Techno Titans

Jonah Chadwin, Delisa Troupe

In this episode, host Delisa Troupe follows the journey of Techno Titans as they develop as a team and express their hopes for the upcoming competitions. Listen on Spotify or Apple Music. 

Delisa Troupe: Hello, and welcome to Point of View, where we give students a place to listen, learn and lean in. I'm your host, Delisa Troupe, and today we're going to follow the journey of Techno Titans, Northview's robotics team, from when it was first created to becoming one of the biggest clubs at Northview today.

Theresa Dixon: So it started in 2005. I think it had been around for two or three years, and then a teacher by the name of Jason Weinberger had taken it over, and that is who Howard had been working with, was Jason. And then I came in at that point. And then they were basically a school club for about 10 years. In 2015, I was involved then. In 2015, we decided to become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and by doing that, it allowed us to be financially free from the school.

Delisa Troupe: Techno Titans was founded in 2005 around the time that Northview opened. However, it's not just a school club. In 2015, they became a 501(c)(3) organization. Coach Theresa Dixon joined years later to help her current husband with the team.

Theresa Dixon: It really was a matter of, my boyfriend at the time was actually one of the mentors with the team. And I never saw him from January to May because that's when he was up here working with the kids. So after a while I have no technical experience whatsoever, but I found that the team also needed people who could order a pizza, who could make their hotel reservations, who could take care of the books. So I volunteered to do that so that I could be with my friend as well as help the kids out. Howard, he actually is now my husband as of two weeks ago. He was approached by the school. He works at Nordson and Nordson is one of the leading industries here in Johns Creek. When the team was formed in 2005, they approached the industry leaders and said, do you have any technical mentors who can help with the robotics program? He volunteered. So now he's here and he's the lead mentor on the team. And then, like I said, I help out too.

Delisa Troupe: To ensure that they can get the materials and supplies they need on time, the robotics team reaches out to sponsors that help them with their financial needs.

Theresa Dixon: So for example, we're building a robot and we say, oh my gosh, we need these parts right now. We need this. A typical situation if you were still with the school club would be, you'd have to put in a requisition to get funds. It could take a week before all the paperwork and everything is done. By being the 501(c)(3), we were able to then we can do our own finances. So if we need a part, we can order it right now, get it tomorrow. So, and that allowed us us to, by having these big sponsors and the foundation, we can operate more freely. We can afford to have the workspace. If you have something you need to do, you pretty much have to finish up by eight o'clock at night when they lock the building. We can be at the workspace as long as the parents will allow their children to be there.

Theresa Dixon: So it's just, it's a nice thing, and honestly, we cannot do it without our sponsors. And we have some very, very generous sponsors. Well, Nordson is our biggest sponsor and that's where Howard works. They were one of the founding sponsors of the team. This year actually, they upped, they granted us $20,000. So we just put words out. A lot of it comes from sponsors, parents of the students, wherever they're working, we say, Hey, can you just give us a name? That's all we ask. We'll do the work. Just give us a name of somebody to contact and see what we can do.

Delisa Troupe: Just this year, Techno Titans had over 200 people show interest in the club with 92 standing members as of today. After they recruit people through orientation and Club Fair, they spend the first two weeks explaining what the club is about and allow people to decide whether or not it's for them. For the rest of the semester, they divide into sub teams and do boot camps where they hone their skills for the FRC competitions in the spring.

Theresa Dixon: We have several subteams. So you can choose if you wanna be on the team on fabrication that actually builds the robot, if you wanna be on the electrical team that does the wiring, or if you have no desire to even touch a robot, but wanna do our social media, you can be on the business team. So during first semester we have that whole time where you can learn about your sub-team and what your responsibilities will be then. And then another thing we do during the first semester is we mentor younger kids in a program called FLL, First Lego League. So they're using the Lego Mindstorms and we help them learn how to program it as well as they do a project.

Delisa Troupe: During the second semester on the first Saturday in January is the big kickoff. FIRST, a robotics competition for high school students, releases a theme or "game" for that year. In the 2021 to 2022 season, the theme is transportation. On their website they explain further, "From the shipment of packages in rural and urban areas to disaster relief delivery and high tech air transit, teams will reimagine faster, more reliable, inclusive, and sustainable transportation innovations that better connect and grow communities and economies around the world." They are given six weeks to build a robot, which is around 120 pounds. After those six weeks, they start their competition cycle. This past weekend, they went to their first competition in Dalton, Georgia, and at the end of the month, they'll be going to Albany.

