• Blog
  • Archives
  • Bio
  • Awards
  • Speaking
  • Book
  • Contact

How the community keeps you going

Published: Thursday, 04 April 2013

When I first started Robogals, the first thing I did was tell people about my vision and ask that they sign on to join.

From that, I got a team of 3 female science and engineering students - Kelly Chiu, Ann Chee Lim and Vi Vu.

From week one, I delegated roles for us all.  Kelly was the secretary, and Ann Chee and Vi would work on the robotics lessons and competition.  My job was to call schools (because no one else wanted to do that), recruit more people, and just make the whole thing work.

Then I found more people to help build the vision.  Through a friend of a friend, I found Adam Falconer, who designed the Robogals logo and then stayed on to be the Creative Design Manager.

I found Daniel Huang, a friend of mine who lived with me at Janet Clarke Hall, my halls of residence, to be the treasurer.  Mark Parncutt took on the role of Sponsorship Manager.  He found Felicity Zhou to help him out…

I just kept telling people about Robogals.  If they were interested, then I would find out a skill they wanted to learn, then assign them tasks so they could develop those skills.

This created a whole community of people working on Robogals in the first few months.  That was inspiring to me, because it meant that even while I was working on Robogals, other people were as well, and the impact of our work was compounded.

After 2.5 months, I left Melbourne to move to London for 10 months.  I always knew that I was going to do this, so it had been arranged from week 1 that Kelly would take on the role of President when I left.

Fast forward a year later, and I'd expanded Robogals to 5 chapters in Australia, and 1 chapter in the UK.  That was really exciting, and I felt so happy!

Then I expanded Robogals to a further 5 chapters in the UK.  That was even more exciting, but also really stressful.

By that stage, Robogals had 11 chapters in Australia and the UK.  There were all these people - all these female engineering students working on Robogals and working on getting more girls interested in engineering.

I was really busy - trying to manage it all, keep up with people from all over the world, develop new projects, while figuring out a system so that we could compartmentalise roles and create processes, so that the things I was doing could be replicated.  It was really hard, and it took a lot of time, but the thing that kept me going, was knowing there were hundreds of people all over the world, working towards our vision.  I didn't want to let them down.  I wanted them to feel proud to be a part of the organisation and the community.  And so I just worked my hardest in order to create that.

Creating stuff is hard.  If you build a community around what you're doing though, the thought of their energy and spirit will keep you going.

About Me

Marita ChengForbes named me a world's top 50 woman in tech & 30 Under 30. I founded Robogals and Aipoly and was Young Australian of the Year 2012. Currently working on robotics company Aubot. I'm the youngest Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and I give speeches around the world.

I tweet @maritacheng and I'm on Facebook.

Subscribe

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Random Articles

  • What's in it for them?

    What's in it for the other person? If you look at everything from this perspective, you can get anything you want in life.

  • How I manage

    For one of the projects I’ve been leading for over the past 2.5 years, I manage a team of 20 people remotely. I meet with all of my direct reports...

  • Tech Schools Ambassador

    I've been named the ambassador for a Victorian Government education initiative called Tech Schools! Tech Schools are shared learning centres...

  • Eating through mosquito nets

    The recurring problem with malaria is that mosquitoes have evolved to be immune to every vaccination ever invented against them.   Humans too are...

  • Short Black | Sandra Sully podcast

    The lovely Sandra Sully invited me to appear on her podcast, Short Black, after we spoke at Vogue Codes together in 2018.  Check out our conversation here: ...

  • The Bubble

    I used to think the bubble was a bad thing.  The huge number of people who called themselves an entrepreneur.  The over-inflation of entrepreneurs in...

  • Austrade San Francisco Landing Pad

    In late 2018, Aubot participated in the Australian Trade and Investment Commission’s (Austrade’s), Landing Pad program, which helps successful...

  • Non-profit founder critics

    Why are people so critical when young people start non-profits? Time and time again, I hear people say, "there are enough non-profits out there....

  • Think more

    All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. Blaise Pascal One of my favourite things to do is to sit there and...

  • No Electronics Day

    Sometimes I like to take a day to think and reflect. So I get someone else to take away my computer, phone and any electronics in the house - so I...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top