Episode 58: Creative Problem Solving with BEST Robitics Executive Director Michael Steiner

Michael Steiner is the Executive Director of BEST Robotics, an annual student robotics competition for middle and high school students that facilitates experiential, complex creative problem solving within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Over 18,000 students across the US participate in the program each fall. Michael is also the co-founder of Your Global Strategy, a consulting agency that works with thought leaders and governments across the globe to manage projects and drive creativity towards growth. In our conversation, we discuss how the BEST Robotics competition fosters creative problem-solving skills among students, as well as Michael’s personal and professional insights into the creative process and how best to prepare young minds for creativity and innovation.  

For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we encourage you to explore and gain expertise across fields and domains of knowledge in order to maximize your creative potential and develop your own creative problem-solving skills. 

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.

If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversations in Episode 16: Creativity, Innovation & Leadership with Robert Cleve, PhD, Episode 38: Leadership for Creativity and Innovation with Jamie Gallagher, and Episode 48: Can You Learn Creativity? with Creative Director Chris McKenna. 

At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you’re not sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. You can find more information on our website, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

BEST Robotics Website

Michael Steiner on LinkedIn

Michael’s Consulting Firm: Your Global Strategy

Creativity Researcher Mark Runco

Show / permanent hyperlinks: 

The Syncreate Podcast

Syncreate Website

Syncreate Instagram

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Syncreate LinkedIn

Syncreate YouTube

Melinda Rothouse Website

Austin Writing Coach

Melinda Joy Music Website

Transcript

Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to create. Our goal is to demystify the process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. We talk with visionaries and changemakers and everyday creatives working in a wide range of fields and mediums, from arts to science, technology and business.

We aim to illuminate the creative process from imagination to innovation and everything in between. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life. At Syncreate. We're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or new venture and you're not quite sure how to get it off the ground, reach out to us at syncreate.org.

Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. 

Hi everyone and welcome. I am really happy to be here today virtually with Michael Steiner, who is the Executive Director of BEST Robotics and also the co-founder of consulting firm Your Global Strategy.

So really excited to be here with you. And so BEST Robotics is a program that is aimed at helping kids use their STEM skills, essentially to address real world problems. And I was excited when you and I connected Michael recently at the Creativity conference at Southern Oregon University. And, we've had a few conversations leading up to this. So tell us a little bit more kind of broad overview of, you know, how does the BEST Robotics program work and how is it related to creativity? 

Michael: So it's a wonderful question, Melinda. BEST Robotics was formed as a STEM program addressing the STEM skills, the challenge we have globally, but mostly in the US. it was formed 32 years by Texas Instruments engineers, and it still is a flagship program of Texas Instruments.

It functions in 19 states, and the flagship is really STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It expanded since it was formed, as you said, to be a problem solving. And, and, and I start smiling because as a follower, just like you of Mark Runco, you mentioned a minute ago, we both know that when you swim into the problem solving, you start tackling the mechanism of creativity. No matter where you are.

So that happened to the goal of STEM. Once you add more and more problem solving in the brain, you get very close to creativity mechanism. 

Melinda: Yes. And I think that is so important because, you know, one of the goals of the show is to really demystify creativity, including some of these misconceptions, like creativity is only for artists, but we know in order to address, you know, problems in any field, including medicine, mathematics, science, you know, we need those creative problem-solving skills, right?

Michael: Yes. So when I was on the board as a board member six years ago, coming from my international background as Your Global Strategy, and having international projects closing the skills gap yet being a many years follower of Runco’s researchers, I started looking at the measurables and deliverables of BEST, remember as a board member. And then I looked at the data in front of me and I said, oh my God, this isn't STEM.

These are the achievables, the deliverables that Mark Runco in his research outlines. This is creativity mechanism. It isn't just STEM. And I was like pulling my short hair and then I said, “Oh my God, does the board really know that they’re being beyond STEM?” We went through a strategic evaluation of ourselves. We brought Mark, we brought others, and we realized that we really aren't doing just STEM.