Coco Lu: I'm honestly really, really proud of our team making so much progress this season so far. All of our practices have been going pretty well. If we will win, I hope so, but then again, robots have a mind of their own pretty much. Yes, we control them, but sometimes things do go beyond our control and something might break or something might, you know, malfunction. So it's hard to tell if we will win or not. We don't know what other team's robots are like yet, but knowing the competition in the Peachtree district, it will probably be pretty tough. But since it is one of the first competitions, I expect other teams to pretty much be on the same level, maybe. But I do think that our robot is pretty solid. We can climb, we can shoot, we can track. So I have confidence in our team's abilities. Yeah.

Delisa Troupe: Junior Coco Lu is the business head of Techno Titans. She oversees the outreach and communications and marketing and media sub teams. Although she originally wanted to join the fabrication team, after a certain incident with the saw, her hopes were diminished. Thankfully, she believes she fits in much more with business.

Coco Lu: Tell them basically what the tasks are for the week, and then we all work together to get the rest of the business team, to go with our activities. So usually we oversee like our team social medias, we apply for awards. We also maintain relationships with our sponsors through the forms of email blasts and thank you cards, stuff like that. And we overall just do pretty much everything that's not on the technical side of engineering.

Delisa Troupe: Other prominent members include Kenneth Shen, Vice President and Siya Deshpande, Engineering Head of Techno Titans. Kenneth, Siya, and Advay Pampattiwar are the main designers of the robot. With their many years on the team, they've also had a lot of memorable moments.

Siya Deshpande: My freshman year I drove into the table and I was like, it was kind of like my thing. It was like, whenever we see that table, now it was a brand new table. It was the first time anyone made a dent in it. And so whenever we like see that table, we're like, oh, that's my table. It's my mark. So it's like, but I've heard that like, it's actually really been useful to connect things together.

Kenneth Shen: This is, I guess one of my biggest memories from robotics and kind of the point that I feel like really sense that I really wanna do this was back in my freshman year, I was really bad at box. Every time I was like, oh, this is off. This is wrong. Oh, it's not within like this thing. It's not gonna work. You know? And then we kind of iterating and iterating, iterating. And at that time I wasn't really that good at computer and design either. So I was like making a lot of mistakes too, with computer design and modeling. I guess my most memorable moment is when we actually built it. I felt so satisfying. To finally see it like done and like completed. We still have it, still use it today. So it's like, not like kind like a legacy. It's like, oh yes, that is gonna be with our team for hopefully a long time after I go.

Coco Lu: The first thing that comes to mind is definitely competitions. I feel like the energy at competitions is just immeasurable compared to everything else. Usually during the season, things can get stressful or things can be very, very time consuming, but once we get to competitions, we just let go of all of our fear and worries. We try to live in the moment and just enjoy the competition.

Delisa Troupe: Competitions are fun experiences for members of the team to earn awards, meet new people, and have fun competing against others in a safe environment. Many of the members also engage in fun events like dance offs. Although robotics is competitive, the FRC, First Robotics Competition, encourages high quality work, emphasizing the value in others, and being professional and respectful to competitors and the community at all times.

Coco Lu: The thing about robotics is that there's a sense of gracious professionalism. Basically that means when you go to competitions and stuff, you are basically representing your team and your fellow teammates, and it's looked down upon if you say anything negative about other teams, judges, the first program, which is what we fall under. So we basically just try to stay professional at all times, and competitions are just really a way for all of us to just enjoy the competition, enjoy the robots, make friends, stuff like that. And our team is really, really good with like team spirit. We do cheers, dances, stuff like that. And yeah, it's overall really fun, and it's just the energy of everyone in the venue or the area. It's great.

Delisa Troupe: The club has grown exponentially throughout the years, not only in number, but also in female representation.

Coco Lu: In 2017, we had like seven girls. Now we have around 20 that's like a 186% increase. So I'm really happy about that. And also I'm really proud of us girls too. Like we have like our own girls channel in our Slack and we plan like girls hangouts sometimes, and we just do a lot of things together. I'm really, really close with the girls on the team now just because we have been able to hang out and talk so much.

Delisa Troupe: However, there have been times where the girls on the team have felt isolated due to their gender.

Siya Deshpande: Especially being like the only girl in the room at times, it felt like everybody else knew things that I just didn't know. People will be like, oh yeah, I know programming and then be like, oh. I feel like a lot of times boys will say they know things even if they don't and girls, at least me, I'm like, I won't say I know something unless I completely know it. So I always, I always felt like I was like, oh, everybody else is smarter than me. I was like, oh, how am I ever gonna learn? You know, how am I ever gonna learn this stuff? But I feel like you spend more time and the more you learn, the more confident you become.

