Anton Olsen comparte su experiencia en el FIT 2011

Anton Olsen, Master Geek at Innovation First, International, participó como conferencista en el Foro de Innovación Tecnológica (FIT) que se llevó a cabo del 12 al 14 de octubre en Universidad Galileo. A continuación compartimos una publicación que escribió dando a conocer su experiencia en el FIT:

A GeekDad Goes to Guatemala

VEXWorkshop-660x404 — Eduardo assists a couple of students in the VEX Robotics Workshop

Last week I took a trip down to the Galileo University in Guatemala City. The occasion was the Foro de Innovación Tecnológica, or FIT2011. This was the second year for the forum whose purpose is to inspire the students and other attendees. I don’t know who was inspired more, but I am certain that we all had fun doing and learning about geeky things.

I must admit that I was very nervous about the conference. I have not often presented to a large group of people and never to a group whose primary language was not English. As is often the case, my fears were unwarranted. Nearly all of the students spoke English as well as I did and despite a lot of last minute work the presentations and workshops happened with very few problems.

The most difficult part for me was designing the VEX workshop. VEX doesn’t have a simple easy-to-build robot kit so I have to improvise. The final design was similar in style to the old squarebot, but with fewer pieces. I added bump sensors to the front and preprogrammed the microcontroller with a simple collision avoidance routine. We got off to a late start but everyone got their robots assembled and most of them worked as planned. I’m very glad that I didn’t leave the programming for the workshop since we nearly ran out of time.

For the toy-hacking workshop I used the TI Launchpad development board to take control of the Hexbug Spider remote. Many thanks to my friend Eric Gregori for the original idea. You can read his post on his site, Build Smart Robots: Hack a Hexbug Spider. I’ll be posting my version of the instructions and more about that workshop here in a few days.

The only other speaker from the United States was Steve French from Volt Vision. He gave a couple workshops and presentations about DMX and LED lighting. I regret not spending more time listening to his presentations as I was too busy preparing for mine, but what I did see was very interesting. Steve is working on some educational kits that may be of interest to many of you. I’ll be sure to post about them once they are ready.

So how was I inspired? I’ve been inspired to create two things, namely, improved versions of my VEX and Hexbug workshops. I have also been inspired to learn Spanish. Nearly everyone at the university and hotel spoke English but there were many occasions where speaking Spanish, even a little, would have been a great help.

I’d like to give thanks to the Universidad Galileo, Eduardo Corpeño, and Oscar Rodas for inviting me to speak and to everyone who helped me get ready for the workshops. You and your students have inspired me as much as I hope I have inspired you. Thank you.

Escrito por: Anton Olsen.

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Anton Olsen comparte su experiencia en el FIT 2011