We did the Blue Ocean strategic transition. We changed where the ship is heading. No we're speaking mostly about creativity and not just STEM. Deliverables and measurables do not cheat. They show you what you really do. 

Melinda: Yes. And again I don't think it needs to be either or. 

Michael: No it isn’t.

Melinda: Right. Because to solve complex real-world problems you need both the skill sets of STEM and the creative problem-solving ability.

Michael: So this is the nutshell. And I'm so happy you started with it. Because, you know, why wait for the end of the show?

Melinda: Right? To find out what this is about. 

Michael: To lift the curtain. You're starting with such a wonderful way of creative input right there. So we know the hero and the heroine kiss and they get married. It's not Romeo and Juliet this way. So they do get married at the end. And so it's a beautiful ending. We discovered, and I give tons of credit to Mark Runco, his contribution. Both of us know he's an amazing person. 

Melinda: Yes, a pioneering creativity researcher. Yes.

Michael: He wants the world to know that creativity is a small-c. It belongs to everyone.

And he's a humble guy also. And so those who follow his work do discover that it belongs to many and not just to few. And when we get to my journey, it really is a similar story. And so you, it's your show. And so I, whatever you want, wonderful. We started in a, in a wonderful way. 

Melinda: Yes. And I want to I want to draw attention. So we were talking just before we started about your backdrop there, which actually shows BEST Robotics in action. So tell us what's happening in that scene. 

Michael: So this is one of many, many, almost a thousand teams participate around the country. So I, most of the time when I participate, I do not participate, I view and I cry very often when I see what these amazing young people are able to achieve.

So I notice thee team that right before they go and participate, they hugged the robot that they created, they fabricated, they built it. And when they prayed for the success of the robot, they prayed together with the robot right at the center of this picture. So I jumped with the camera and I, because it's understandable that they pray, but they pray for it, he, she, success of their robot, and they include the robot in their prayer. 

And then, you know, AI, the robot is very human for them. I say, when I speak to my mother and she compliments or says something, I said, but I came from you. I use that example because the robot came from them. It's their birth child.

It, they really relate to it in a human way. Not as a technology. It's a creative. Mark doesn't speak about creativity speaks about creative. If the world they're creative, so they pray together with their creative. I think it also explains what really is creativity. It's not, it's not something, maybe the word mechanism isn't exact. It's something that evolves in us. 

Melinda: It's a process. It's personal. 

Michael: So you would explain it better than I do. It's deep. It's very deep, very personal. And when you do it together with others, it's even of different magnitude. It's greater. 

Melinda: Yes. So in BEST Robotics, in the yearly competition, you have teams of students, right, working together to address some specific real-world problems. So what are some examples of, of what the competition has been in in prior years? 

Michael: So I'll answer you in a second. One thing that our audience needs to understand is that each year we scratch it, bring it to zero, and we recreate the program from scratch. Reason is because we don't want their brain and our brain to get used to something.

One year we will do, to answer your question, a program which is on the supply chain. There’s places in the world to find parts and manufacture. So the problem is how do you manufacture in a different way that addresses the supply chain chart as, how do you manufacture in the same space much, much more where there's much more technology that is much more effective but uses more with the same amount of parts, yet is quadrupled in its ability.

How do you do that? How do you design it? How do you manufacture it? How do you operate it? What does it mean? What's the strategic behind it? How do you operate it? What's hidden in it, and how do people work with it? All of that is in front of them built. They need to rebuild it, to design a robot, to build the robot, to see what are some of the issues that the robot, each team designed to, each team approached it completely different, although the challenge is the same or the challenges are the same, each team, for whatever reason, came to completely different conclusions.

Melinda: Yes. Which is fascinating because with the creative process, you know you have a problem or a challenge that you're dealing with, and there's not one right way to solve it or to address it. Right. And so kind of by starting from scratch each time and giving the teams a, a common, you know, problem to solve, but letting them go about it in different ways, you may end up with very different solutions.

