Florida's ROBOTICON and How to Connect FIRST With Your Community
ROBOTICON Tampa Bay, now in its 5 th year, is a collaborative effort of several Tampa Bay organizations and partners, including FIRST Affiliate Partners, Alumni and volunteers. Led by Eureka! Factory, in partnership with the Foundation for Community Driven Innovation, ROBOTICON is a K-12 STEAM education showcase, featuring all four FIRST programs, and academic, engineering and industry exhibits for a weekend long celebration of science and technology. The mission of ROBOTICON is to increase public awareness of and engagement in, the power of hands on, mentor driven youth engineering and robotics programs like FIRST , and to provide participating youth with a low stress, high-quality event with opportunities for skill building, networking, and college and career readiness experiences. When we originally organized ROBOTICON, I was the Regional Director for Central Florida and simply modeled the off-season event on a scaled back version of the Orlando Regional. We quickly dis...