​Volunteer Corner Spotlight - Adnan Abdulally – Region Head Referee

​Name of the team(s) you are currently involved with, name of school and location: 
 
I do not have any association with any teams or schools. It keeps me unbiased in making referee calls.
 
Tell us a little bit about your history with FIRST and what you currently do with the FTC program in the San Diego region:
 
My history with FIRST has always been with refereeing. I started around 4 years ago and quickly worked my way up as regional head referee. My job is to recruit and train head referees for all the events, answer any rules related questions that get escalated to me, and referee for events like the San Diego Regional Championship.
 
What do you most enjoy about your involvement with FTC:
 
My favorite part of refereeing is seeing the kids succeed in accomplishing something with their robots for the first time. Whether it’s getting their robots to score something in autonomous that they never did before, or to hang for the first time, that look of joy that they get is priceless.
 
When you’re not doing FTC, what do you do for a living:
 
I am a Senior Software Engineer at Printivity, an online printing company. I work on the company’s website and internal software tools.
 
Tell us an interesting factoid about yourself that people might be surprised to learn:
 
I own and run a non-profit organization called Active Lifestyle Nerds (ALN) that has over 7000 members.  ALN’s goal is to build and grow the adult nerd community in San Diego.