Delisa Troupe: With 92 members on the team, Techno Titans is open to anyone hoping to learn more about business, robotics engineering and more. However, the club was not always this welcoming. In previous years, they had a cut system where they evaluated members on their performance and decided who should be removed from the team. During the summer, they focused on improving their robots to prepare for GRITS. GRITS, or the Georgia Robotics Invitational Tournament and Showcase, is during the off season and takes place around October or the first semester of school.

Coco Lu: And we used to have a cut system. So basically the October season, basically first semester, we call that the GRITS season because at the end of October or early November, usually somewhere around on that time, there's a competition that's called GRITS, so we call that the GRITS season. In previous years, we allowed anybody to be on the GRITS team. Basically, if you paid your dues and then if you were engaged, we would let you go, and we would let you be on the team. But then for FRC, which is like the second semester season, we used to have a cut system. So we evaluated people's behaviors, and if they acted like they didn't wanna be on the team or they weren't focused at meetings, they would be pretty much warned or booted. This year, it's gotten a lot better. It might have been due to COVID, but we started being a more open team. So we open up our team. It's no longer a cut system, basically, if you're interested and you are committed and you're engaged at meetings and you step up to lead side projects and you do your part, we let anyone join the team now. So that's why our team has been able to grow so much in size.

Kenneth Shen: It was 15 people who applied and only like three got in. So it was like 20% who really got it. It was kinda the same for like all across all sub teams, and we had to cut a lot of people and now we're like more like open we're like okay we accept everyone right. My personal opinion on this and we still have disagreements on the team on this or at least previous leadership definitely didn't believe this was a good method. They thought a more seclusive team was a lot better. I think that people on the team who disagree with me as well, but this is my opinion on this. I feel like having a more open and letting everyone who wants to join, join. I think that's a better system than having a cut system.

Delisa Troupe: Members of the robotics team have expressed positive feelings for the team and leadership. Shriya Mahakala, the safety captain and a programmer for the team, believes that this year, especially with the new workspace, everything is very organized.

Shriya Mahakala: It's been a little hectic, but I think we've been managing it well. Especially this year, I feel like our leadership is super organized. We have schedules every week with designated people at designated places, like some people would be at the workspace and some people would be at the media center for set intervals of time. So it's definitely really organized this year, but then there's always just some stuff like the robot breaking. I think it was like Monday, we were supposed to test on the robot, but then the robot broke. So then that kind of like delayed it. But there's always unexpected circumstances, but I think our leadership this year has been doing really well with managing everything.

Delisa Troupe: With rising hopes and challenges for the upcoming competitions. It is easy to forget that for some members, this may be their last. Kenneth Shen, senior and Vice President of Techno Titans, hopes that people will continue doing the club because they genuinely enjoy it. For him, it was never about leaving a legacy, making a huge impact or looking good for college. Rather, robotics became his passion.

Kenneth Shen: I really hope generally to inspire people to continue doing what they want and what they find meaningful. So I feel like robotics, if you do robotics for college, I feel like you're kind of an idiot in my opinion, because you spend so much time on it, you spend so much effort, and it's just like one thing on your resume. Do things because you want to, because you find them meaningful again, and keep on inspiring others, keep on mentoring others and helping others. You know, helping the community. Our team is very community centric. You know, we go to STEM nights, we do outreach and everything.

Delisa Troupe: For those interested in engineering, robotics, or even business, Techno Titans could be the perfect hobby throughout high school. Although it comes with hard work and a competitive environment, it's a way to make new friendships and explore something you never believed you would've enjoyed before. Their hard work will pay off as they compete in different competitions around Georgia and possibly the world competition in Houston, Texas.

Siya Deshpande: So first time I saw the Techno Titans was at orientation. I saw a really cool robot and it looked really complicated to me and I was like, wow, there's no way that I'm gonna figure out how to do this. I don't know anything about robotics. I had no background in engineering or anything like that. So I was hesitant about joining, but after some encouragement with friends who were on the team and then my family, they encouraged me to join. So I joined and I was really impressed with how inclusive the team was. It didn't matter that I didn't know anything, they were willing to teach me and that's all that mattered. So, that's why I joined and it's a lot of fun in competitions and just the culture of learning is something that I really appreciate within the team.

Delisa Troupe: This concludes our episode with Techno Titans. Thank you so much for listening. For a transcript of this episode, head to the Point of View tab on our website, nhsmessenger.org, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook @nhspointofview for updates and new episodes. I'm your host, Delisa Troupe, and this has been Point of View.