The Girls of Steel are halfway through preseason! 

The girls are excited and working hard in preparation for our fast-approaching end to preseason and our EOPP unveiling.

Quick follow-up: We went to the Rah Cha Cha Ruckus competition on October 27th and received the “Alien Invaders” Award!

Starting with our business side, the girls were extremely fortunate to have Matthew Romeike speak to them on Tuesday, October 30th. He is currently an MBA student at Tepper and the president of the Finance Club. He worked as an engineer for Siemens after graduating from Lehigh prior to business school where he will pursue investment banking full time. Mr. Romeike spoke to the entire team about the importance and significance of business plans. He then talked with the finance team, going over our business plan and suggesting different techniques to distinguish ourselves from our competitors. The girls are so appreciative of Mr. Romeike taking the time to speak with us- Thank you so much!

The Finance team updated all of the team goals and organization structure in the business plan. They also completed the Gantt chart for season structure, contacted nonprofits, and picked a date in December for the CMU bake sale.

The Awards has been working hard on the Woodie Flowers essays, revising the rough drafts of the long essay. They have also been brainstorming ideas for the Chairman’s video and presentation in collaboration with the Video team. The Video team finished and edited the Crowdfunding video and now it’s on CMU’s crowdfunding website here. They also starting scripting for the Chairman’s video.

The Media team has continued to update their branding guidelines and media girls are learning how to use Adobe Illustrator.

Transitioning to the technical side, the girls have been hard at work to make our EOPP amazing. The design team has received the plates for the shooter cut, and continued prototyping. The electronics team starting working on their second electronics board. The mechanical team assembled the gearboxes and are now working on the chain. Finally, the programming team continued training and got two robots working with code. Great job, Girls!

And last, but certainly not least, our lovely FTC teams. Lovelace (9981) has rebuilt a bigger chassis, worked on wheel positioning, and are building the collector linear slide. Hopper (9821) is fixing their chassis and sketching and building their arm mechanism to latch onto the robot. Hypatia (9820) finished building their chassis and attached it to the expansion hub. They are now working on putting wheels and chain on the chassis, as well as building mechanisms.  They are excited about their upcoming scrimmage on Saturday, November 10th, at Peters Township Middle School.  Check out their first blog post !

Two more very productive weeks have just finished, and there is only more work to be done-so stay tuned for what the Girls of Steel will accomplish next!