ideas. She is trained in LEGO(r) Serious Play and the Creative Problem Solving Institute‘s methods of intentional creativity. The two communities she has created and in which she takes most pride are Makersvilleand ScoutMaker (a prototype community started at Title I, Lincoln Elementary School through a grant from Honda Research and Development arranged by the Long Beach BSA ).