• 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

  • SBS Viceland: The Feed

    SBS Viceland’s The Feed did a story with us where Anthony used his brain to control Teleport to see the top storey of his house for the first time,...

  • Don't kid yourself on your priorities

    What are your priorities?  Work?  Family?  Relationship?  Start-up?  9-5?  Non-profit?  Volunteering?  Watching television?  Reading blogs?  Eating?  Meetings? Don't...

  • Al Jazeera Women Make Science Documentary

    From September to December 2019, Al Jazeera English followed me around and filmed an update on all my projects: Robogals, Aipoly, Teleport, my...

  • YouthActionNet Global Fellowship Day 1: What makes a great leader

    The first day of the "YouthActionNet Fellowship" program began with a welcome email read out, written by Bill Clinton!  How exciting!  I've always had...

  • ANZ Television Commercial

    Appeared in an epic television commercial with my robot arm!

  • The most successful students become university professors

    When kids are in diapers, their parents enroll them into primary school. If all goes right, the right primary school could mean the right high...

  • Be a fool

    When you learn something for the first time, everything is new to you. So you explore, you try different things, you fall down, you fail, you fail, and...

  • Tech Schools Ambassador

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

  • Australian of the Year Awards 60th anniversary

    My last, large, in-person networking event I went to in Australia since before the pandemic was the 60th anniversary celebrations for the Australian of the...

  • Aurukun Advance Queensland

    As part of my Advance Queensland Hot Desq tenure, I was granted the unique opportunity to visit a remote Aboriginal community, Aurukun, to encourage kids into...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top