Hi all,

This is the second follow-up update from the Town Hall. If you weren’t able to make it to the Town Hall, you can take a listen here. New updates are in Bold. The final follow-up post will come at the end of July where I’ll detail the budget situation in consultation with our Treasurer.

1. Membership and benefits — Complete (3/31)
   
2. Consolation print — In progress: The posters are printed and ready to be shipped! We just need your address. Silver and Gold members should check their email or can fill out the address form here. We’ll start shipping these very soon.
   
3. Budget — In progress: As mentioned in the last update, no expected progress until fiscal EoY in July.
   
4. Homecoming — Completed until Fall 2020 (3/31)
   
5. New content including livestream — Complete! Thanks everyone who came out to Virtual Raceday 2020. We were able to still expand the broadcast with split screens, trivia, a live-chat alumni panel, and more. We’ll try to incorporate as many of these into Raceday 2021 as we can and hope you had as much fun as we did! If you missed it or want to watch again, you can watch any time on YouTube here! We’re still hosting Friday Night Rewatch to go along with the History of Buggy as we wrap up the first 100 years of Sweepstakes.
   
6. Elections — In Progress: We have started receiving nominations for officers. You can nominate someone yourself here if you’d like. Nominations close on May 8th, and elections will follow.
   
7. Gifts for students — In Progress: The students have come together and decided on a quarter-zip hoodie with the BAA Buggy100 logo. We’ll be finding cost estimates and finalizing the design and hope to be able to sponsor personalized embroidery for the nearly 50 graduating seniors that have agreed to a gift.

Hi all,

I’m writing today to post about our open officer positions in the BAA this election year, Vice President and Graphics. Our incumbent officers, Jeremy Tuttle and Ethan Gladding, have done a fine job but aren’t able to run for re-election so we need new folks! If you have someone you think might fit the bill, you can nominate them with this form. Here is some additional info about those positions:

Vice President:

The Vice President assists the other officers in their projects, and coordinates with Sweepstakes as necessary. While the President is often concerned with big picture planning and direction, and most other officers have fairly specific duties, the VP is a flexible role that can change to support the needs of the BAA and express the skillset of the person holding the office. During my time as VP, I took part in many different projects: I wrote copy for the Raceday preview; I researched historical data and did a bit of coding to improve our history database; I worked with Sweepstakes and other BAA members to help several new organizations set up buggy teams; I attended Raceday chairmen’s meetings to get fast, accurate information about schedules and DQs (for our community and for our historical records); and I threw countless ideas into officer discussions about what the BAA should be doing. None of these examples are specifically prescribed duties of the Vice President—they’re just some of the ways I chose to use the role. In truth, a good BAA VP candidate is someone who wants to improve Buggy, or Raceday, or the BAA in some way, and has some ideas for how to do it. If you read the BAA mission’s 5 stated goals and think, “I know how we could do some of those things better,” and you are excited to commit the time to make that happen, then the VP office is right for you.

Jeremy Tuttle, BAA Vice President

I’d like to add to Jeremy’s description that we are interested in having the Vice President also participate directly in the transition of leadership between Presidents in the future. This will be clarified in a revision of the bylaws (a summer project, stay tuned) as the officers work out the best vision for the VP position going forward.

Graphics:

This position is to provide design support for the various activities of the BAA. In addition to assisting the Communications and Reporting officers with graphical assets for Rolls Reports and the Raceday Preview, the Graphics officer is on hand to help out with projects like merchandise, video editing, and other communications, like social media. Although currently our Treasurer Bryan Arsham is doing a bang-up job of spreading the word on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, we’re looking to transition these responsibilities to the Graphics officer in order for each role to have more cohesive duties. The Graphics officer would also have opportunities to collaborate with CMU staff in Marketing and Communications, Media Tech, and potentially other departments working towards unified messaging to our supporters. Recently the Graphics officer has provided above-and-beyond support by collaborating on an open source Build Book to help new teams get off the ground.

Mike Darcy, on behalf of Ethan Gladding

We’ll post later this week about the other officer positions, but these are the two we need nominations for! Feel free to ask questions in the comments, and thanks to everyone who has already nominated someone.

Thanks everyone who watched and participated in this year’s Virtual Raceday, helping create the most memorable spectator experience ever. While we were literally rewriting the history books, we also established the Buggy Endowed Fund, helped start multiple new buggy teams, and supported a fantastic podcast collaboration on Chute the Sh!t. I’m proud of all our officers and what we’ve been able to accomplish this year despite the circumstances.

I also want to specifically point out that this year has seen a huge surge of involvement by CMU staff. The spirit of Buggy has been so strong and it has been absolutely energizing to hear and see the enthusiasm for Buggy from staff and faculty at all levels. It’s hard not to expect big dividends from this involvement going forward as professional support enables us to do so many things that previously weren’t possible, like coordinated social media content, new Buggy themed events, and professional outreach. Huge thanks to Tim, Laurel, Annie, and everyone else for their fantastic work.

Although we’ve decided to hold back some of our projects for Raceday next year, we also were able to help design and prepare the widest selection of buggy themed stuff ever seen at CMU: from pins, 3d printed buggies, and shirts to shot glasses, banners, posters, and more, many of which will be available in the bookstore soon!

Lastly, it has been incredible working with current students this year. Seeing everyone come together in the face of these insurmountable obstacles has been inspiring. Although we won’t see the specific Raceday they envisioned, their impact will be felt for many years to come. For the graduating seniors, I hope that they can carry their camaraderie and spirit to every corner of the world as they start the next steps in their lives.

If you’re interested in participating more in this great collaboration, we’re currently accepting nominations for officer positions. Anyone more seasoned than this year’s graduating seniors is welcome to accept a nomination, and anyone can submit someone else for nomination. In particular, we are looking for a new Vice President and Graphics officer. You can read about the positions in the nomination form here, and we’ll have longer advertisements for individual positions later this week. We’ll also have recordings of Virtual Raceday content and updates on the other projects hopefully next week sometime.

Thanks again to all and see you next year!
Mike Darcy
BAA President

Hi all,

We’re excited to announce a Raceday Rebroadcast Livestream on 4/18 at noon EST! The event will feature live commentary, clips of races and hijinks of years past, and a few live events such as an alumni panel!

You can submit any heat you’d like to see at the link here!

Any segment or regular part of the broadcast (yes, even Squirrel Cam) we are thinking about incorporating, but I can’t share too many details yet. There will be a detailed schedule to come, but roughly speaking, the first two hours will be races and accompanying segments, and the final hour and a half will be an awards ceremony, an alumni panel like what we do at Design Competition, and closing remarks.

We’re hoping to get the community very involved through the chat, live video, and through submissions of all kinds. If you have any ideas, feel free to share in the comments or on Discord!

Lastly, thanks to those who have attended our small scale livestreams these past couple Fridays, they’ve been very helpful to try out new things.