From Abby:
One thing that we need in order to set up the Buggy Alumni Group is identified leadership. We must have a President, VP and Secretary/Treasurer. If anyone wants to volunteer for these positions, please let me know.
I think the best thing to do to start would be to get Pittsburgh-area alums who have a reasonable amout of time and a high level of commitment to this as volunteers for the positions. Then, when there’s a more established membership and organization, we can hold elections.
If anyone has a better suggestion, let me know, otherwise – volunteers wanted. Email Abby Sullivan or post here. If there are LOTS of volunteers then we’ll put it up for discussion.
In Other News…
The Alumni Office is super excited about the idea of Alumni Interest Group. Anne Witchner is on board to do whatever she can from the Student Affairs side of things. So things are moving forward from that perspective, which should allow for the structure needed to do everything else we’ve been talking about.
A bunch of people have sent emails to me and Dani through the site letting us know that you’re interested in participating, and until we have the web forum in place (which looks like it will happen through the Alumni office, if anyone cares), that’s the most ‘official’ way we can keep track of people, so go ahead and do that if you want us to know who you are.
McCue says:
I am posting because I want to help out with this :)
Chris Stengel says:
Yo I am local and I am DAHN WIT DAT
Sign me up.
dani says:
awwright…now we’re cookin’!
Tommy K says:
People you should solicit because they are local and have already done stuff related to buggy publicity and alumni information:
Kat Crawford (regularly posts to live_journal buggy_geeks forum)genuinekfc@livejournal.com
Aiton Goldman (started a general information buggy wiki that he wants to revive)
yanetut@gmail.com
Sam Swift (started pikabuggy.com)
samswift@cmu.edu
Carsen Kline (half volunteered to write regular buggy column for Tartan)
carsen@gmail.com
Frank and Lou – the ancient CIA vets that show up occasionally at rolls
Carsen Kline says:
I’m going to throw out some ideas of what each position might involve. Let’s add, subtract, and get down to some nominations.
President:
– organize meetings with other Buggy Brain Trust leaders
– make meeting agendas, raise issues of committee members and bring these to attention of other leaders, esp. Treasurer for funding
– gather needs and wants of committees and set up meetings with administration
– act as primary ambassador to administration offices (Alumni Relations, Student Affairs, etc.)
“C.F.O.”:
– the person who arranges all things involving income
– works with Alumni Relations and Annual Giving people to raise awareness of our needs and increase donations towards the B.B.T.
– ties in with the P.R. chair to get the word out about donations and ease any fear in reluctant donors of being targeted by the University for future donations
– if possible, maximizes returns on donations through a fund as seen fit by the University
– looks for the big $1M donor
Treasurer:
– interface with funding sources to set up spending accounts
– apportion funding to committees based on availability, priorities as set by B.B.T. leaders, and requests by committee members
– monitor spending of the organization as a whole, set budgets, constrain spending to budgets
– make a 5 year funding proposal and help identify future needs and growth of various arms of the buggy alumni org
plus individual committee heads like P.R., History and Preservation, Student Involvement…
dani says:
Carsen, these are great points. And, I agree, we’ll probably want to have some committee heads. (“History and Preservation” is obviously Tom Wood.)
Eventually, maybe we can have sort of regional point-people for alumni activities and prospective student events as well.
Tommy – thanks for the contacts, I’m sure any and all of those guys will be good for the cause. I am hesitant to solicit anyone, though. It’ll be a fairly decent time commitment (if we do it right)…so I’d like to see people who come forward of their own volition, and have the ability and relationships to achieve our goals. Those guys should come on and tell us how they want to get involved.
Sam Swift says:
Yeah, I’m down. I’m back in grad school at cmu, so I’m very much local (my office is 50 feet from the finish line) and will be around for some number of years.
I would be particularly inclined to help with the web development, but I could also probably get into having one of the official roles.
Tommy K says:
How are you spreading word about this currently beyond those that got here from PB? There could be good candidates out there that hanv’t been exposed to the ground-swell yet. Maybe a cattle call email through Alumni mailing lists?
abbysullivan says:
Admittedly, this is not the ideal way to start such an organization. However, without identified leadership, the official organization cannot get off the ground, and without said organization we don’t have the structure needed to identify the larger potential membership pool. As I said before, we are looking here for interim leadership, then we will get the web forum up, identify the pool of people who might be interested in membership and have them register, then look toward real elections.
I, personally, have sent this information to everyone I have contact with that might be interested. I hope everyone else does the same. We know this not a perfect process, really we do. So, we can sit around and discuss how imperfect it is, or we can agree to move forward in the way that makes most sense right now and then iron things out later. There has been plenty of talk about this with no action, so I think now’s the time to support those who are willing to step up.
bordick says:
Can I be the court jester? How about designated heckler?
Seriously, what can out of towners do?
abbysullivan says:
I’m thinking that the best rolls for out of towners right now would be to head up different projects/committees. Writing the buggy 101 book that’s been discussed, flesh out the rule changes, edit a non-organization centric video that can be used to generate interest, etc. Bordick, if I recall, the buggy 101 book was your idea, so you can certainly volunteer for that one if you’d like. As soon as the web forum is up, hopefully we’ll be able to identify and assign these things.
Also, the plan is to have events for alums everywhere as well as the regional events for prospective and incoming students.
I think going forward, it should not be hard for everyone to contribute, and people in charge can be anywhere, but I think to get this off the ground a crew that can actually show up at Alumni House would be great, since I’m experiencing their capacity to not return calls.
abbysullivan says:
Just to be a little more clear and specific, I do not see the Pittsburgh-based leadership to be the end all and be all of this effort. While there will be a certain level of power there, these people will be initially engaged in things like writing bylaws and begging for money, and I don’t think it would be realistic for them to be in charge of every detail.
I think we’re all big kids and we should pursue what we’re interested in. There is certainly no shortage of ideas. Adler has expressed interest in helping start up organizations. There is no reason why that can’t be fleshed out further now. Who, what, and how that would work needs to be thought through, written down and put up for comment. Anyone who wants to think more about the WRCT broadcast can have at it, call them up and see what can be done for next year. An outline of buggy 101 book/class would be an awesome topic for discussion.
In the interest of efficiency, just let other people know what you’re up to. Dani and I will happily post here anything that anyone wants to share with the group. The limitations that exist right now are that we don’t have the web forum set up yet to gather contacts and funds.
Carsen Kline says:
I was in SARC long enough to know where Alumni House is, and I just might know one or two people there. I’ll have plenty of time this summer and fall to work on this, and I work 5 minutes from Warner and Alumni House.
Add to this my boundless passion for our beloved sport, and I feel ready to put my name out there for president.
My girlfriend’s going to kill me.