We attended a demo night on Monday evening, the sort of event where a large number of organizations have individual tables in a large convention hall. The theme was Internet of Things, a concept loosely associated with the theme of a larger conference taking place Sunday to Tuesday. Internet of Things is an umbrella term that includes things as varied as water level sensors in rivers and the smart refrigerator that might be in your kitchen—any device that is communicating over an internet signal. Engineering is not my specialty and I don’t know enough engineering concepts to pretend otherwise, but we go to these sorts of events anyway because it can be fun to see new devices and projects in their nascent stages and it is only really possible to make a chance connection with someone if you are in the same room.

Alas, we did not have one of those magical chance encounters. Many of the exhibitors were also companies whose products I don’t understand—I have never assembled components on a motherboard or tried to solve for signal interference. That led to some stilted conversations, but one group was noteworthy. It was a group of high school students fidgeting at a table with a robot that loosely resembled a tank in the floor in front of their table. I didn’t have extracurricular opportunities like that and I probably would not have participated even if I had, but I was curious and so we approached the group to hear their spiel.

It was a rehearsed speech that they must have taken turns giving. I surmised that based on the level of enthusiasm, but I would have felt the same way. This was a team, maybe even from different schools, that came together to compete in a national robot-building competition where the robots are designed to compete in a designated game. This particular robot was designed as a mobile frisbee cannon with a top-loaded magazine since that was the contest for the year, and the kids were nonplussed that they were forced to turn the power way down inside the conference hall. The coolest thing for me was how the robot moved around. It was built using Mecanum wheels (yeah, I’d never heard of them either). The wheel assembly was basically a wheel with a bunch of rollers installed at an angle instead of a tread. The result was that the robot could move in any direction or even go in circles without having to turn.

This post isn’t so much about the event or even the frisbee launcher. Instead, it is an admonition to find opportunities for young people to be involved with technology whenever possible. It can be a robotics club at a school, Legos or Lincoln logs, simple Python scripts or Canva, but the tools are out there. And with the power of the internet, you can make a lot of money selling things that seem very simple. I am seeing this first-hand as our mergers and acquisitions practice continues to grow. So if you know someone of school age, expose them to and encourage them to explore technologies both established and emerging—one just might become their true passion.