April Presentations
We have spent the entirety of the month of April preparing for Spring Green Expo! “What’s that?” you ask?
On April 28, 2016, our participated in the Metropolitan Water District's Spring Green Expo–an event that features groups of young people and their endeavors in the field of sustainability. In the past, the expo showcased groups from colleges. However, we were determined to be included in this prestigious event. After explaining our project to the event-runners, they gladly accepted our team as participants. This means that we are the first high school group to ever attend! MWD even added a new category for High School students since we were included.
To work up to this event, Lola (‘19) and Social Media Lead Maya ('18) organized, created, and printed materials for our tri-fold for the display on our table at the expo. Isabelle ('17), our team's Communication Lead, redesigned our business cards that we previously used at our Mid-Grant Technical Review.
On the technical side of things, Annie and Claire (both '17) spent some time sketching and adjusting the internal mechanics of our faucet attachment. Isabella M. and Iman H. (both '16) have continued to make tweaks to our test sink. We brough the sink to the expo so that we could demonstrate how our attachement works in action!
Additionally, Iman M. ('18) worked tirelessly on the code for our display, and with the help of Iman H. ('16), she as able to get our attachement to read the water flowing through the faucet properly! The entire team was excited about this amazing accomplishment. Below, Iman H. (left) and Iman M. (right) show off their progress.
On the big day, our team traveled to Downtown Los Angeles to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. After checking in and setting up, we took shifts to walk around the expo and learn about other exhibitor’s sustainability inventions. Meanwhile, a few girls were always at the table to explain and answer questions about our invention when attendees stopped by our booth.
We loved being able to share about our project to the greater Los Angeles community, including both attendees and a couple of news sources! Annie (‘17) spoke to ABC7, and Marcela (‘16) explained our invention to Joel Greene of PBS’ Curiosity Quest! We feel fortunate to have had access such outstanding media coverage. Watch some behind-the-scenes action below!
At the end of the day, we received an honorable mention for our faucet attachment! We feel extremely proud of ourselves, especially because the vast majority of presenters there were college students or older.
This event was such a wonderful way to end our month of hard work; after powering through, we received some helpful feedback on both our invention and our presentation skills. Moving forward, we will have a focus on making sure that each team member and can answer questions about any area of our invention and practice not talking over each other.
Our focuses for May will be to perfect our working prototypes and filing our provisional patent. We have been looking forward to these milestones all year, and we cannot wait to share more as we progress.
For more updates on our road to EurekaFest (and more!), follow our Twitter, Instagram and Facebook!
- The Archer School for Girls InvenTeam - Los Angeles, California
