G.I.R.L. Tech had our Soft Opening yesterday and it was a big success! *whew*

It wouldn't have been possible had it not been for Lauren and Rebecca slaving away making these awesome cabinets til 4am these past weeks (get some sleep you two) and Lindsay for hammering away at that Interface code and electronics/lighting til it was all integrated (I'll admit it, that last minute lighting idea of yours was genius). Laura did an excellent job saving the days multiple times getting all the equipment (especially getting those incorrectly cut canvas plexis straightened out) and writing up all that documentation. And I can't forget about little Samantha ditching school to come out and represent our interns' work at Soft... Awesome job explaining and presenting it Sam!

The faculty and visitors were very impressed by the project and somewhat more impressed by the interns' tic-tac-toe playing robots than Lynxy... which made Lynxy somewhat jealous (older sibling syndrome and all, I can relate :). We were given tons of valuable feedback that we definitely hope to incorporate in the final exhibit... I particularly loved Brenda's idea of a personality on Lynxy... Pixar's Luxo Jr immediately came to my mind when she was describing how Lynxy could animate. Now I need to think of a way to give her a personality (through keyframed animations) without shredding through her servos too much with all those repetitive actions. Ah a good artsy engineering challenge!

We'd like to Thank all the faculty, students and visitors who came by at Soft and all those times prior to test out our little painting bot. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us to finalize and clean things up for the final grand opening in a few weeks.

This past Friday, Lauren, Chuck, and I represented G.I.R.L. Tech at the Carnegie Mellon in the Community: TECHNOLOGY event on main campus.

We saw a lot of familiar faces at the event and also met some new ones. Emily Hamner of Robot Diaries was there and Gregg Behr of the Grable Foundation (our project's sponsor) stopped by our table to say hi. There were some neat demos, in particular the Snake Robot winding and coiling its way through the center of the room.

We also met ETC alums Ames Kraemer and Yuki Izena-Vandapel, who were at the table next to ours presenting Carnegie Cadets, the MySecureCyberspace Game.

In addition to new robotics and education contacts, I think the main thing we took away from this event was a realization of just how much demand there is for high school internship programs like the one G.I.R.L. Tech is offering. We had quite a few people from different organizations asking if we were still accepting interns, or if the program would open up to new girls again at any point. Future semesters take note!

We saw this simple robot at the Carnegie Mellon in the Community: Technology event—as people came closer, it would open like a flower, offering pens and displaying the CREATE business card and other program info. It was a cute, fun way to draw people in!

Robot Diaries robots at the Carnegie Mellon in the Community: Technology event.

Team members Lauren Etta and Charles Daniel talking with a visitor at the Carnegie Mellon in the Community: Technology event. Photo by Laura Lantz.