Reflections from the Girl Powered Robotics Event

The two weekends in July (14 thru 16 and 21 thru 23) have been one crazy time for me and many of my robotics friends. Over the last few months, we have been planning for this big event to bring robotics and STEM to young girls between the ages of 8 through 16. This work started in March 2023. Here are some of my reflections from the planning through execution of this event. To help you understand the scale of this event, we had 500 students, 250 parents, and 250 volunteers each weekend. That’s 1000 people each weekend. Our original goal was to 

1.  Remember the ‘Why’

In 2022, I committed to running the Google Girl Powered Robotics Workshop for 2023. We met in late February 2023 and decided we will start planning for the event in late March 2023. As many of you know, I work at #SVB (Silicon Valley Bank). On March 9th, we had a bank run and the bank collapsed. Instead of focusing on robotics, I had to think about my job. I had a choice to back away and sit this one out. However I remembered the “Why”. It is easy to give up but when you have a deep “Why”, you will find ways to get it done. My “Why” continues to be to bring diversity and inclusion into robotics and STEM. Opening doors to the young girls will create new opportunities and tomorrow’s engineers and leaders. So if you are going through difficult times, always remember the “Why” and you will find a way out

2. Have a winning Mindset

When I started working on the VIQ workshop volunteer list (in April), I didn’t have enough of a core team to work with. Many had other plans (vacation, busy with work, personal/family commitments). I had to trust my gut and have a winning mindset. I knew that I will eventually have a team that I can rely on. Remember, “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” ―Vince Lombardi. When you have an open and winning mindset, you will always find the right people that are ready to help. Sometimes you will be surprised at who steps up. Always believe in yourself and have a winning mindset. When you doubt yourself, your goals start to crumble.

3. Trust the team; collaboration is key

Past experience of running these events has taught me one thing: You cannot do it alone. You need a strong core team. Once you have built that team, you have to trust that the team will get things done. An event of this nature has so many sub projects. Each one of them has to come together for the weekend. Registration, Ordering Robot Kits and Parts, Badge, T-Shirt, Booths, Speakers and their slides, Food, Production Crew, Event Location and Setup, Security, Marketing the event, all Materials to be printed, and many more. Each of these require tracking and they need to come together in perfect harmony for the weekend. It takes a village to get this done and above all, these are all volunteers helping to make it happen. Trusting that they will NOT drop the ball is critical. Over the years I have learned what and how things work. How much to micromanage and when to let it go. This is where collaboration becomes the key to success. The village will never let the team fail. That’s the trust and collaboration we have created.

4. Create an environment for leaders to grow

When you work with 100s of volunteers, you start to see a pattern of three kinds of people: a) the doers, b) the leaders / the ones that take charge, and c) the happy-to-be-here kinds. You want to find a way to reduce the number of happy-to-be-here kinds. They are definitely needed but you want to reduce this pool. You need a lot of ‘doers” as they are core to the success of the event. And you definitely want to spot the “leaders / take charge” ones. When you create an environment that allows people to take charge and explore their leadership capabilities, you will see transformation. Everything in an event can’t be spelled out. In many cases, we cannot spell out the details. You want people who can assess the situation, take charge and drive. I found high-schoolers and college grads stepping up to take on certain roles. It is great to see that transformation. When you allow this, you will see creativity,  automation, and efficiency. I wouldn’t have been able to incorporate them if I was doing it alone. The key is to create an environment that allows people to step up and lead. These will become your core team for the next event. So think long term and build leaders that can take the event to the next level

5. Be Humble and Stay Calm

Running an event like the Google Girl Powered Robotics Workshop is not a simple job. You are given the responsibility to bring together 100s of volunteers. Ensure it doesn’t get into your head. Stay humble and learn from each interaction. It could be with the participants (ages 8 thru 18), or with the adults (participant’s parents) or volunteers (ages 14 and above). In an event like this, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Your ability to stay calm, collected, and to navigate through the situation is critical. When you panic and let your guard down, it will reflect badly on you, the organizers, and everyone around you. You want everyone to have the best experience and you have to be the role model to make this happen. Evaluate every situation, assess your surroundings, neutralize the stress level, think and then act. This is one of the biggest lessons for me. I am still learning and growing with each event. In the past, I used to panic and jump into action. This has hurt me and others badly. Over the years, I have learned to stay calm, think, process, and then act.

6. Communication is Key

A large event like this can have so many challenges. The more you communicate, the more successful the event will be. We started communicating with the parents of participants in early April. We continued to communicate until the event was over. The core team vetted all the emails and ensured the right information was shared with the participants and parents. We did the same with the volunteers. We had rehearsals on many of the communication protocols. Some of our meetings were primarily focused on communication strategy. We regrouped every day during the event to ensure we tweak our communication. The more intentional you get around communication, you win. It is also important NOT to assume the recipients will receive, read, and understand the message. We had to build strategies to ensure recipients received and understood the message. This is an area we continue to improve and I think there is still room for improvement. Always keep learning, improving, and communicating. That will result in a successful event.

7. Take time to recover and reflect

This is the most important one for me. 

This was the sixth year of the Google Girl Powered Robotics Event. Every year we spend numerous hours preparing for the event. We start the planning sessions in March and wrap up with the event in July. Our central focus is the participants (girls aged 8 thru 18) for these five months. We also work on creating opportunities for our volunteers to learn and grow. And we identify core team members that can help us repeat this annually. Over the five months we refined our templates, runbooks, program designs, instruction manuals, and even created a big list of lessons learned. We focus on our Thank You notes and we ensure everyone has had a great experience. What I have also learned is that I need to take time and reflect on how things went. More importantly take time to recover and re-energize. If you don’t take time for yourself to reflect, you are not improving. Learn from what you did or didn’t do. It will make you a better person. 

Thank You for taking time to read through my learning. If you are interested in volunteering at the Google Girl Powered Robotics Event or any other Robotics Event in the Silicon Valley Bay Area, feel free to DM me or send a note to girlpowered.iq.robotics@gmail.com

#GirlPowered #Robotics #Google Shivakumar Venkataraman , Shantanu Pal , Kevin Joseph , David Kwan , Dawn Kuenzi , Rahul Raveendran , Dheeba Gopalsamy , Chris Croswhite , Sangram Dash , Nitin Agrawal , Kaushik Shivakumar , Raja Jasti , Ramachandran R , Dan Mantz ,