Google hosted a Bay Area Robot Team Building event to inspire their team of 70 cloud engineers. We were all at one of their brand new campuses included in the the $800 million Moffett Park expansion located across 13 different streets in Sunnyvale. This event was at the stunning glass and steel high rise megaplex, an architectural beauty among the low rise warehouse type “all-business” suites in the surrounding neighborhood.
One feels a little in the future walking about and around the beautiful , simple, and elegant buildings, and if you suspend your disbelief you could imagine yourself in a futuristic science fiction movie. To add to the feeling we were building and battling with robots in a bay area robot team building for the ages. The winning team, pictured above, put in a top 5% finish coming in under 35 minutes at 33:19. Many teams finished soon after creating the type of competitive atmosphere you would expect from some of the world’s most talented tech professionals. Every team was finished by the 45 minute mark which allowed for extended battle time.
We fit an entire team-versus-team competition, and 3 all-bot melee’s into the hard-stop time of 2:00 hours. It was a Friday afternoon so our hard-stop time was vitally important. Even the best team building can be overrun by a herd of weekend seekers, so always best to error on the side of caution as we approach closer to 5:00 PM on Friday. Luckily this crowd moved fast, battled fast, and basically broke the robots all into mechanical submission just as the two hour mark came, so no need to flirt with danger. All went home happy!
Each team carefully returned their robots and the extra tools and parts to the robot boxes before leaving, a gesture that made my exit a little quicker. Considering the timing, it felt like a magnanimous thank you! Truly thankful for a wonderful experience with some great people, and we are looking forward to coming back and giving more teams a crack at the World Record!
Robot Team Building
