FIRST Mentor Conference
San Jose, California | August 24-25, 2024
Hosted at Google, Mountain View, CA
FMC 2024 by the numbers
represented countries
Represented States
FRC Teams REPRESENTED
Panels & Roundtables
Workshops
2024 Schedule & Sessions
The 2024 conference was a great success!
- Our sponsors: Google and PG&E for their support.
- Our dedicated volunteer planning committee—working tirelessly since December to make this happen.
- Our incredible speakers for generously sharing their time and expertise to deliver outstanding content.
- Local team and Google volunteers for keeping everything running smoothly.
- And to all our attendees for dedicating your time to becoming the best mentors for your teams.
Our Workshop Lines Up included…
Technical
Scouting and Strategy
Team Organization
Project Management
Marketing
Awards
Event Logistics
Much More!
How Do I Know If I should attend?
What is the FIRST Mentor Conference?
The FIRST Mentor Conference is a 2-day event aimed at creating and growing a one-stop conference for FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) community mentors to share their experiences, best practices, and further build community. This year, 2024, will be the second time this event occurs, though we hope for it to become an annual staple within the FIRST Community. This is a volunteer created and run event, not operated by FIRST HQ.
What is the setup of the conference?
The conference will feature 3 tracks of content for different stages of FRC teams: Pre-season/rookie stage teams, early year teams, and established teams. Content will be taught/shared by established mentors and leaders within the FIRST Robotics Community. Various activities for overcoming early team hurdles will also be built-in, such as a grant writing workshop, a kit bot assembly session, and other interactive sessions.
What is the conference cost?
FIRST Mentor Conference attendance ticket is $100, which includes food for the 2 days of the event (breakfast and lunch each day), and a commemorative event shirt.
Earlybird registration is $75.00 per person until May 31st.
A limited number of scholarships are available for attendance.
Partial refunds are available up until August 9th (minus convenience fees and t-shirts). No refunds available after that date. Refunds may not be processed until after the event, as our volunteers are diligently working to finalize event plans.
What is the schedule for the 2 days of the conference?
This is the rough outline for the 2 days; specific details about the schedule will be in the Schedule page of the site (constantly being updated)
Friday:
- 5:00-9:00pm: Lab Crawl
Saturday:
- 7:00 - 8:30am - Registration/breakfast
- 8:30-8:50am - Keynote
- 9 - 6pm (1 hr for lunch) - Workshops/sessions
Sunday:
- 8:00 - 8:45am - breakfast
- 9:00-9:20am - Keynote
- 9:30 -5pm (1 hr for lunch) - Workshops/sessions
- Optional evening social event - tentative
Who can attend this conference?
The FIRST Mentor Conference is for post-high school FRC mentors and potential mentors. Students should not attend this event without express permission from the planning committee.
Will the event be livestreamed or recorded?
FIRST Mentor Conference is for mentors, old and new, to share their experiences, best practices, and further build community. As such, this event will be in-person only with no livestreaming.
Join FMC 2025
Coaches & Mentors
Register to attend the Class of 2025 FIRST Mentor Conference and choose from numerous technical and non-technical workshops as well as panel discussions, round tables and the opportunities to network with mentors from around the country.
feedback from some of our 2023 attendees
Wow! What a great event. When you put something like this on, everyone’s a critic, right? I think the committee should be very proud to have made an event that ran on-time, with LOTS of food, a fantastic venue, and a great set of speakers and diverse array of topics. I appreciated that there was an emphasis on technical AND team AND DEI. Thank you.
I loved the actionable advice from Elise and Wendy. I loved the realistic and thoughtful content from Michael (321).
One of the most valuable and honest conversations I had was during a happy hour after the event with a group of Title I school mentors. We had a really frank and serious conversation about inequity and resources in FIRST–I know there were a number of DEI sessions, so thank you for having those.