Michael: So if you, if a person has light fever, they may seek Tylenol or whatever. And always the same Tylenol. Yet in reality of life, when we have all around us challenges, mostly those that we created, addressing them, living side by side with them, the Tylenol or Aleve or whatever are the ones that we need to design to build, and they constantly change and they are not the same.

This shift shape or shape shift constantly. I think digesting that is something which leads those to those skills of the future and also realizing that they are not the same, neither the problems nor the solutions. I think, that's one example. To give you just a different example. Oh, we last year brought to the attention that humans, like them, have issues internally.

They know it. But we brought, we built in front of them a human with nine different challenges in the shoulders, in the brain, in the arteries and so on and so on. Nine. And we said, we would like you as a team to conduct nine surgeries within three minutes. Now, when they approached it, they realized that there is something which is called minimally invasive surgery.

Not require cutting but entering the human. They also realized that to do nine of these requires making decisions. So first of all, they need to understand what is minimally invasive surgery. So they cannot do all nine. Which ones? The brain, the heart, the shoulders, the arteries. What is the device which you and I know, it's called Da Vinci.

What, they need to design it, they need to build it. The last piece of it before it takes the entire conversation is, they will learn that in order to answer some of these questions, it's not Wikipedia. Wikipedia is wonderful but learning these issues, they need to call a hospital. They may think that if they call a hospital, they will be answered no.

The reality is, is that if they call a hospital, the hospital will say, please come. Because in real life by saying to them, please come, the hospitals invest in them becoming future nurses and future doctors. So in all of these seasons, when they call the hospital, Boeing, the airport, the Air Force, whatever they call, for whatever reason, people say to them, come. One lesson we want them to learn is that when you when you call, the world says to you, come. Learn from us. That's part of our hidden agenda. If you call, they will call you. 

Melinda: Yes. It's so important to reach out for the resources.

Michael: To reach out, not the smartphone, to reach out the world. 

Melinda: Yes, yes, I love that. So I know that we had a very rich conversation. You know, when we were first talking about doing this show about kind of your own journey to creativity and, you know, kind of how you came to be so interested in creative problem solving. And I know the consulting work you do focuses on that as well. So tell us a little bit more about you know, how you got so interested in creativity. 

Michael: So it's funny and it's interesting. As I thought about our conversation, before I answer you, I asked myself, I didn't know that what I have is creativity. And I asked myself, would I have wanted to know that I have creativity in me? 

And I think I did. I would want to know. When I share with you in a minute my journey, I would have wanted to know. I would have wanted to sit in classes where I and my mates would have been empowered that we have creativity from first grade. Why let all the others not discover it? Left hanging. I, thinking ahead of our conversation, I think it's a mistake. 

Melinda: It is. And unfortunately, most schools and school systems actually are antithetical to creativity, unfortunately. 

Michael: What a major mistake.

Melinda: Right. 

Michael: So I knew from early childhood that when I take a book and I start reading the words, the letters, rise. Or I was always, always with a book in my hand because it was my boarding pass.

So I read Alice in Wonderland and I saw her path. I saw flowers. I heard the words, I saw the author. I saw everything. I didn't favor going to the cinema because I saw the movie through the words which literally came up in the air. Whether it was Lewis or it was Charles Dickens or Jules Verne, it didn't matter.

Any book I took into my hands, the words came up alive. So I discovered, and I took books to school. Every day, I had, I opened the book and I read. I didn't know it was creativity because I didn't know the word. I didn't even know it was imagination. In later years in school, still in elementary school, I sit next to the window. Teachers didn't disturb me. They didn't.

Melinda: [laughter] ‘Oh, you're looking out the window.’

Michael: They knew. Yes. What's going on? They didn't suspect something was wrong, but there was a home teacher who kept her wing above and didn't disturb. She knew I was looking out the window and I was somewhere in the world. And she knew I'll come back when I, she asked me, where was I?

And so I said I was in France. I was in Albert Island, this country. And she asked, what did you learn? And I always connected it to what was studied. 

Melinda: That's beautiful. And what a wonderful, skillful way as the teacher.

