Outreach
The Issaquah Robotics Society is committed to spreading STEM education throughout our community. Here’s how we do it…
Salmon Days
The Issaquah Salmon Days festival is among the largest street festivals in Washington State, with almost 200,000 annual attendees. Over the years we have become a landmark in this festival. We show off our robots, share information about the program, and provide robot-related arts and crafts. We team up with other FIRST teams to expand the robotics booth. Also, multiple FLL and FTC teams join as well.
FLL Mentoring
Wanting to inspire a love of STEM at a young age, we mentor FIRST LEGO® League (FLL) teams, the elementary and middle school level of FIRST, at local schools. FLL teaches kids to build and program small-scale robots out of LEGO SPIKE PRIME kits, preparing them for the high school club.
Taking FIRST to the Streets
Since 2001, "Taking FIRST to the Streets" has been our outreach program in which we bring robotics and STEM to community events where they are not usually found. We have spearheaded FIRST WA’s participation in the Seattle Pride Parade since 2022. There we show off our robot to the thousands of spectators and celebrate inclusivity.
Community Partnerships
For the past two summers, we have worked with Home Depot to help with their kid’s STEM workshops. In 2025, our analytics team had the opportunity to present at SciPy. In previous years, we worked with the Issaquah Library, we led library activity days multiple summers. At “Building Buddies” days, kids built with LEGO® bricks during unstructured creative time. And during events at Valley Church, we introduced kids from an under-served community to robotics and STEM activities.
In the News
The IRS has become a well-known Issaquah organization. Issaquah Robotics was featured in the cover story of a 2016 issue of Above the Lake magazine, and in 2019, a team member wrote an article for the technology-news website GeekWire about his experiences with FIRST. Recently, we visited Swedish Hospital to learn more about their surgical robot and they posted an article on their blog about our trip.
At Our School
Robotics has become one of the most popular clubs at Issaquah High School, with about 120 members every year. We give back to our school district by attending elementary school science fairs and developing club attendance software.
Government Outreach
Since our successful 2008 Olympia campaign, Issaquah Robotics has continued to build relationships with our government. We have presented FIRST multiple times to the U.S. Navy in an effort to increase their involvement in student robotics, and in 2019 we met with U.S. Representative Kim Schrier about our program.
Looking to the Future
The Issaquah Robotics Society is always looking for new opportunities to work with our community. If you have an outreach idea or request, please contact us! We’d be happy to help.