The Air Force’s former Chief Information Officer, Lauren Barrett Knausenberger, got her start in federal service learning cryptography as a 17-year-old through the National Security Agency. 

“I had this amazing early experience that really got me excited about government service,” she said during the Cyberspace Symposium on Tuesday at The Broadmoor.

The Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association hosted the event that attracted about 4,100 attendees last year. An attendance number was not yet available for this year, said Matt Denny, a spokesman for the event, which was impacted by the government shutdown, in part, because of the pause on travel.

In a neighboring building and in many ways a world away from the free pens and sales pitches of the industry symposium, the association also sponsored a simultaneous event for high school students from 17 states and Canada to test their robotics skills, computing, coding, teamwork and problem-solving skills, and perhaps lay a foundation for future careers.

The robots started off the contests moving autonomously, collecting red and blue plastic polyhedra and shoving them into the tubes on their own. When the high school drivers took over, the robots went after the opposing teams’ points, removing the bright pieces from the tubes, in the most intense portion of the Pikes Peak Classic Signature Event. The top three teams at the event qualify to compete in the VEX Robotics World Championships.   

Doherty High School senior Sophia Malpakam’s time on the school’s robotics team and similar hands-on programming helped her decide to pursue mechanical or chemical engineering in college, hopefully at West Point, she said. 

“It set me up for what I want to do in the future,” she said. “That is invaluable to me.” 

While the partial government shutdown forced military speakers to cancel their appearances at the symposium on Tuesday, about 70 uniformed volunteers, largely from the Space Force, were busy helping to run the annual robotics contest. 

Space Force Master Sgt. Cody Goodin, vice president of military affairs for the association, has been involved with the robotics competitions locally for about four years and seen students grow. 

“The coolest thing for me has been watching the junior high teams turn into high school teams and seeing that progression,” said Goodin, who organizes the unformed volunteers, mostly from the Space Force. The volunteers help with robotics competitions throughout the season, from October through February, and so they also brought experience to this week’s culminating event.

With the support of the local association, the number of high school robotics teams has grown from a handful four years ago to more than 130 through Pikes Peak Robotics, said Russ Fellers, the association’s vice president of education. It is one of several outreach initiatives, including support for adults who want IT degrees. 

For those attending the symposium, Knausenberger promoted the value of working for both the federal government and private contractors to gain insight into both perspectives. 

The Trump administration’s Tech Force initiative to hire workers from private industry with software engineering, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analytics and technical project management to work for the government for two years could help build that understanding between private industry and government, she said.

“Mutual understanding and empathy is so critically important for our country,” she said. 

On its website, Tech Force is promoted as a way to “build the future of American government tech in a two-year White House-backed engineering corps, with real missions from day one.” The application deadline to work for Tech Force was on Monday.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misidentified Russ Fellers.