Michael: I was, I was lucky, I was so lucky that nobody punished me, sent me to the principal. I give immense credit to this system for not outcasting me, for being part of the time away, away, daydreaming, letting the alpha waves come into action, allowing me to travel, because I wasn't allowed to read, obviously. 

Melinda: Right. And they know that daydreaming is an important component of creativity, right? 

Michael: Oh of course, and I needed it. I had to come to it very often because it was my oxygen. I couldn't last a whole day without traveling. That's why the books. That's why the daydreaming. It really is for those of us who have it in such an extreme way or, so I, I fail because later in life I knew that there's other manifestation of it in me, the other possibilities of Dabbrowski, I knew that I smell stronger, I hear stronger, I get excited.

So I knew that it manifests itself in other way. So the other pieces of the puzzle came into, I became more aware, because I became also older. But again, the system didn't bother me. When I became a high school student, I started acting on it, so I was holding the horse reins, in and also my schoolmates took at that and I enjoyed it.

They used it. So when we were supposed to have a test, the students said “Steiner, use it.” I would raise my hand. I would ask a question that was from the other side of the globe, and no teacher could resist it because I knew how to use it. I use creativity in ways. Were they legitimate or not legitimate? It didn't matter because it was creative in the class and the school enjoyed it. 

Melinda: Yeah. So that makes me wonder, was there a moment, was there like an light bulb ‘aha’ moment when you actually realize just that this was creativity at work? 

Michael: To be honest, I didn't think whether it was creativity, I think. To be completely honest, I was more possessed by the idea that it's making me popular in class.

I mean, I was a young teenager in, in pre-puberty, all over puberty, lots of boys and girls, and suddenly I had a powerhouse. It can do something that others are not. So for whatever reason, I get it. And I can suddenly pull something from God knows what planet. I'm just not responding to it. Guest teachers, principals and I don't know to explain it.

So then. So I used it. I use it to do anything completely wrong or semi criminal? Of course not. I didn't know how. So I didn’t think of it. So it was, it was contained in the world of learning. And it was fun. Later I, of course, when I started dating, I discovered that you can also use it in a relationship, you know, make a girl giggle. And to be more popular. 

But again, it was in discovering how the world works with creativity. Still didn't know what it was. This is why I said before, I wish somebody told us, I, first of all, I wouldn't be isolated in a negative way. So that it wouldn't be just one person. I, I'm sure that had it been taught, all the others would have been discovering.

Melinda: Right. They could have been acting on their own creative potential. Right. 

Michael: There's no question about it. It isn't a gift of an individual. It's a trained skill. Well back to BEST. Tens of thousands of kids from all walks of life are using it. They are doing what I did 50 years ago. And in scale that is unbelievable.

Melinda: Yes. Beautiful. So I'm curious, coming back to BEST. Thank you for kind of, bringing us back there. So are there any particular stories that come to mind of, you know, particular competitions or solutions or maybe students who went on from participating in BEST to do, you know, great things in the world? 

Michael: I think, there are there are quite a few. I think that the stories that touch me are the stories of where, I don't want to call it biases. I think the stories that touch me are stories of maybe the unexplained childhood meeting the adulthood in me because this is in every one of us where little Michael and the older Michael are still speaking. 

And one of them is seeing in 2019 at my first year as an executive, a fifth grade girl in a rural community, becoming a sixth grader very young, probably pre-puberty. Just as I was then, and she's leading a team of sixth graders to 12th graders. She's leading them and she's mustering skills of electronic simulators, autonomous sensors at her age and she's manifesting creativity, which blew my mind. 

Melinda: Yes. That's amazing. 

Michael: Yes. And she did it once, twice, ten times, 15 times. And I, I couldn't fathom it. I, I started crying. I think that when I think about it now, especially in our somewhat therapy conversation, I think I was thrown back many years. Reflecting on what to that child then and now. They explained skills of maturity that are in a body of a child, that creativity, that acquiring such maturity and yet exist in a child. 

