Shop OBEX P1 Docs P2 Docs Learn Events
USA science and engineering festival — Parallax Forums

USA science and engineering festival

Invent-O-DocInvent-O-Doc Posts: 768
edited 2012-04-29 12:38 in General Discussion
I saw the parallax crew at this event in Washington dc today. The event was really huge and filled withkids. Parallax had soldering stations, sumo bots and line followers. The pace seemed a little more intense than at the recent expo. Ken said he was spending most of his time fixing robots.

there were a few other cool things. The sparkfun guys noticed my wifes jewelry she made from reject spark fun pcbs.

There was a cool basketball shooting robot there as well.

Comments

  • Ken GraceyKen Gracey Posts: 7,401
    edited 2012-04-28 19:26
    @Invent-O-Doc:

    Thank you very much for bringing the whole family into the USA Science and Engineering Festival today, and stopping by to say hello. Your kids were super excited to play with all the robots!

    This was a very demanding event from our perspective - the Parallax crew isn't familiar with handling 13,000 kids in a single day. You can imagine the variety of situations we encountered - surprising in so many ways - a massively mixed bag of commercial contacts (buyers, product designers) and creative kids who wanted their first experience "building something". Really, these kids want to make anything, especially something they could take home. Kids are starved for simple hands-on experiences using tools, especially since the school's test-driven agenda has literally designed such experiences right out of the classrooms at this point. There's a renaissance among some educators to bring into the classroom 3D printers, robotics, and any fabrication activities.

    I bounced between cruising the conference hall, helping in our soldering station (I think we "processed" 1,000 kids today) and keeping our robot demos running. Afterwards we went to a Belgian restaurant to relax - all nine of us plus a customer, and just decompress. I don't think I've ever seen our crew worn so thin as today. We'll see if any Parallax crew return to the convention tomorrow for a final round of action.

    We also had a fair number of new Propeller programmers stop by. There's a number of them lurking around here, staying quiet until they have a project in mind.

    Ken Gracey
  • Matt GillilandMatt Gilliland Posts: 1,406
    edited 2012-04-28 21:47
    a massively mixed bag of commercial contacts (buyers, product designers) and creative kids
    You're not whining now, are you Chief? :tongue:
    Sounds to me like a veritable cornucopia of rising new talents and fertile grounds!

    -MattG
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,259
    edited 2012-04-28 22:01
    Wish I was there! I grew up in Woodbridge, 20 miles south of DC. I have badgeholders left over from Expo and my BS2 printer & golfball shooting robot are always ready for action! Didja demo the flamethrower? :)
  • Invent-O-DocInvent-O-Doc Posts: 768
    edited 2012-04-29 06:40
    Love that flamethrower!
  • prof_brainoprof_braino Posts: 4,313
    edited 2012-04-29 10:59
    Baaaah! I missed the flame thrower AGAIN? Its not fair.....
  • MicrocontrolledMicrocontrolled Posts: 2,461
    edited 2012-04-29 11:07
    DC is just a few hours away. Why do I not hear of these things until they are over??
  • Invent-O-DocInvent-O-Doc Posts: 768
    edited 2012-04-29 12:38
    Oh - there was no intention to intonate that the flamethrower was shown at this festival - it is way too crowded. Just seeing the flamethrower once in Rocklin leaves me with warm fuzzy memories - thats all!
Sign In or Register to comment.