It’s true. We blew up our hosting service. Not with bombs, but with awesome.

You guys have spiked our bandwidth and ramped up our use so much that we’ve had to upgrade THREE TIMES in the last 2 weeks! I’m not telling you to stop; tell your friends and family and friends’ families and friends’ families’ dogs about us, because if getting you guys pumped about teaching robotics to kids is wrong, then baby I don’t want to be right.

Let’s go for a fourth burn. Our hosting service can handle it. Let’s tear this place down. Get the whole world to visit. If a small faction donate, we’ll be up to our ears in robot workshops!

Hit us with your best shot. Fire away!

How can you tell that Greg Gilla, owner of Robot City Workshop, is “the man”? Because, as if just helping us bring the Bots 4 Tots program to the world by hosting our very first Chicago workshops at his store wasn’t enough, he has now donated a robot to Don and I to be the mascot for Bots 4 Tots! Can you believe this guy? If you are ever in the Lakeview neighborhood, be sure to stop by his shop and give him a big fat propers!

Why is there not a picture of said robot above this post, you may ask. We will reveal him soon, but first, we want to ask you something… will you help us name him?

We want to know what you think we should name our very first Bots 4 Tots mascot. Don and I have named a few robots in our time, but this robot belongs to all of us. We want you to help! Comment below on what you think the B4T mascot should be named, and we will hold a poll in the near future.

To help you name him, let me tell you more about our friend. This model will be masculine, but don’t worry fembots, our girl mascot is next in the production line. This, our first mascot, will be remotely controlled but will also have an autonomous personality that will allow him to roam around, snap and send pictures to the Internet, and detect and project sounds. He will be able to find his way around a room by sight, and recognize where he is. We are going to program lots of interactivity into him, but he’ll also be able to be self-aware enough to know when he has to return to his charging base.

We cannot wait to hear your ideas!