Melinda: Yes. And it strikes me that the competition gives young people an opportunity to exercise not only these technical skills, but the leadership skills and the interpersonal teamwork collaboration skills that they might not have otherwise had a chance to bring that forward. Right. 

Michael: I owe you a hug. [laughter] You know I do, because you resolved the riddle. I sat down, I published an article about it with the title, how dare a fifth grade going into sixth grade young woman manifest just such an amazing set of creative skills. Where God is it coming from? And I think you resolve that because the problem is almost raising it.

It's raising it. She continued. She did it again a year later in a different way, and again a year later. She is now in 12th grade. 11th or 12th grade. She is still a rising star. But instead of losing it, kind of a fluke, because she continues in the program, these native skills in her, instilled, they are in her, she owns it.

Melinda: Yes, yes. And who knows what she may go on to do in the future. Yes. That's amazing.

Michael: She made me cry because it's just, you realize how gifted people are. It's just incredible. It's just that I couldn't fathom it as being in her age. I just had fun. It's like a magic toolbox. It, and you enjoy playing with it. Why not? And suddenly when you see yourself in a girl. You realize what's going on in others. The gift it is that others have it. 

Melinda: Absolutely. So I'm curious. So how do students get involved with the competition? Like how do you work with schools and with groups of students to kind of recruit and bring them into the fold?

Michael: Amazing amazing question. There's two sides to it. The one side is that the school has to register. The program is free. Completely free. The vision of Texas Instruments was, and a wise vision, is that if it's not free, if it will cost even $5, it will divide the country between those who have five or $5,000 and those who don’t. Yes. I, not being born here, I wouldn't even know how divided the country is between those who have and those who do not have.

So they, they put into writing the vision that it must stay free. So the school registers and says we are part of the program. From that moment on, it is up to the students to decide. The program is so demanding, so complex. Students must say, I'd like to be part of it. 

Melinda: Okay. So there's a self-selection element.

Michael: Yes, yes, yes, and rightly so. If Aubrey, that young lady I described, if Aubrey would say I'd like to be part of it, the principal or the teacher cannot say, Aubrey must participate, because it wouldn't be appropriate. It's eight weeks of grueling, from her side. And for some of them, it's eight weeks plus more. Because if her team succeeds because of her, go for another round with only those who succeeded. So it's to be a self-selection that they say we as a team want to be part of it. 

Melinda: Yes. Beautiful. And so I know that this year's competition is ramping up. It kind of coincides with the school year calendar. So tell us, you know ,I know you have some events coming up, including here in Austin where I am. And so what's the theme for this year and what's happening? 

Michael: The theme of this year is, it's going to be advertised, is gravity. The gravity as we share with them is really around what Einstein and his teacher, Minkowski said, figure out the center of gravity or figure out what gravity means, but what they don't know, and we are not going to share it before the beginning or the end of August or the beginning of September.

But it really is more than just gravity and center of gravity. They will discover when you post the interview, they will discover that as astronauts, they are being sent to a station on the moon where others left the station with challenges, with problems that they didn't fix. So they are going to fix challenges that others, just as all the seasons before, there are challenges that other humans caused.

And some of these challenges, and I'll be careful not to share everything. Some of these challenges, the basic one is the issue of really gravity, is going to design a robot, a robot for the first time, vehicle that carries them. So typically the robot needs to fix things. This robot needs to fix things, but also carry them to fix the things that they need to be involved in.

The difficult thing is that the gravity is not secured, meaning the robot keeps changing its center of gravity, which they need to figure out who they need to go to to understand what does it mean center of gravity in a transportation that keeps moving? Grapple with the thought. How, then to all the gravity in a vehicle moves.

My father was an engineer in Volvo busses. It took me to see how centers of gravity caused busses to turn over. So what does it do to all the passengers?

Melinda: Right. Not good. 

Michael: And how if you change the height of the bus, the bus will flip. He showed me the accidents. All of this routine. So they will see how they design something and it flips. So you may need to fix things in the station but it flips. And with it you. So that's one issue of the gravity also all the things they need to do fixing batteries on the station, fixing antennas, communication in the station, things that they've never been exposed to in previous seasons while the center of gravity gives you moving. 

