Graduate Students Team Building with UNL
A Graduate Students Team Building event with Robot Battles had 4 teams building and battling robots!
The Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln hosted a two day retreat to team build with graduate students. It took place at a fellows program that brings upper level students and faculty from the colleges of business, engineering, law, and journalism together to work on challenges presented by technology.
It was a fascinating weekend with amazing folks from different colleges having spirited conversations and interacting in teams.
I traveled all the way to Ashland Nebraska to the Carol Joy Hollings Conference and Retreat Center to see how these talented teams of cross-college team members would handle the Robot Build and Battle event.
I am regularly working with folks who feel in silos, don’t want to be there, but everything seems to push them in this direction. It is a very common Teamwork Training request: “We are in silos, we would like the TeamWork Training to help us get out of the silos and have better communication between departments.”
Needless to say I was intrigued to observe and learn more about this innovative approach to educating my future clients.
One very noticeable aspect of my trip was how friendly folks were all around: from Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers to the staff, faculty and students at the retreat, folks were genuinely nice and friendly. This, however, did not stop them from being great robot builders and battlers!
The winning team – pictured above – finished building the robot in a blistering hot time of 37:45! (thirty seven minutes and forty five seconds); 7 minutes under the average build time. All four teams finished below the average build time of 45 minutes – considering this is their first week/weekend together, I would say the group is off to a great start!
The battles were awesome with many robot flips and balloons popped. The last bot standing battle stole the show in my opinion because of the surprising and exhilarating ending.
It involved what I thought, and I think most people agreed, was the best driver (pictured above) working his way through the other bots, eliminating them 1 by 1, until one last “duckling” remained for the “fox.” He popped one of the balloons quickly and the end seemed near, before a miraculous turn of fate had the other bot flip our best driver over for a climactic victory and finish! The driver were a hero … at least for the day, and our best driver was still held in the highest regard for his abundance of skill throughout the tournament!
A huge thank you to the The Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the University of Nebraska for a wonderful experience and for being great robot builders and battlers!!!
