Outreach Blog

Every morning this week I have gotten up at 4:30 am. My new little puppy doesn’t quite know how to sleep through the night, but he sounds so sad when I leave him in the crate so I have to let him out and play with him, no matter the time. He’s pretty cute so I let him get away with it.

That doesn’t make it easy to get everything done, and when I’m (sadly) not playing with my pup,

I’m writing more things on my to-do list, and not crossing enough things off. I’ve been outreach lead for about 4 days now, and I think I’m pretty on top of things, like a unicyclist on a tightrope across the grand canyon, but on top of things nonetheless.

A lot of work goes into outreach, there are so many little nuts and bolts that have to be in place before the outreach bot can run. First we have to contact community members, and reach out into the community to set up outreach visits. Email after email after email after call after text after meeting after email. Finally once one event is set up, suddenly there are three everyday and seven on weekends, and we gear up to go. Totes organized, transportation arranged, volunteers signed up, emails sent, phones charged, robots working. We’ve achieved liftoff, but it’s not that easy. You get to the classroom and you left the tape in the car, and ran out of paper… A little Kindergartner is scared of Star Wars and starts to cry when you mention R2-D2 as a famous robot… The phones weren’t actually in the tote, but on a table in the warehouse… Alas, it works out anyway, and we just keep planning more outreach.

By: Carleigh