One more challenge, which they will be tempted too, again remember we are not sharing it before the season, is that they have control on the issue of how much ambiguity on the center of gravity they want to tolerate less or more to deal with less ambiguity of center of gravity or more. It influences the results. 

Melinda: Yes, yes. Okay, so this brings me to a question. Given the parameters of these different annual competition missions, have the kids ever designed something that was completely innovative, that hadn't been done before? 

Michael: Again, again, an amazing question, because in each of these years and season, they are required among the challenges among these tasks that they have, they are asked to design things, to produce things that many of them have not been done before.

The level of their interpretation changes among the tasks. So remember there's a main theme and then they have tasks to do. Some of these tasks there are things that they have more leverage and less leverage. In some the leverage is almost completely theirs. And they can design it almost 100%, meaning their innovation, their creativity is complete. I'll give you in a second, or it's less, for example, there is a challenge which is called spirit and spirituality.

How does the challenge of the year get expressed in an element called spirit and spirituality? Design a mascot. Mascot embodying the spirit and spirituality of their team.

Melinda: Love that.

Michael: One of the teams in few years ago took the dance team of their school and asked the creative director of the dance team to design a choreography especially for the theme of that year. They wrote a dance company for the game day, and the dance company danced the premiere of the choreography. 

Melinda: That's amazing. 

Michael: This obviously is going almost insane. 

Melinda: [laughter] But the creativity is boundless, truly. 

Michael: Boundless. Boundless. They shot the video, which is another task on the process of designing the choreography and how it expresses their creativity on the theme of the year. This is where they can go, leaps and bounds, wherever they want. They are told at the beginning, interpret the way you feel. Go as far as you want with your interpretations on any of the tasks. Every task they have is measured. We have deliverables and measurable. We talked at the beginning, so they are measured. It's not that things are elusive.

So what the measurables and deliverables are. So it's not jungle, but the fact that they can drive with their creativity as far as they want and that they love themselves to do it is the biggest compliment into the program.

Melinda: Yeah. And that's really beautiful because it strikes me, you know, that it instills this idea. You know, when we talk about creativity, we talk about thinking outside the box or whatever metaphors we might use. But, you know, when we go out into the world and we start working for a company or an organization or whatever it might be, you know, we we enter into a space with all these set parameters, and sometimes it can be very, very hard, as you were saying earlier, to change course, especially within a larger organization.

But I think what this competition really does is, is help, students and young people see that there are many possibilities available, even when we're told, well, this is the way it works, or this is how it's always been done or whatever, you know, to be truly creative and innovative in a professional context, let's say, you still have to be able to question that and go, well, is that really the only way to do it?

Michael: I think one of the things we see happening in, it's a, I think it started 32 years ago as a pilot. When I speak about BEST, I personally say that I believe it continues to be a pilot because it's learning things. One of them is that many of the graduates come to the conclusion that they need to study medicine and engineering, because when they come to the conclusion that there's so much diversity, not one thing gives them in a litmus test to what life is, a clear answer.

And so, they want to go to medical school, but they want to do medical school in the military so that they can get exposed to engineering and not just, or they want to do medical school plus they want to specialize in the MRI because they believe the world is multifaceted. For one track isn't giving them what they want.

Melinda: That's right. And different disciplines and fields inform each other. I'm so glad you said this because I was speaking at a conference recently of spine and neurosurgeons, and at the beginning of my talk, and they are developing medical devices, these incredibly innovative, you know, things to treat spinal disorders. And I said, how many people here consider themselves creative? And only three people raise their hand! Because they're not making that connection. Right. 

Micahel: Yeah. Let me give you an example which compliments the company that sponsors us because they started that way 15 years ago. But demonstrates your point. The issue of software engineering is a big enigma. And it's a big issue in this year.

