For the 2023 SkillsUSA Awards Ceremony, I wanted to do something big!  We hadn't had a live awards ceremony for three years and it was time to go all out.  The problem was that the SkillsUSA events were primarily all virtual.  It wasn't like our SkillsUSA events of the past where we had a one-day showdown and everyone would convene for the awards ceremony with anticipation.  So, why would anyone want to come to an awards ceremony if they know it would be streamed live?

So, I had to do something special to bring students to the "grand finale".  My idea was to have additional live contests.  I recently acquired a set of drones thanks to the Ambassador program and thought it would be a great opportunity to have both a live drone contest and follow on STEM bowl to bring the students to the Innovation Lab prior to the ceremony.  

The Innovation Lab was a perfect place to have the ceremony as it was an old converted theater, so plenty of seating and a great stage.  This would work out great for a location, but what about the drone contest?  I had no idea how to conduct one.

So, I reached out to some contacts and located the top drone pilot on Ramstein.  He was a young SrA and excited to help support.  I provided him with the drones and asked how I could support.  He then asked me to purchase a few "gates" for the drones to fly in, plus a few extra chargers for the batteries and he would do the rest.

In the end, I would reach out to the local Middle School as well as local high schoolers to see how many teams would be interested.  It was really good to see the middle school students there to help expose them to SkillsUSA.

Finally, if I really wanted a quality event, I would need a top keynote speaker and someone/somehow to capture the event.  It was a no-brainer for me to recruit Maj. Rachel Kolesnikovlindsey.  Not only was she a successful Space Guardian, but a successful STEM female!  She had a phenomenal resume with her involvement with international space relations and active participation of over ten rocket launches.

 The steaming of the event was absolutely horrible!  Fortunately, AFN was on hand to at least capture the Drone competition and a small part of the awards ceremony.  They wanted to interview me, but I was still trying to piece together the awards presentation until the very last minute - I'll never do that again!!!