Awake the Lakes and Ribfest

Team 3313 has expanded our outreach efforts every single year that Mr. Bydlon has been head coach (past 3 years). It's crazy but just 2 years ago (2011), we only had 5 outreach events ALL YEAR. So far in 2013, we have had 31 (holy crap). So when one of our sponsors, Massman Automation Designs, asked us to have our robot at their Memorial Day Weekend event, Awake the Lakes, we had to say yes.

Awake the Lakes is a "kick off summer" event where many cooks bring their grills and cook up delicious ribs. It's also referred to as Ribfest. There's a street right along one of the downtown Alexandria lakes, Lake Agnes. This street is taken over by big tents and other food vendors. Luckily, we got a spot of our own right by the rib tents.

We set up our Frisbee shooting robot from this year and let the people come to us. It's amazing and awesome how entertained little kids are by a robot. We must have had at least 60 kids shoot and/or catch discs. It was so much fun! The best part was that by the end of the evening, we didn't have to do anything. The kids knew how everything worked and did it all on their own.

Our favorite moment was that a child missed seeing our mascot and asked for Molly to put it back on. As soon as she did, the kid ran up to her legs and gave her a big hug. Melted our aluminum hearts.

Not only did we have a blast shooting off discs with kids, we also got to enjoy DELICIOUS ribs and talk with a ton of community members. It's fantastic to show off and all the work we do to our community.