It comes from machine learning and software engineering but it's constantly discussed. Are we trying to get them to specialize in coding in software engineering or not. Is it soft skills. Hard skills. There's a whole debate around. So the company that leads us in this year, in this sphere is called MathWorks. They’re a world leader. They are a small but a boutique global company in math and in software engineering.

They've been with us for 15 years. So we thought, and they give three prestigious awards to three schools each year who are exceptionally talented, but they also train all the schools. They are supposed to be just for must master's degree, PhD and above. And yet here they are teaching middle schools and high school. Thought, most of the students will specialize in Simulink and Matlab which is their tools.

Measured in 2023, to look and see because we measure everything, we look and see what is it that our students doing in software. We discovered that most of the students use nine different softwares. We thought, what's going on? And when we went deeper, we came to the conclusion that the reason this is happening is because once you open the books, all the, of young, passionate, creative minds, want everything. They want, MathWorks opened the world of software to them. It's like the Michael of 50 years ago. They don't want one book. They want another book and another book. And another book and another book. They want one software, another they want C++, they want Python, they want Simulink.

They want to try as much as possible. We were afraid of lazy generations coming up. This is generations that want much more. Everything. This is why they want medicine and engineering. They want this and that and that and that. 

Melinda: And there's so many tools available. So why not? Yeah. 

Michael: The issue for us to digest is that the workplaces for a generation like Z and Alpha can be siloed. We cannot tell them stay at your desk, stay at your department. We have to break it. Give you access to accounting, to technology, to marketing, to development tools, because their curiosity, the appetite, their ambition, not for themselves, to advance things. So big that we will lose them if we don't open things and allow them to do more, to accumulate more. They are gifted. 

Melinda: Yes. Okay. This is beautiful because we are getting toward the end of time, and I usually like to end each episode with what I call a Creativity Pro Tip that people can take and kind of run with in their own life and work. And what I'm hearing you say, maybe a good pro tip for today is to go ahead and experiment and learn and gain skill and even expertise across domains, across different areas, across different technologies, and, and fields of knowledge, because that, they're only going to inform and enhance one another.

Michael: I think you're reading it very, very well. The, Michael as a trainer, not as a child, as a trainer used to train, among other things, Air Force pilots who present those issues. They had difficulties doing it. The kids at BEST swing presentations, do elevator pitch this way without hesitations on subjects that they've never learned.

They do it on viruses. They do it on airplanes. They do it on Covid. They do it on Da Vinci's. They do it as if they will born elevator pitchers. They do it on printers. They do it on anything and everything. They were not born this way. They were given an opportunity. Swing domains. Don't pay attention to the word swing. Pay attention to what you said, Melinda.

And that is if we open the different domains in us to the younger generation, they will show us the abilities that they have. The experiential approach is exactly what you said. 

Melinda: And that's what we need to address the increasingly complex problems that we find ourselves dealing with. So beautiful, that, I think that is a great end point. I do want to just hear a little bit about, I know you have some kickoff events coming up, and if people want to learn more, how can they find you and find out about the competition? 

Michael: So, the kickoff is on the first weekend of September. Really, the first Saturday is the first kickoff in Grove City College here in Pennsylvania.

And then the, in many, many locations throughout Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, Texas. You mentioned Austin, and many, in fact, ten different locations in Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and, and more and more Florida and many other locations. And it stretches all the way to the first and second weekend of December. The best places to find more information is to go to the BEST Robotics site online and be in touch with you, and then you can refer them to me.

Melinda: Yes, we'll put them in the show notes. Wonderful. Well, Michael, it's been a pleasure and the time has flown by. So thank you so much for being with us. And good luck with this year's competition. I'll be following it. I can't wait to see what…

Michael: Go to the Austin branch and find yourself some gravity!

Melinda: Yeah that's right, that's right. Okay. Thanks so much Michael. 

Michael: Thank you. See you soon. 

Melinda: Yes. 

Find and connect with us on YouTube and social media under Syncreate, and we're on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review. We're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, and the show is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios.

Thanks so much for being with us, and see you next time.