2025 FIRST Forums @ Purdue Ft Wayne Sessions

 Learn how to make your team stand out through effective branding, storytelling, and media. This session covers everything from creating a consistent team identity to running a student-led media group, managing social posts, and engaging sponsors. You’ll leave with practical tools and strategies to grow your team’s visibility, attract support, and tell your story beyond the robot. 

Looking to grow your program or support others in doing the same? Join us to explore practical strategies for building and sustaining a successful K-12 robotics pipeline. We’ll share how our program grew from just 14 students on a single FLL and FTC team to serving more than 85 students annually across a dozen teams, spanning grades K-12 from FLL Discover to FRC. Learn proven approaches for recruitment, mentorship, retention, and program structure that can help your robotics community thrive. 

Overview of a build season and ways to communication with students to stay on task.

This session will cover less about actual programming, and more about the strategy & tactics that we use on FRC 461 & our feeder FTC teams to get our students up to speed on the basics.

Prepare your team to understand the FRC awards.
Level up your submissions and presentations.
Navigate the complexity of pit judging.
Understand how the judging process works to better prepare your team!

Looking to take your FTC robot to the next level? This session covers proven building techniques, design strategies, and tips to avoid common pitfalls. Learn how to improve durability, reliability, and performance while keeping your build process efficient and effective. Whether you’re new to FTC or looking to refine your approach, you’ll leave with practical insights to strengthen your team’s robot and overall success. 

Come learn the ins & outs of the judging process in FTC

Launching and sustaining a FIRST robotics team takes more than just passion - it requires a solid financial foundation. This session is designed for new and growing teams who want to build sustainable fundraising practices. We’ll cover the most common types of fundraising in FIRST (sponsorships, grants, events, and digital campaigns), strategies for keeping strong records and alumni connections, and how to structure a fundraising calendar that supports an entire season.

Attendees will also participate in a group idea share, leaving with a crowd-sourced list of proven fundraising strategies they can adapt for their own teams. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to strengthen your approach, this session will give you practical tools to help your team thrive.

Want to make autons as good as the veterans? Join the Pathweaver crash course where I show you how to create autonomous paths with ease and implement them into your team's drivetrain code.

Leadership has two sides: building the habits that make you effective as an individual leader, and shaping the culture that helps your team succeed. This session gives a general overview of both—from personal strengths and leadership styles to team vision, mission statements, and conflict resolution. Student leaders will learn how to grow themselves and unify their teams, and mentors will walk away with practical tools to guide and support their students and team.

Teaching process and focus points for improving robot performance through small changes to robot design. 

How do we think in terms of software to create a mechanical output? 

Let's discuss ways to recruit, engage, retain, and support your mentors!

Programming languages as tools, using the simulator, unit testing, realistic planning, agile, feature creep avoidance, team communication, and of course A.I.

A quick introduction to a couple of models of personal development & how we can leverage those to help support the students & mentors on our teams.

Question. Persuade. Refer.
Three steps anyone can learn to help prevent suicide. QPR Training (Question, Persuade, Refer) is a suicide prevention program designed to teach people how to recognize the warning signs of a suicide crisis and respond effectively. Similar to CPR, QPR provides simple, actionable steps: Question the person about suicidal thoughts, Persuade them to seek help, and Refer them to appropriate resources. The training equips participants with the knowledge and confidence to intervene early, support someone in distress, and potentially save a life.

A session will last roughly 1 hour 30 minutes, with an in depth guide on how to help people in distress. Participants will receive a QPR certificate upon completion and QPR booklet . The training is provided free of charge, with a certified instructor coming in to train people!

Please note that the intended audience is for college students, mentors, educators, and adults. Students at least 16 years old are also invited to attend.

This session, presented by the Indiana Youth Advisory Board, will feature QPR training from Pamela Cashdollar of Mental Health America of Northeast Indiana.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to find the right alliance partner to help your team take home a blue banner? Should a small team bother with scouting? Do rankings matter? We'll answer these questions and more as we learn the fundamentals of scouting, including data analysis, networking, and creating your pick list. 

Let's talk student & mentor leadership development, non-profit management, and pipeline building!

Managing your resources is one of the most difficult tasks in FRC. Spanning from kickoff to state championships, this session focuses on how to optimize your slices of the pie - time, knowledge, materials, and data to be highly competitive at the district and state level, geared towards lower resourced teams. 

Learn the essentials of wiring your FRC robot for safety, reliability, and easy troubleshooting. Perfect for rookies and mentors who want to avoid common mistakes and keep their robots running strong on the field.