The Piedmont Makers hosted a season kickoff and watch party on Saturday, Sept. 12 for the unveiling of the 2026-27 FIRST Tech Challenge theme at the new community robotics and maker space on 10th Street in Oakland.
FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) challenges middle and high school students to design, build and program robots to compete in a new game each year. Working with mentors, students develop engineering skills, teamwork and strategies for competition.
A local non-profit dedicated to K-12 STEAM education, the Piedmont Makers offers hands-on learning opportunities through robotics, maker programs, teacher grants and community events. The organization has expanded beyond Piedmont, with programs serving over 1,000 students from 139 schools across the Bay Area during the 2026-2027 season. Piedmont Makers programming starts in kindergarten and continues through high school. “It’s a really amazing program that impacts a lot of kids for a very long time,” says Paul Morrison, the co-leader of the Piedmont Makers First Tech Challenge.
The 7,000-square-foot 10th Street facility serves as a hub for the local maker and robotics community. The space provides a full-size robotics practice field and access to specialized equipment like CNC routers, and has hosted over 30 robotics teams throughout the Bay Area in the past year.
Highlander Robotics, Piedmont Makers’ capstone high school team, first had the idea: a full-size, community-accessible robotics practice field. The team opened one at a temporary space in Oakland, giving Bay Area teams that used to drive to East Palo Alto for practice a home in the East Bay. When rent rose at that location, the team partnered with Piedmont Makers to find a long-term site. With grants from the PG&E Corporation Foundation, the KLA Foundation, and over one thousand volunteer hours from the team, the 10th Street facility opened in the fall of 2025.
From the beginning, the vision for the new space extended beyond just serving our own teams. “We’re always thinking about how we can expand our impact,” says Piedmont Makers co-president Ben Stein. “The impetus for investing in the 10th Street facility was not just to serve a single team or chapter; it was the goal of creating regional infrastructure for youth throughout the whole Bay Area. That’s the real magic.”
For Kai Chiles, a middle school student and member of FTC team #37264 “CTRL-ALT-Defeat!”, the 10th Street space offers a chance to learn from older students. “The space is cool because we get to see the older teams practice and how their robots work,” he said. “The reveal was exciting, and I’m very interested to see how everyone’s robots are going to look this season.”
His teammate Tristan Lu echoes the enthusiasm, saying, “I’m very excited for this FTC season. Right after the reveal, we started immediately building and modifying our robot for the competition.”
The Piedmont Makers ecosystem is powered by a broad community of students, parents, mentors and partner teams. “The heroes of the Piedmont Makers program are really the kids and our volunteer parents,” says Stein. “We have roughly 300 volunteers, along with teams from across the region contributing labor, parts, and other support. At the end of the day, it’s about building a village to support the amazing work all these kids are doing.”