Last week on October 17, 2017, the Girls of Steel had the 4th all hands meeting of the preseason which began on September 26th. So far we have been getting settled, getting to know new girls, making changes from last year to better the team, and working on preparing for the upcoming build season!
During the all hands slideshow on Tuesdays, we discuss the various events and opportunities coming up within the next few months, like outreach events. This week we heard about mentoring at FLL meetings and leading chassis workshops, along with the opportunity of being identified as an GoS “ambassador” for the upcoming crowdfunding campaign. We also heard about who has already had shop safety training and who still needs it. We talked about how we reached over 1,000 people in two days at the Pittsburgh Maker Faire (October 14 and 15), which is 20% of our annual goal of reaching 5000 people by direct contact at outreach events.
Each week George speaks about one of the Girls of Steel Principles – teamwork, respect, communication, integrity, safety – and this time he spoke about what integrity is and why it is important. Integrity is doing what you say you’re going to do. During the past few meetings he has talked about communication, teamwork, and respect also; all are vital characteristics of a good team. We also talked about every member reaching their requirement of 10 outreach events and championing one event, a new component that was added this year. Championing is when a GoS member manages one event, talks about the event to the team and recruits girls, attends the event, and then records how many people are reached through the event.
This year, we have also began having regularly scheduled Thursday preseason technical meetings for extra time on technical projects and other tasks. On Thursdays the girls have been focusing on building technical skills by getting hands on experience with using hand tools, working in the machine shop, programming robots, working on design projects, and more! Thursdays have also been meeting times when girls are encouraged to try out new ideas or work on a tech subteam that might be new to them. We have been holding tester sessions for each of the technical subteams in which girls get to learn more about each technical aspect of the team, and get a taste of what it’s like to be on each different technical subteam. So far we have had “taste testers” for the design and mechanical team, which included a welding demo, and in the upcoming weeks we will be holding the “taste testers” for the electronics and programming teams.
At this point in the preseason and for a few more weeks we are only doing business tasks on Tuesdays, so after the all hands meeting on Tuesday, we separated into the business subteams. Media has been working on team branding (and hosted a guest speaker), creating a video for the crowdfunding campaign, and on creating new social media connections for the team.
The awards team worked on drafting ideas for their awards presentations. Lastly, the finance girls edited more of the business plan, created an outline for a video, and planned the “we can do it” T-shirt fundraiser and the annual Sarris Candies fundraisers. You can order online. Our Group ID# is 10-2445.
Preseason is going well so far – great job to everyone! We will be back next week to continue working hard!