The ultimate goal of RoboJackets is threefold: promotion, education and advancement of robotics. We, as an organization, are well equipped to do all three, and our structure should be equipped similarly well to accomplish these goals. Recently, RoboJackets leadership has made the decision to change how Outreach is handled in RoboJackets. As many alumni will remember, Outreach was formerly a subteam that specialized in, as the name implies, outreach. This included mentoring individual FIRST Robotics Competition teams and providing them with access to our facilities to help them perform in competition. This year, Outreach has been absorbed into the core of RoboJackets and established as a committee, led by the Outreach Chair.
There are a few reasons for this change. First, RJ leadership felt that we, as an organization, could refocus our efforts from mentoring a single team to better serve a larger audience with activities such as producing a Robot in One Weekend (Ri1W) video and hosting design reviews to benefit multiple FRC teams at once. Second, we also wanted to better enable members from any team to participate in outreach on a more casual basis, making Outreach an endeavor that anyone in the club can be involved in. We are excited to see what fruits this new approach will bear. Even though we may be limited in our in-person outreach opportunities during the pandemic, we hope to shape the goals and systems of the committee to serve the future of promotion and education in robotics. Look forward to hearing more about our outreach activities, including participation in FIRST events, in future editions of this newsletter.